Level Editor-ing

I had a bit of a falling out with the side project from work-related weirdness that gave me a temporary lack of motivation in all respects, but this has blown over. It does go to show that there are many reasons to lose motivation that go beyond simple procrastination. However, I have had a stronger desire to see this through, and I feel I have more determination and trust in my own abilities than, say, a year ago. I'd like to say that procrastination alone isn't really an issue at my current mental state.

Since the last post, I have made some substantial code cleanup changes, and I'm better accounting for multiple controller inputs. I seem to be moving forward with a brute force, "get this new mechanic to work" method and stopping after it works to do code cleanup. I have no reason to not continue with this method, as it gives an appearance of small spurts of quick advancement. The code cleanup is really for organization and making certain it's easier to manipulate what's there if I need to make changes -- also makes it more readable for the future if I need to step back into sections I haven't touched in a while...

I have a placeholder now for a Level Select screen, but I'm actually bypassing how a level is selected at this point -- I'm just jumping into gameplay logic for now. The first thing I need for gameplay is actual level content. The typical scenario for a sidescroller is some tile-based level editing, so here I've done some reinventing of the wheel with a level editor tool:

Click the tile from the tileset and just click in the level grid to add the tile

Pretty straightforward. My current focus is just on a 1280x720 screen resolution, and I'm not yet worrying about scroll capabilities. I haven't yet added the ability to save this, actually, but it will probably just be an XML file, since those can be thrown in the XNA game's content as something that will presumably be hidden in the final version of the game (though perhaps I should leave some options open for players to generate their own levels with this tool, too).

The only other thing to really save with tile placement in the level editor will be the behavior each specific tile will have for players and enemies:

- Can be stood upon
- Is in the foreground and players/enemies will walk behind this tile
- Is impassable
- Can be passed from beneath, but will not fall through from the top (floating platforms, essentially)
- Etc. (Just keep an open mind for different tile types as I need them)

I may just focus on getting the level content I have to be imported by my game before implementing the tile types, though. One step at a time.