Sony releases open-source Level Editor dev tool

[Sprony]

Quite unexpected. Source

 

Sony Computer Entertainment has released an open-source Level Editor development tool. The Level Editor package lets is a fully-fledge, standalone development tool that lets users design and create their of video game levels, maps and campaigns.

 

[r1ar]

Cool, but what for?

What games made on this engine?

[r1ar]

Engines accent:

Unity - for casual shit.

UE4 or CE3 - for big budget projetcs.

Sony Engine - what for?

[Leigh]

Odd. Not sure entirely why they've done it but I might have a poke around with it. Another tool to add to the cv I suppose! 

[Sprony]

Well I browsed the official site and it wasn't very clear to me either. I think this an tool to make indie games for PSN. Kinda like what MS had in the past.

[Steppenwolf]

I don't get it. Maybe it's a glorified Marmoset but for whole Environments?

[FrieChamp]

It's an open-source level design tool that you can hook up to your game engine. Not more, not less. Could be useful for indie game devs.

[-HP-]

It's an open-source level design tool that you can hook up to your game engine. Not more, not less. Could be useful for indie game devs.

 

Yeap, look at this more like a module and less of a full blown engine like Unity.

[DrywallDreams]

Yeah, just a tool (in the spirit of ATF itself) to not waste time making a custom level editor.  I find it odd how it's dependent upon C#/Windows though, with most engines/tools moving away from it.

[mjens]

It might grow into something big, it's a good idea to get a community early and find a path to progression. The problem it's there's literally nothing that is better then in UDK/UE4, Unity or CryEngine... And as I can see, there's a lot to do. It's a WYSIWYG editor but still it will look completely different in the engine...

Edited September 3, 2014 by seir

[-HP-]

It might grow into something big, it's a good idea to get a community early and find a path to progression. The problem it's there's literally nothing that is better then in UDK/UE4, Unity or CryEngine... And as I can see, there's a lot to do. It's a WYSIWYG editor but still it will look completely different in the engine...

 

Well, but to use all those engines you need to either pay a license or give whoever made them a cut of your profits if you're indie, whereas this tool is open-source.

[blackdog]

Is it not hooked up at anything really? I think Sony has a free(?) game engine since many years, I remember finding about an OpenGL engine from them when I was dwelling into their site…

I find it odd how it's dependent upon C#/Windows though, with most engines/tools moving away from it.

Uh?

I know about native support for Linux (and Mac)… but development on the penguin, is it really happening?

[DrywallDreams]

Is it not hooked up at anything really? I think Sony has a free(?) game engine since many years, I remember finding about an OpenGL engine from them when I was dwelling into their site…

I find it odd how it's dependent upon C#/Windows though, with most engines/tools moving away from it.

Uh?

I know about native support for Linux (and Mac)… but development on the penguin, is it really happening?UE4 and Source 2 are moving to support it, Unity already does. Cryengine is supporting Linux, I don't know if that includes the editor though. That's most of the engines that people are getting the tools to, that's pretty incredible.

[blackdog]

Oh cool! I know about source, it was expected since they went on Linux and clearly when they lunched SteamOS; didn't know that UE4 was going to have Linux tools though!

[AlexM]

It's built on ATF a FOSS framework Sony made for developing tools. For instance the uncharted editor was made with it. The benefits of ATF are great. One of the main things it handles is implicit save/load/undo which is a huge bitch to implement correctly. 

 

Unfortunately the ATF library is a REALLY difficult library to get your head around. I spent 3-4 days with it and I'm still not exactly certain how to interface WPF with it (a GUI framework). 

 

I think the level editor is a effort for them to show you how you would implement something like a level editor. Or to use as a starting point for your own custom level editor. 

 

As for being dependant on Windows. They did a 1-2 hour talk on ATF and said that there's nothing in .NET they use that's too tied to windows that they couldn't switch to Mono and make it multiplat. They just havent bothered. I'm fully behind that decision too. Once I stopped focusing on making my gui application multiplatform I got 10X the work done and the quality of my applications went up significantly. Multi-platform native gui's are just huge messes and are terrible to maintain. If I were to go that route again I'd use something that's done in a hardware context so I don't have to worry about generalizing my design across 3 OS's or worse. 

 

Also if they did port ATF to multiplat then WPF would be out. WPF is absolutely amazing for making game development tools. One of the best things Microsoft has ever done. 

 

EDIT : Obviously in the case of something like Unity where they are selling the tool to customers multiplat is a valid concern but for a internal tool at a company it's a massive expensive liability. Whenever I use unity I can feel the pain of the GUI programmers there who had to use GTK#. 

Edited September 5, 2014 by AlexM