Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor

GET MULTIPLATFORM RUNTIME LEVEL EDITOR FROM UNITY ASSET STORE

This Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor will allow your players to create levels in game. Allowing your gamer community to create levels will not only increase their satisfaction, but it will also save your time. You can also use this level editor to create levels yourself and save them. This way you can allow your players to download the levels from your server or mysql database, which will reduce your initial game file size.

Features:

• works in Unity 5
• no Unity Pro required
• multiplatform (tested on iOS, Android, Windows Phone/Store/Standalone, Web Player)
• runtime (runs on device, does not need Unity Editor)
• supports both touch screen & mouse/keyboard
• terrain editor (uses Unity Terrain Engine)
• object editor (placement, transformation, coloring)
• object snap tools (to terrain/grid, object to object)
• streamed levels (instantiate visible objects only)
• undo/redo
  
• save/load levels
• level preview icon rendering
• easily moddable uGUI
• 3 demos (full level editor, FPS game with object editor and terrain editor)
• independent modules (handles(move|rotate|scale), perspective gizmo, snap tools, level streaming, touch gestures, uGUI widgets, ...)

The following screenshots show a level made with the editor on a Kindle Fire HD 7'' tablet (shots taken from standalone). The demo game is more or less the third person mobile controller setup from the standard assets.



So far the level editor has a terrain editor very similar to the Unity built-in terrain editor. The editor allows to raise, lower, level and smooth the heightmap and to paint the terrain textures. The terrain editing supports brush textures in the same way like the built-in terrain editor. The next screenshot shows the terrain texture painting tab with the projection of the brush texture.


The object placement part of the level editor allows to drag and drop predefined prefabs into the level. The instances of the prefabs can be moved, rotated and scaled. The object editor allows to focus on an object, to duplicate it or to delete it. The following three images show the object level editor part in action.
First, the level object inspector on the right showing the same object that is selected in the running level editor. Also the move handle is visible.

The next screenshot shows the rotation handle and the object snap UI. The curved obstacle taken from Mad Snowboarding allows to snap the next curved object or an object that changes the curve direction.

The scale handle...

The next two screenshots show the controls of the level editor on PC and on a touch screen.


The level editor allows to fast preview your level with the mechanics of your game. A level can be saved/loaded to/from a file on mobile. It is stored into clipboard in the webplayer (this way you can save it to a file or load it from a file manually). Unfortunately, files cannot be written directly from the webplayer for security reasons.

Interested? Take a look your self!
Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor - Home Page

• Unity Web Player - Demo
• Android - Demo
• iOS - Demo
• Windows Phone Store - Demo
  
• Windows Store - Demo
• Windows Standalone - Demo

Want to see the demo level from the screenshots in the editor?
Webplayer: go here -> press ctrl+a -> press ctrl+c -> click load in the editor
Android, Windows (Phone), iOS: click save button in the editor -> you will see where the file is -> replace it with this one

Popular games using the MRLE:
- Mad Snowboarding
- RC Simulation 2.0
- Guts and Glory

Asset Store: http://u3d.as/content/denis-lapiner/multiplatform-runtime-level-editor

 

BUMP: ok two weeks later... I have uploaded some screenshots of the 70% finished level editor. I hope nobody answered back then, because there was nothing visual to see or is really nobody interested in a multiplatform runtime level editor?

 

It looks like a great start. I have made extensions like this in the past with little or no feedback from the Forum.
Keep it up!

 

Sounds very interesting, does it use unity terrain and support saving/loading terrain?

 

@JohnRossitter: thanks. I hope I will get some feedback here, otherwise I fear there is no reason to invest dozens of work hours into writing the documentation and making promotional material like images and videos.

@noanoa: yes it uses the Unity terrain and it supports saving/loading by saving the terrain heightmap and alphamaps in a binary format.

 

Dont let the forum be your only point of contact for it.
Put it up on some facebook groups too.

 

I've tried the demo, it's pretty cool. I'm already sold when you release the asset!

 

Oh man, I really need something like this,
I just wish I had the time to make a runtime terrain editor as well.

