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LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

deepnight.itch.io

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Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#11
post #5

> Linux Ubuntu (experimental) 76 MB > HTML5: LDtk is built around modern web standards. Why its size is so huge? Is it Electron-based? Size of Tiled [0] app binaries for each of MacOS/Win/Linux platform is 3 time smaller than LDtk's binaries. What is "modern" in differnce between LDtk and Tiled? [0] https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled/releases

Why does it matter? At all? Is anyone really pushed for 76MB?

bloated disk space usage can be an indicator of bloated cpu and memory requirements.

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter? At all? Is anyone really pushed for 76MB?

Because Tiled is a very mature 2D tilemap editor with quite a few features, so if a new product comes on the market that is three times bigger then an obvious question is "what does this have to offer that the older, smaller program doesn't?"

Having used both Tiled and LDtk, the latter is far more fun to use. Tiled is bogged down by legacy compatibility quirks that will never be fixed.

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#13
I want to talk about Haxe. Haxe is a small niche language. But I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the showcase of games written with Haxe. Quality indie games I have played myself, like Dead Cells, and this level editor is another very polished example. Even things like Pokemon Sword and Shield. What's going on here? I need to learn me some Haxe.

Are all of these using Kha - so called "SDL but super-charged"? Or are there even more great graphics libraries for Haxe?

(Also, I found LDtk on a four month old HN post less than three hours ago, and now it's front page. I'm not the one who submitted it. My connection to the hive mind must be a good one.)

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#14

Thanks, this looks really cool. I wonder what kind of algorithm and tilesets are needed to achieve what we see in the first two animated gifs on right side. The second gif seems to be sort of 2D LOD -- once the designer zooms out a different layer is shown instead of the tiles. I think this can be achieved by preparing one set of tileset for detail editing and one for zoomed out views and switch between them. However…

> However I'm not sure how to do things in the first gif. Looks like you have to prepare a few different (but visually close) tiles for one "group" (say grass/dirt/sky/etc.) and when the designer drag the mouse the editor randomly chooses one tile from each group. Still I think it's a lot more complicated than I thought.

The algorithm is called Wang Tiles. I think you identify a set of tiles which have edges compatible with each other by coloring them. Every time you place a tile, it will pick a random tile that meets all edge constraints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_tile

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#15
post #5

> Linux Ubuntu (experimental) 76 MB > HTML5: LDtk is built around modern web standards. Why its size is so huge? Is it Electron-based? Size of Tiled [0] app binaries for each of MacOS/Win/Linux platform is 3 time smaller than LDtk's binaries. What is "modern" in differnce between LDtk and Tiled? [0] https://github.com/mapeditor/tiled/releases

Why does it matter? At all? Is anyone really pushed for 76MB?

Not to mention game development asset creation is inherently a disk intensive task. You're going to have lots of huge images, 3D files, sounds, etc. in lossless high quality formats (even for simple 2D games). 76 megabytes is tiny compared to the rest of the stuff you're dealing with.

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#16

I want to talk about Haxe. Haxe is a small niche language. But I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the showcase of games written with Haxe. Quality indie games I have played myself, like Dead Cells, and this level editor is another very polished example. Even things like Pokemon Sword and Shield. What's going on here? I need to learn me some Haxe. Are all of these using Kha - so called "SDL but super-charged"? O…

Dead Cells and a number of other high-quality commercial games are using Heaps: https://heaps.io/

The Haxe website has links to some other popular frameworks like OpenFL and HaxeFlixel: https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#17

I want to talk about Haxe. Haxe is a small niche language. But I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the showcase of games written with Haxe. Quality indie games I have played myself, like Dead Cells, and this level editor is another very polished example. Even things like Pokemon Sword and Shield. What's going on here? I need to learn me some Haxe. Are all of these using Kha - so called "SDL but super-charged"? O…

From my limited experience, Haxe seems like a really neat language but good grief the documentation and learning resources are awful. It’s possible that I was going about it wrong, but there was very little by way of “here’s where everything is and how you’re supposed to do things” resources. I feel if that issue was better handled the language would see much more use than it currently does.

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#18
post #16

I want to talk about Haxe. Haxe is a small niche language. But I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the showcase of games written with Haxe. Quality indie games I have played myself, like Dead Cells, and this level editor is another very polished example. Even things like Pokemon Sword and Shield. What's going on here? I need to learn me some Haxe. Are all of these using Kha - so called "SDL but super-charged"? O…

Dead Cells and a number of other high-quality commercial games are using Heaps: https://heaps.io/ The Haxe website has links to some other popular frameworks like OpenFL and HaxeFlixel: https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

Thanks for bringing heaps and the others to my attention.

I look at this list and suddenly 4 of the top 10 game engines I'd consider for a personal project are from the Haxe ecosystem.

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#19

I want to talk about Haxe. Haxe is a small niche language. But I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the showcase of games written with Haxe. Quality indie games I have played myself, like Dead Cells, and this level editor is another very polished example. Even things like Pokemon Sword and Shield. What's going on here? I need to learn me some Haxe. Are all of these using Kha - so called "SDL but super-charged"? O…

As far as I can remember, Dead Cells specifically was made using Heaps[1], which the creator of Haxe himself made. Paper's Please uses OpenFL[2] instead. I'd say the Language has quite a few good libraries and frameworks to work with. The Haxe site itself lists a few others too [3] at the very bottom of the page. My advice would be to look at some sample code or documentation and see which one strikes you as either the most interesting or the most practical.

[1] - https://heaps.io/ [2] - https://www.openfl.org/ [3] - https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

Re: LDtk: A modern and open-source 2D level editor

#20
post #14

Thanks, this looks really cool. I wonder what kind of algorithm and tilesets are needed to achieve what we see in the first two animated gifs on right side. The second gif seems to be sort of 2D LOD -- once the designer zooms out a different layer is shown instead of the tiles. I think this can be achieved by preparing one set of tileset for detail editing and one for zoomed out views and switch between them. However…

> However I'm not sure how to do things in the first gif. Looks like you have to prepare a few different (but visually close) tiles for one "group" (say grass/dirt/sky/etc.) and when the designer drag the mouse the editor randomly chooses one tile from each group. Still I think it's a lot more complicated than I thought. The algorithm is called Wang Tiles. I think you identify a set of tiles which have edges compatib…

Thanks! Am checking it out, sounds cool~~
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