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Start Page » Game Development with the Drag[en]gine » Drag[en]gine Integrated Game Development Environment » World Editor
The world editor allows to edit World resources (*.deworld) for your game. World resources glue together many other resource types. See the Game Development With The Drag[en]gine section to learn more.
The editor window composes of the content area and the properties panel on the left side. Three different content area exist:
The world view shows the world content to edit. See 3D-View Navigation for how to navigate the view. By default this view is set to an FPS type camera navigation.
The view operates using a CAD like interface. You can switch Element Mode and Work Mode.
Selects the type of world element to operate on. Supported are these element types
Work on instance of Object Classes. Object classes represent static and dynamic objects (elements) backed up by Game Script Objects. Typically these are Script Classes but can be anything depending on the Scripting Module used.
Object classes are defined in the Game Definition Editor by the mapper. The separation between Game Script Object and Object Class in the Game Definition is on purpose. The Game Script Object is in full control of the coder while the Object Class is in full control of the mapper. This separation allows artists to work on the game without needing working game code and to shape the object classes the way they help them work efficiently.
The interface between the mapper and the coder is solely defined by the Object Class Name, the Object Properties and the Texture Properties.
See Selection Panel for further information.
Work on instance of World Decals. World decals added to the world are projected onto Object Classes they touch. The game scripts decide what object class they will actually affect in-game. The result shown in the editor is thus not fully representative depending on your setup.
World Decals add Decal resources during game loading. Game scripts are free to add Decal resources themselves at run-time to Component resources.
Work on instance of Height Terrain Navigation Spaces. This adds navigation space support to Height Terrains resources allow AI to navigate them. This is similar to Navigation Space resources game scripts can add to individual game objects but for height terrains. In this mode you can edit the height terrain geometry directly in the world editor in contrary to Navigation Space resources used by game objects which are loaded from files.
See the Navigation Space, Navigation Type and Navigation Painting sub panels in the Height Terrain panel for further information.
Work on Object Properties of Shape or Shape List type. Shapes are stored in an encoded form in object properties. Using this view mode you can edit the content of such properties in a visual way.
You have to first use Object Mode to select the object whose properties you want to edit. Then switch to the Object Shape mode. Here you can select from the Shape panel the Object Property you want to edit. All shapes of all supported properties are shown but only the shapes of the selected property are highlighted to edit.
Selects the type of manipulation to apply to the selected Element Mode. Not all work modes are supported by all element modes.
Element selection consists of a list of all Selected Elements with one of the selected elements being the Active Element.
Moves the selected elements along the View Plane.
Scales the selected elements along the View Plane.
Rotates the selected elements along the View Plane. Use Edit → Rotation Pivot Center … to set how elements are rotated:
These key bindings can be used:
Add new element to the world:
If you keep the mouse button pressed the mode temporarily switches to Move until you release the mouse button. While dragging you can use these additional key bindings:
While moving the newly added element snaps to nearby Snap Points of object. If the newly added object also has snap points these will be used for snapping too. Hence each snap point of the newly added object can snap to any snap point of nearby objects.
Paints the Height Image of a Height Terrain. See the Height Painting sub panel in the Height Terrain panel for further information.
Paints the Mask Image of a Height Terrain. See the Mask Painting sub panel in the Height Terrain panel for further information.
Paints the Visibility Image of a Height Terrain. See the Visibilty Painting sub panel in the Height Terrain panel for further information.