So logically, if you could put it on the asset store, I'm definitely getting it !
The fact that it's multiplatform, oh boy !! Take my money !

 

cool nice. need a lot more things like snap to be useful as editor. If have those features ,then worth buy

 

@noanoa, KillerKahuna: awesome I hope you guys are not in hurry? I plan to release my next game in september. I would release the level editor after that. It will then be tested in my game.

@imtrobin: I thought already about snapping for example for roads, so it will be included in the final editor when its done. Do you have any other wishes for features that should be included?

 

Nope not in a hurry really, I would need something like this around the end of September actually.
So it should work out perfectly
Don't forget to let us know when it's up though

I wish you the very best of luck with your game

 

Be able to customize the ui. If you can use daikon forge or something. Not using OnGUI

 

This is great! i'm making a level editor my self,but its game dependent..and i never even tough of terrain hightmap saving.

Nice work.

 

It's better to release it well prepared than rushing. I hope you keep us updated though Hope everything goes well

 

^ What he said

 

Great it seems there is some interest in a Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor!

@imtrobin: I will think about it. It is an important feature, since OnGUI will be probably deprecated in Unity 5, if it will be included at all!

 

This looks interesting. Could use something like this for web players, standalones and mobile.

 

I would love something like this.

 

You have another sale here when it's ready.

 

i would like this well just the rotation and moving part of it anyway not the terrain

 

Dude... This looks amazing. Superior to the over priced one on the playstore now with controls, terrain texture painting and prefab ability. I will pay for this once its out. Luckily this is something I can wait until my game is ready to go to have to implement but you know players love making maps for their games. Can't wait keep up the good work

 

I'm happy that you people post here again and again! I think it's time now to ask what would you guys pay? What is a fair prize for such a tool?

A little update to the current state of development:
I have made the editor for this game: Mad Snowboarding
An Android demo of the game is already available so that you can see the editor in action.
I plan to release the game on Windows platforms this month. Then I will probably need one week to fix the worst bugs. After that I will clean up the editor and make it shippable, write docus and make how to videos. So it is realistic that it will be submitted in September. I hope that Unity guys will not need to long to approve it.

 

for something like this i would happily pay 40 euros

 

Any updates? I'm super excited!
I'm hoping you will be able to save maps to a file.

 

@ZeoWorks: you will be able to save maps to a file on all platforms except for the Web Player. The Web Player is not allowed to write files for security reasons. You can check the map files of Mad Snowboarding for Android if you want: http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/mad-snowboarding

 

Hey FreebordMad, good to hear from you again.
Also very exited for the level editor and since you asked for a price range
It could be about 40 dollars/euros I think,
I've seen a similar priced map builder that isn't being supported anymore on the assets store.

Support and documentation for an Asset to me is of utmost importance when I decide to purchase an asset that might speed up my development time, I say might because if things go south and there are issues that arise I hope to be able to contact the creators of the asset. To solve unexpected problems basically.

Your Level Editor seems on the right track however and I'm very excited for your product

 

@FreebordMAD : I need a runtime terrain editor and after looking around, this seems to be the closest there is to what I am looking for. I started building mine from scratch, but decided to lookout for existing solutions when I found yours

So, I have a few questions :

1. Would I be able to modify the terrain on mobile devices ( iOS, Android ) ?
2. Can I set a specific height for the terrain raise. Let's say my terrain height is at 0 and when I click/tap on screen, the affected area raises up to a predefined height (ex. 1 or 2) ?
3. Would I be able to paint textures on mobile devices as well ?
4. Where does the Runtime Editor get its texture and object references ? Do they come with the editor or is there a way to add my own ?
5. Can I add custom objects as well, as per question 4 ?
6. When can I test it ? ( I am in a bit of a hurry )

There is definitely interest

Best regards,

 

Hello @.Snipe,
I'm glad you are interested! Here are the answers to your questions:

Yes, you can modify terrain on a touch capable device iOS, Android, Windows (Phone) and probably Black Barry.
Android Demo (screenshots from first post): http://www.freebord-game.com/MultiPlatformRuntimeLevelEditor/MultiPlatformRuntimeLevelEditor.apk
My game demo using this level editor: http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/mad-snowboarding

Yes, in the second terrain editing tab you can set the target value from 0 to 1. So if your terrain has a maximal height of 500. You can move the target value slider to the middle and the height will be set to 250 when you tap on the terrain. Similar to the built-in Unity terrain editing while in Unity Editor.

