At first, I used Inkscape, the open source vector drawing program, to create my levels.
It seemed like a perfectly good idea: Just like my game engine, Inkscape uses shapes to define the drawing. Also, since SVG files are basically XML files, any XML loader can be used to read the content of the drawing and extrapolate a game level script.

The real benefit was, however, that I didn’t need to write a level editor, but just a simple program that converts .svg files in lua scripts. I estimated that writing a converter instead of a level editor would save me a lot of time.

I estimated wrong

The problems I had with this approach were many, but here are the best ones:

1. I found it really difficult to come up with a series of consistent rules for setting shape properties. I started putting different object types in different layers, so the unmovable shapes would be in a layer named “unmovable”, the movable ones would be in the “movable” layer, the powerups in another one, the traps in yet another layer.
2. It’s almost impossible to align everything correctly in Inkscape
3. Inkscape doesn’t save the shape rotation in the SVG file, but only the transformation matrix.

In the end, frustrated by my poor choice, I decided to finally write a level editor.
It took me just a couple of evenings to create a decent c# application that does exactly what I want:

One of the best features is the ability to import the bitmap files I create as mockups and transform them in levels:

(click the picture for a 5x enlarged version)

I have to say that c#/.net 3.5 is a wonderful combination for creating applications quickly!

Lesson learned: Sometimes it is better to create (and eat) your own dogfood

Of course, storing each menu item as a separate picture is not very efficient, so I decided to add text rendering capability to the game.

My first choice was the OGLFT library. It’s a really easy to use and complete OpenGL text rendering library based on FreeType. I quickly added it to the project, and it worked perfectly, until I closed the application and got a nice “Access violation” exception

After hours of tinkering, I finally found out that the error was related to the FreeType library. For some mysterious reason, just trying to open a font file with FreeType caused the erroneous behavior.

So, since I couldn’t use FreeType, I decided to create a text rendering class myself, based on the font texture approach.

In order to create suitable font maps, I modified Irrlicht Font Maker to create non-irrlicht-specific font maps. I also added a couple of options and the ability to export the control points as custom text  or in a handy binary format:

But that’s only the first part of the story: once ready, I took my new text rendering class for a test drive and, with much surprise, I discovered that the program triggered the same exception it did before! OH MY!

After an hour or so of debugging, I finally found out the root cause of the problem: a single call to fopen to read the font control points was enough to send the program to C++ hell.

I have since replaced all the standard C file IO functions (fopen, fread, …) with the modern C++ equivalent (fstream) and now the program ends with no errors.

In the end, I’m happy with the new font rendering method, as it gave me a chance to clean up and improve Irrlicht Font Maker, however once again I feel like I misplaced my foot in the minefield that is programming in C++

I was however informed in the comments that by overriding the NamingContainer property the control loses the ability to read its value from the PostBack data.

Since the controls I developed were not meant to to be used in a postback scenario, this wasn’t a big problem for me.

Fast-forward a couple of years and here I am, wondering why post back does not work in one of my projects

Anyway, I looked at the link provided by Alex, where Rick Strahl talks about overriding the ClientId and the UniqueId properties instead of NamingContainer.

In a standard web control, the two properties ClientID and UniqueID are mapped, respectively, to the id and name properties of the HTML control generated.

Since most (all? ) JS frameworks use the id property to access the varius HTML elements and the PostBack mechanism uses the name property, I think the “best of both worlds” solution is to only override the ClientId:

<p><span class="kwrd">public</span> <span class="kwrd">class</span> NiceTextBox : System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox
{
    <span class="kwrd">public</span> <span class="kwrd">bool</span> UseNamingContainer { get; set; }
</p><p>    <br />    <span class="kwrd">public</span> <span class="kwrd">override</span> <span class="kwrd">string</span> ClientID
    {
        get
        {
            <span class="kwrd">if</span> (<span class="kwrd">this</span>.UseNamingContainer)
                <span class="kwrd">return</span> <span class="kwrd">base</span>.ClientID;
            <span class="kwrd">else</span>
                <span class="kwrd">return</span> <span class="kwrd">this</span>.ID;
        }
    }
}
</p>

Now our NiceTextBox works even during post-back scenarios

Here is an early screenshot from the game I’m working on. Obviously all the programmer art you see is temporary and will be replaced by something better

It will be a 2D mario-style platformer, whith a twist: the game is set on a physically realistic world. More details to come soon!

I also have a very cool productivity (“serious”) application to release. Testing is complete, I just need to get the boring part done (creating setups, writing web pages…).

But now, you want to back them up together with the code of your program, using subversion or CVS. Afterall, they are part of the application logic.

Better yet, you would like to automate the extraction procedure so that you only need to launch a batch file and your backup is done.

Gljakal’s Sql Exporter does just that: it extracts tables, views, stored procedures and triggers from your database and saves them as individual text files.

Used together with a source control software, you can have a precise idea of what changed between the various releases, just like you do with your applications’ source code.

You can do that with the interface version (shown in the picture) as well as with the command line version, that you can automate to run whenever you want.

Plus, it’s a free download!

• Stable, documented plugin support:
  Now adapting ToDo to your needs is easier than ever. Plugin support is great for custom exports and imports, intranet integration, even synchronization with online services!
• New, nicer user interface, with famfamfam’s famous icons.
• AdvancedStatus plugin
  Now you can set a task as 50% (or any %) complete!
• Copy & paste inside the details window
  You could already do this with CTRL-C and CTRL-V, but now there are also cut-copy-paste buttons inside the details window
• Help file
  Now you can press F1 inside todo and actually see something
• All the new features in the preview release

Comments & critics are welcome!