Game Editor Pro

Review: Game Editor Pro
How many times have you played a game and thought "I could do better than that" or "if only they'd done ..."? If you're anything like me then it's probably one hell of a lot of times! So have you ever done anything about it, if not then it's likely that you just haven't got the time to learn all the various skills involved to knock a decent game together with a traditional programming language. Enter "Game Editor Pro", a game development environment for Windows PC.










Supplier: game-editor.com
Product: Game Editor Pro
Version Tested: 1.3.4
Cost:
Basic Package = Current FULL version. No Version Updates. $14.95
Silver Package = Current FULL version and 6 months of free FULL Version Updates. $54.95
Gold Package = Current FULL version and 1 year of free FULL Version Updates. $94.95
Note the developer tries to update monthly but is currently working on a major update, see the change log to get an idea of the type of updates that occur.
(30 Day trial demo available)
Tested on: Windows XP laptop (created games tested on O2 MiniS)
Those of us who've been around a while will remember the old days of Shoot Em Up Construction Kit and the Graphic Adventure Creator (amongst others), these old school development tools were always a bit disappointing with very limited scope. The new generation of game creation tools have the huge benefit of running on far better hardware and the benefit of 20:20 hindsight. Game Editor Pro (GEP) claims to allow any type of game that uses 2D graphics to be created, and crucially allows creation of standalone games for WM & WM Smartphone (in addition to Windows and Linux).

Overview

So how does Game Editor Pro differ from the limited tools of yore? Firstly it is pretty easy to use to create a simple game. GEP has a basic concept of Actors (including all the graphical elements on screen), events (collisions, button presses etc) and paths (definable paths which can be assigned to actors), all of which can be controlled through a point and click interface. It is possible to create a basic game using just these elements, however the really neat part of GEP is the scripting, all of the elements can also be controlled through the script engine and this allows far greater control.Did I say that the scripting was the
neat part of GEP? Well I was only giving you part of the story, the scripting has an even better trick up its sleeve, in addition to the very useful script elements created specifically for GEP, the scripting engine is also compatible with the C programming language so if you have any experience of C programming then you will be able to put that to good use here. This does also mean that any books on C programming will be helpful when you're putting your scripts together and obviously any scripts you create (for things like enemy AI for example) for GEP could be very easily adapted if you ever progress to programming in straight C.

Features at a glance Will allow you to create stand alone games for Windows, PocketPC, Smartphone and Linux
Allowed image formats = jpeg, gif, png, bmp, pcx, tga, xpm, xcf, lbm and tif
Allowed music formats = Ogg Vorbis, wav, mid, mod, s3m, it and xm
Allowed sound formats = wav, voc, iff and 8SVX
Event driven
Collision detection events built in
Infinite Actors
Multiple Animations for each actor
Tiling drawing tool
Configurable resolution and frame rate
Powerful scripting language
Created games are royalty free
Getting Started

Once you've decided what sort of game you want to create, and the old advice of using pen and paper at this stage holds as true today as it always has, the first thing that you're likely to need are some game graphics, even if they're only basic at this stage. I've decided that the
easiest way to demostrate the software is to create a game. The most basic of games and easiest to create here is probably a shoot-em-up so I'll quickly go through the steps required, you'll need a copy of the GEP demo and three graphic images to follow this quick walk through, player ship, player missile and enemy ship (bmp or gif will do, bear in mind that if the image is 24bit or less that the top left corner pixel is taken as the transparent colour).
Now that you have the graphics you're ready to delve into GEP, firstly you should set up the configuration of the proposed game, this is done through a very straight-forward menu option (see screenshot) which allows you to choose the target screen resolution, including some very handy PPC defaults, and to set the mapping of PPC buttons. You should notice a white outlined box (called view) which shows the game screen view.

The next stage is to bring your graphics into GEP so that you can start setting up the games mechanics.

