Hello everyone,

The development train keeps rolling for the Level Map Editor! Following up on reaching MVP, adding the ability to load saved work, implementing sprite movement, automatic configuration loading, and various UI/workflow enhancements, I’ve been focusing on making the core level-building process even faster and smoother.

This latest update brings some significant improvements aimed at boosting efficiency, particularly when placing common level elements.

Here are the key updates:

More Performance Gains (The Ongoing Effort)

The continuous effort to optimize performance persists. I’ve implemented further refinements under the hood to ensure the editor remains as responsive and fluid as possible, no matter the complexity of your level.

Auto-Scrolling While Moving Sprites

Building on the recently introduced sprite move feature, I’ve added a quality-of-life enhancement. When you are dragging a sprite around the canvas, the drawing area will now automatically scroll if your cursor gets close to any of the edges. This eliminates the need for manual scrolling while moving objects, making fine-tuning placements across large maps much more seamless.

Introducing Bulk-Drawing: “Cloning” Sprites for Faster Tile Placement!

This is arguably the most impactful feature in this iteration, designed to drastically speed up building foundational level elements like ground or walls. I’ve added a “bulk-drawing” or “cloning” capability.

Here’s how it works: While in Sprite-Mode with a sprite selected (like a ground tile), you can now left-click on the canvas, hold the mouse button down, and drag the cursor. As you drag, if the distance your cursor travels exceeds a certain multiple (‘n’) of the selected sprite’s width (for horizontal dragging) or height (for vertical dragging), the editor will temporarily draw ‘n’ number of adjacent instances of that same sprite along the direction of your drag. This creates a temporary preview of a line (or potentially a 2D array if dragging diagonally) of sprites.

For example, if your ground tile is 20 pixels wide, and you drag horizontally 65 pixels, the editor will show 3 temporary copies (since 65 is more than 3 * 20 but less than 4 * 20). This temporary placement updates as you continue dragging. When you release the left mouse button, the temporarily drawn sprites are permanently placed on the canvas, perfectly aligned side-by-side. If you decide you don’t want to place them while still dragging, simply press the right mouse button, and the operation will be aborted, removing the temporary sprites. A simple click down and up without moving the cursor still results in the standard single sprite placement.

This feature is a game-changer for placing large runs of tiles or blocks, ensuring perfect alignment automatically and saving you a considerable amount of time and effort compared to placing each one individually.

These updates, particularly the bulk-drawing feature, are aimed at making the level creation process significantly faster and more intuitive, allowing you to focus more on design and less on repetitive placement tasks.

Happy editing!