how to create GUI game editor

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

hello I would like to create a GUI editor for my game:

have some folder structures, right click and create a sprite, then add the image or animation of the sprite and set all properties according to what I want, I can do that with code ( and I have it like that ), but how to make with UI,
do I have to create the canvas, then how to add dynamically the sprite, I know I can put another panel and there all the properties to change, but how to define colisions between that sprite with other, things like that, I have the idea but I want to realize every thing.
thanks in advance.

#2

if you want make all self without extra libraries:
make Gui in Photoshop, Paint etc…
then write every GUi data in some External format like XML, etc…
then load this XML in Game, and generate GUI from it

#3

GUI is one of the great unsolved mysteries of programming. There are a million ways to do them and none of them are that great. WYSIWIG editors are cool for show off but most of them I’ve found hard code margins into your code meaning that you end up with a layout that looks good on your computer but breaks on any other. Generally developing anything is more frustrating, time-consuming and problematic than it seems when you think about it. I say just hardcode the UI into your game.

#4

That’s what I did, but then again my game is only for desktop so there’s no resizing or anything going on.

#5

I have a decent amount of experience and so you can ask me any questions if you have any.

My best advice:

  1. At the highest level, most level editors are a window with menu bar, a pane for viewing and editing your scene, and some pane for selecting entities. Saving and loading and similar stuff is handle in menu items. You might want to also throw tile map editing in there if are doing 2d.

  2. If you cannot hardcode entities, which i highly recommend, then create another tool for making entities. This would have a menu bar, list for viewing list of entities, a pane for editing properties like collision and graphics. Save them to a file and load the file in your level editor.

  3. In regard to making a properties pane, just create forms. If you’ve ever registered for a website, then you know what forms are.

  4. Copy Copy Copy. There are hundreds if not thousands of guis. If we include websites then there are many more. You’ll move a lot faster if you have a model.

  5. focus on functionality not appearance

  6. Choose a gui framework and stick with it. I am biased and so I will recommend Swing/AWT.

#6

Hi,

if I got you right you wanna make the GUI editor for the only one game.

Even, if you’re actually saying about the game engine e.i. the GUI editor for a number of games I’d still advice you not to try to solve all problems at once.

If this editor is the part of your game-play this is the one deal. if you develop it as a tool making your life easier, this is the another.

I biased to join @Sickan and my opinion is: do the games, not the tools.

I just talking about MY experience and I’m slightly regretting about the fact that I spent the big chunk of my time trying to automate automatic automation =).

Some tools had been released, but now nobody needs them.

Don’t think I’m frustrated.

I’m currently working on non-game projects and very happy with that.

At the same time my advises are not more than the food for thought.

Me is me and you is you.

So I wish you to succed with your plans.

#7

thanks man, I will sak u surely I have some idea but I want to be pretty sure about that.

I understand most of what you are pointing, but for example. how to specify how the player sprite will behave if is colliding with another sprite( enemy ), that part is to enter to the code editor and throw code right?,

then what you told me is like:

creatate a window with boardLayout, in the center I have to put the canvas of my game,
on another panel I can specify to add an image as background( from menu), then the canvas will instance that image and will
put that on the background,
but if I want to add a new sprite ( from menu ), then the canvas will add another sprite instance to it ,and so on, I think that how it should work