Step by Step Game Creation
1. Create player ship
Add an actor (type=normal) called "player"
Right click on the actor image (which will look like pacman at first) and select "Actor control"
Select "Add Animation" and then choose your player ship image by clicking on the file box
2. Create enemy ship
Add an actor (type=normal) called "enemy"
Right click on the actor image (which will look like pacman at first) and select "Actor control"
Select "Add Animation" and then choose your enemy ship image by clicking on the file box
3. Create player missile
Add an actor (type=normal) called "missile"
Right click on the actor image (which will look like pacman at first) and select "Actor control"
Select "Add Animation" and then choose your missile image by clicking on the file box
4. Set up enemy ship path
Select "Path" and then click "Add", enter name as "enemy1" and a number of frames "75"
Click "Draw" and then draw the path by clicking points on the screen, try creating a winding vertical line (top to bottom) slightly taller than the game screen size
5. Set up player movement
Right click on the player actor image and select "Actor control" and from the Events click on "Add" and then select "Key Down" from the menu
Once the "Key Down Event" box is displayed press the right arrow key and then click on "Add Action", select "Move To" from the menu
Click on the "Relative To" box and change it to "Event Actor"
Enter "10" in position x and "10" in velocity
Click on "Add" and then select "Immediate Action" from the menu
Repeat the above five actions for left movement (hit left arrow key at second step and enter -10 in the x position box at fifth step)
6. Create Missile Firing mechanics
Select "Path" and then click "Add", enter name as "fire" and a number of frames "50"
Click "Draw" and then draw the path by clicking points on the screen, create a straight vertical line (bottom to top) slightly taller than the game screen size
Right click on the player actor image and select "Actor control" and from the Events click on "Add" and then select "Key Down" from the menu
Once the "Key Down Event" box is displayed press the space bar and then click on "Add Action", select "Create Actor"
Click on the Actor box and select "missile" (the animation box should be filled automatically), click on the Path box and select "fire"
Click on "Add" and then select "Immediate Action"
7. Set up enemy movement
Right click on the enemy actor image and select "Actor control"
Click on the "Path" button and select "enemy1"
8. set up collision detection
Right click on the enemy actor image and select "Actor control" and from the Events click on "Add" and then select "Collision"
Click on the "Of Actor" box and select "missile", then click on "Add Action" and select "Destroy Actor"
Click on "Add" and select "Immediate Action"
Right click on the player actor image and select "Actor control" and from the Events click on "Add" and then select "Collision"
Click on the "Of Actor" box and select "enemy", then click on "Add Action" and select "Destroy "Actor"
Click on "Add" and select "Immediate Action"
9. Test the Game
Click on "Game Mode"

That's it! Now there are better ways of doing some of the things in this example and there are plenty of things wrong with our little game but it is functional without the need for scripting. I'm sure that from this basis you should be able to improve and make a nice little game, feel free to let us have a go of anything you produce.

Ease of Use As you can see, GEP is very easy to use, I knocked up an admittedly basic shoot-em-up within a couple of hours of installing. Having done this my eleven year old decided he would have a crack and produced very similar results in no time at all with me just having to show him each element once. As with any toolset, to get the best out of it you will have to put the hours in but the fact that the scripting is C based will means that once you've mastered the GEP environment and functions that all of the extra time that you put into your development will also be improving your general programming skills.

As for creating the final executable file once you've finally finished work on your gaming masterpiece, it really couldn't be much simpler. Give the game a name, select the intended platform and hit the export button. As you can probably tell from the example above, you can put a game together very quickly, however if you want to create a complete game then you will of course still end up sat in front of your computer at stupid-o-clock iin the morning.
Support In addition to the regular updates produced by the developer, the support forum has a lively and interesting userbase and the developer regularly provides feedback, advice and solutions to problems. From reading through the forum, the general impression is of a happy community which gets plenty of support from the developer.

If I were to pick any fault with the package then it would be with the help, the help files have been put together as a bunch of web pages, unfortunately there is no search function and the navigation method means you will probably have to flick through a few pages to get to the section you're looking for. I would have much prefered a standard windows help file. On the plus side you can always resort to the forum which does have a search function, and there are some very good tutorials available which load up and run you through the steps from within the GEP engine.
Example Games
Firetrap Mountain - inoGames

Labyrinth - Dark Spire Games

Pros/Cons
Pro's
Multiple platform compatibility
Allows use of many standard image/sound file formats
Easy to use
Powerful scripting engine compatible with C programming language
Basic option is very cheap
Cons
2D only
The help files could do with a search option






Conclusion

4WinMobile Rating : 97%

GEP is a great package, the complicated (and boring!) things like handling graphics, sprite movement and sound are all greatly simplified whilst still providing a large degree of control over the finished result. The wide variety of games currently available and in development (see boxout above) are testament to the versatility of this toolset. I can see how with very little effort this package could be used to create shoot-em-ups, board games, puzzlers, platformers and RPG's. I am certainly addicted and will be beavering away on some of the game ideas that I've been pondering for years.

In addition to this, the speed of development in GEP means that you can very quickly knock a prototype together to test game concepts/mechanics. The author is continuing to develop the toolset and overall I believe it represents incredible value for money.

Just in case you're interested, the basic game that I cobbled together after a few of days using the toolset is available in the downloads area 4WM Shooter, just copy the exe to your PPC (incl Storage card) and use the D-pad to control, button A should exit the game. The basics of the game took a couple of hours to put together with one "stupid-o-clock" session to get my head around moving between different levels.