What's New?

Tile Layer Editing in the Level Builder

Tile layers are now editable and viewable from within the Level Builder. This means that you can drop a tile layer on a scene and use either the quickedit or the right-most widget on the object to edit it. There are a variety of tools that you can use for editing your tile layers and you can save them off as different names, add scripting, assign collision polygons, and more.

Selection Tool
The selection tool in the layer editor (accessible from the quickedit tile layer toolbar) will allow you to select individual tiles, or double click to flood select a group of them and you can apply changes to any selection using the 'Apply to Selection' button in the quickedit. You can also shift+drag to do rectangle selection of a group of tiles.

Paint Brush Tool
The paint brush tool allows you to paint directly onto the layer with the currently defined brush or settings of an unsaved brush that is defined in the quickedit panel. This works much like the original tile editor painting and should be fairly self-explanatory.

Eye Dropper Tool
The eye dropper tool will allow you to drop from any given tile. It will grab all properties from a dropped tile and apply them to your current brush setup in the quickedit. It will get collision information, custom script and other relevent data from the tile.

Erase Tool
The eraser tool, when selected, will clear tiles that you click on.

Wrap Indication and Layer Collision Creation
The tile layer editor will display a translucent red rectangle around any areas of a tile layer that are wrapping when you are editing. This is to show you which areas you can change and which are simply duplicates from wrapping options. You can also do a normal collision polygon edit on a tile layer and it will automatically chunk out the collisions onto the proper tiles so that they match what you've created as shown above.

Editor Add-On Support

With 1.1.1, resources have been expanded upon to allow drop-in add-on functionality to the Level Builder and tools set. An addon is simply a folder with special scripts inside of it that is placed in $installPath/tools/resources/resourceName that will automatically be loaded upon startup. As an example of this functionality we have prepared a floating Layer Management window addon that you will be able to download from TDN soon! It provides a new menu item and shortcut (ctrl-l) to toggle it on screen and will show up as follows. This means that if you've got a modification you've made to the Level Builder that is all script you can easily give it to your friends and they can then instantly use your cool add-on the next time they start TGB. All currently active add-ons are listed in the about dialog for TGB.

Layer Y-Sorting Support for Isometric Games

Layers may now have a sorting mode assigned to each of them, including sorting by Y and -Y axes. This allows you to do isometric style games where a player may need to at times be rendered in front of or behind an object depending on his Y position and the sort point for his object. The sorting modes for each layer may be changed by clicking on the scenegraph (on no objects) and in the "Layer Management" rollout.

UI and Workflow Improvements

Smaller, More Space-Saving Layout
We received feedback from lower resolution users that the Level Builder consumed a large amount of space and left them feeling as if they didn't have much of a scene to work with. So with this in mind, we streamlined the appearance using smaller fonts and graphics to allow it to correctly run at lower resolutions and display even MORE data at higher resolutions.

New Button Appearance
There was also a lot of confusion about buttons on the interface so the buttons have been tweaked to appear more like buttons, making them easier to identify and more inviting to click on!

Play Preview Linked to Design Resolution
The play game option of the builder has now been linked to the design resolution at which your level is designed. This was because of feedback indicating that designing something for 800x600 while running the builder in a 16:9 Aspect Ratio resolution was causing stretching of sprites and overall confusion and dissatisfaction while playing your game. TGB now sets the screen size to the design resolution that is specified when playing your game and then back to its previous resolution when you return to the editor.

Many more
See the full change list here.