Drag And Drop Level Editor

Having reached a point in the development where there are enough elements. It is now time to start designing levels. The first few levels were designed using pen and paper and actually putting them in the game was a lot of hard work. Seeing as I don't like lots of hard work, I took the time to make a simple drag and drop based level editor. It looks like this : 

 

This handy little tool (also built with libgdx, in case I ever want to publish it), allows me to pick elements on the left, color and rotate them on the top, and place them on the screen. Once I'm happy with the design, the editor creates a string representation of the level. Which I (for now) copy paste into the game. Where it is translated into a playable level. Hard coded level strings are fine for now, but will be upgraded to an external file based solution eventually.

Future plans for the editor include having it load and save level designs from and to external files.

As Pachinguys is after all a puzzle game, its level design is its most important part. Hopefully this tool will speed up the design process. One new level has already been added to the game.