The Tree Editor

Certain things, such as trees, would be a bit annoying to add to the game one by one in Photoshop, as it doesn't allow sorting depending on which layer is closest to the 'camera'.

To make this easier, Teddy has made a 'tree editor', which allows us to put trees into the game with automatic sorting. This makes sure we can move the trees around without manually adjusting which layer should be on top. When creating forests with a lot of trees, it saves us a lot of pain and hard work!

Above is the base we have to work with: the summer version of the previous room, without trees.

Here's our editor! In the drop down menu to the left, we can select sets of props depending on which area they belong to. We use this tool not only for trees, but for a lot of other props as well. Crates, pots, bushes, rocks and tree stumps are all added using this tool!

Adding the trees is very straight forward. We simply select the trees we'd like to use, and it will pick randomly between the selected ones. It's also possible to have the trees flip randomly. One click puts out one tree, so we simply click around where we want them to appear. Once we're done and want to change where certain trees area places, it's possibly to select one or multiple trees and drag them around until we're satisfied with their positioning. 

Another great thing about the editor now that we're working with the Temple of Seasons is that we only need to put the trees out once. The editor saves the position of the trees and allows us to change what trees appear, while they remain in the same position, so changing between summer- autumn- and winter trees is a piece of cake! (Sadly, though, this sprite-swapping feature works only in the game engine, so when I show you mockups like these, the trees will have different positions depending on what season it is, since I'm putting them in manually in order for you to get the correct idea of what the area will look like.) 

That's all about this editor, I think! On to new adventures!