Game Creation with XNA/Other/Level Editors

What are Level Editors
In general a Level Editor is a piece of software, we can use to create or design levels, games, maps etc.. I will show you two pieces of software which can be used to create a Level, one calls GLEED2D and the second is SAYA-Engine 0.3.

Description
XNA LED is a C# level editor created with XNA using xWinForms and outputs an XML file which is possible to load into your project using the Scene.cs class included in the source.

These are the current features implemented

 * Snapping
 * Dynamic loading of textures during runtime
 * Transformations like move, rotation, and scale
 * Panning the screen
 * Floating toolbox
 * Uses xWinForms for GUI
 * Save and load from an XML file
 * Add Scene.cs class to your game for easy loading of levels
 * Just port Scene.cs to any language to be able to use the XML files in that language


 * Attributes Editor
 * Create a tab on the right that lets you control various properties of each object.


 * Copy, Paste, Redo, Undo
 * Full copy, paste, redo, and undo support!


 * Show the snapping grid
 * List of all objects in the scene
 * Scenegraphs, easy renaming of objects.


 * Pressing f to pan the camera to an object
 * 2D Terrain editing/painting
 * 2.5D models
 * Place models, create 2.5d games! Start for 3d editing.


 * 3D Editing


 * Editing.... in 3d! In 3D editor, it is possible to create 2D or 3D scenes in the editor. For 3D
 * we are able to import 3D models.


 * Entity Editor, placing entities in the Level Editor
 * For Entity editor you create a entity, a class, you define physics, shapes, mount, points,               : animation properties.
 * Also, we might add material editing, the texture that let you define all kind of maps,
 * and include perfect synchronization.

To create a Levels you can use the software GLEED2D - Generic Level Editor 2D
Project Description GLEED2D (Generic Level Editor 2D) is a software and is free, written in C# and XNA Game Studio 3.1. It is a Level Editor for 2D games and is possible to insert textures and items. The Levels are saved in XML format. Now we can added the special items, you own ideas of some features.

Examples for Features

 * undo/ redo
 * parallax scrolling
 * placing & editing textures
 * multiple layers
 * preview in your application
 * several tools

To make a XNA Level Editor
It is easy to work with this software, you can create easy levels and very fast. The structure of the levels is that each level consist several layers and each layer consist several items. First I create a layer, on the layer I add the texture and create a primitives for example a circle. I continue to create more layer and give them a name, add some texture on it until I am fine with my result. It is possible to rename the layer anytime. When I select the texture I can do three basic transformation, it is move rotation and scale. There are also other properties, the Tintcolour, FlipHorizontally and FlipVertically. Every action I can Undo and Redu, copy and paste. Finally you can save the level in XML file and we can look in XML file.

Another Software is SAYA-Engine 0.3, you can use for 3D Games in XNA
Saja Engine 0.3 is a also a software and is free, with this software you can design levels in 2 D and 3 D. Is very easy to work, you can create very fast your levels.

Youtube.com has a lot of tutorials with Saya- Engine, In this website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NczP1pQev5Q&feature=related you can see how easy is to create a level with this software.



When I start to create a level, I add some texture on it. For example the floor will be green, then I put some stones, windows and whatever I like. There is a lot of examples for the texture in Internet, for background and objects.



Here are some important points in general about level editors


 * Modify level content processor to load textures automatically, so that they don’t need to be added manually
 * Implement a camera system to be able to create larger levels and move around them
 * Add functionality to the level editor to be able to edit objects once they have been placed
 * Implement the Properties tab using the .NET Property Grid control to be able to edit the properties of selected objects

Links
A good example of a level editor is http://gleed2d.codeplex.com/

Also interesting maybe: Load XML in XNA: http://vimeo.com/12658473

another good video example for XNA Level Editors http://wn.com/XNA_Level_Editor

Very good Tutorials for XNA Level Editors is this website: http://xnagpa.net/xna4rpg.html

To download Saya- Engine 03: http://www.downloads.de/download.php?id=20638&tabelle=Computerspiele

To download Gleed2D: http://gleed2d.codeplex.com/releases/view/50413