Level Editor
A level editor for LibGdx is a rocky topic.
Coming from the Android world, I thought a clever move would have been sticking to Java for game development. Unfortunately, the panorama of level editing software for this language is still really poor. Many game engines, like Unity, contain awesome integrated solutions, stable and rock-solid for creating complex levels.
You will find a totally different scenario if you decide to develop your game using Java and LibGdx.
A stable level editor recognised from the community is somehow still missing in the LibGdx ecosystem. The choice is limited and some of them are not maintained anymore or unstable.
The top 3 most promising:
- Tiled Map Editor (http://www.mapeditor.org)
- Overlap2D (http://overlap2d.com)
- VisEditor (https://vis.kotcrab.com)
Far from being production ready, I decided to give it a shot with Overlap2D.
Now at its 0.1.3 version.
Overlap2D
Pro
Even if not super stable, I have to admit I enjoyed using this editor. The learning curve is smooth and several tutorials are available on a youtube channel
A big problem I had, was related with rotations applied to a physical body, that feature was not working properly so I had to spend a while in the code base to figure out a solution and gladly the overlap team accepted my pull request 🙂
Among the changes, I decoupled overlap2D from physics and light, so now there is a way for managing outside the engine this two elements.
The project is open source available on GitHub.
Cons
Among the drawbacks that I found so far: the resizing. Sometimes after a window resize the editor becomes unusable. All the UI elements will become somehow misaligned with the mouse pointer. This is very frustrating and I hope the team will try to fix this really annoying issue.
The community forum is still small and sometimes the feedback may arrive after a while.
Conclusion
Overlap2D is not ready for big productions, but it can be a good solution for Indie Devs or small games based on LibGdx. Being open source is a big plus.
VisEditor looks promising also. It worth mentioning that Overlap2D is based on VisEditor.
I hope the community will embrace the potential of one of these two.
Considerations are always welcome.
If you have a direct experience with a level editor for LibGdx let me know in the comments below!