I''m working on the level editor for my top view flying shooter game (like Raptor) and I am having trouble with it. I was thinking, it might be easier just to get Mappy and use that... How important is the experience making tools and stuff to becoming a game programmer? I wasn''t really planning on being a tools programmer... Also, is Mappy worth using? Thanks! ------------------------------ Jonathan Little invader@hushmail.com http://www.crosswinds.net/~uselessknowledge

Well I don''t know how essential having experience in tools programming is to you being a "complete" game programmer.

But I do have experience with mappy so maybe I can help you there.

In my opinion mappy is a very nice editor. It has a lot of nice features such as the parrallex backgrounds and the animated tiles, that give your maps some nice effects - plus it comes with it''s very own library for loading and drawing the levels and things of that nature. Which makes it much easier to concentrate on the content portain of your game.

I have experienced a rather major problem with it though. For some reason I have not been able to use the library to draw a level while a Direct Draw clipper was attached to the surface I was attempting to draw to. I don''t know why.

But, in my OPINION, if you are looking for a good versatile editor and are not programming retail games and can figure out a way past the clipping problem (if you can e-mail me because I''m still working on it) Than mappy is an excellent choice.

Perhaps Mappy is using BltFast() to draw... BltFast() doesn''t work with a clipper attached to the surface to which its bltting.

As a matter of fact mappy is using Bltfast() - and now that you mention it I''m remembering that it does not work with the clipper........ THANK YOU very much for pointing this out to me.

Yeah, I gotta agree with you on that one. Make the editor yourself if you can. At first I didn''t want to bother with making an editor for this tile-game I was doing, but I did it anyway, and I swear I learned more about HOW I was going to do the game from the editor than from the game itself. And the engine will be essentially the same.
Go for it. You won''t regret it.

Yeah. Im gonna keep writing my own editor. I downloaded Mappy and looked at it for a while, and came to the conclusion I''d rather use something written specifically for my game. Plus, I think you''re right, I have learned a lot already from making my editor. Thanks for the help guys.