Yes, you can do all the thing that are possible in the Web Player demo.

The editor will come with some demo assets. You can add any of your own assets. The demo assets are meant only to show how assets can be used. You can add your own terrain textures and level objects.

As answered above yes.

You can test it right now.
Web Player demo: http://www.freebord-game.com/MultiPlatformRuntimeLevelEditor
Android demo: http://www.freebord-game.com/MultiPlatformRuntimeLevelEditor/MultiPlatformRuntimeLevelEditor.apk
my newest game on Android or Windows (Phone): http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/mad-snowboarding

This weel I have started to work fulltime on the level editor. I hope to upload the first version to the Asset Store by the end of the week. Next week I will create tutorials and a detailed documentation. I plan to release an update by the end of the year based on the feature requests that will arise when the editor is published.

 

@FreebordMAD :

Thank you for the reply. I tested the apk on my Tab 3. It looks great
Great news on the idea to release to the AssetStore this week. I can't wait to test it.

1. Do you think I would be able to use a custom UI with your library ? I mean if I want to make custom buttons using the new UI from unity 4.6 with your terrain editor, that would be possible ?

2. Also I noticed that the objects placed can not be put in the ground. Is there a way to change that ? For example I place a car on the terrain, and after I get the transform xyz arrows, i was thinking of placing a car half way into the ground.

 

Ok. My mistake. Regarding Question 2, I see the Trees in your demo work as per the question.

 

Unfortunately, the answer is rather no than yes. It woulbe be possible but it is much work and probably not worth it. I use a custom object oriented GUI wrapper for OnGUI you would need to rewrite all my classes such as buttons, boxes, labels, icons, etc...
I will update to the new GUI once Unity 5 is released, but I will not manage to find the time for this in 2014, so maybe next year.

As you have already discovered static object like trees can be moved into the ground or other objects, but dynamic objects like cars that have a rigidbody attached can be saved only in a valid position. This is done to prevent the users from putting a car half into ground. In this case once the player would touch it, the car would go into air like crazy, because of the physic collision.

I have worked on the documentation today. IT IS BY FAR NOT DONE! But if you want to get a little more insight on what you will get, you can take a brief look on it: http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/multiplatform-runtime-level-editor/documentation

 

Same question I asked the other guys making one of these. Are you providing sharing exporting the levels. Most of us use mysql.

 

What you will get from the level editor are two byte arrays. One for the level information (terrain, objects, etc.) and one for the level meta data (level icon, gold medal time, etc.). You can do what ever you want with them, save them to a file or upload them to a mysql database.

I have used the level editor for Mad Snowboarding. What I do there is to zip it which reduces the level file by over 70% then convert it to Base64 and upload it to my server as a file via the POST protocol.

Here is the part of the documentation that lets you get the two byte arrays of a saved level.

 

I was recently thinking about the file size being to big. ~70% reductions in size is awesome.
Also I see the documentation is coming along fine Love the progress

See you soon on the Asset Store

 

How hard is it to add textures and brushes for the terrain editor?
Also in the terrain editor can we:
1. Import template levels with say the borders that could not be edited? (example would be an island terrain.)
2. Set area within that terrain that could bot be built on? (Say you wanted to have a standard feature in every level)

For the level editor:
1. Can we use this for player housing say give them a plot of land in a larger scene?
2. Will there be a store type system built in so level assets can require some type of currency?
3. Does this keep track of total assets placed for say a max amount of assets per level?

 

This is very easy see this pages of the documentation:
Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor Documentation: terrain textures
Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor Documentation: terrain brushes

Here is an example of a possible way to do this in the current editor version:
1. Create your template level by using multiple terrains for example with 9 patches. In the "figure" below the "X" character stands for one terrain object of the template level. The "0" character is the user terrain for now it simply does not exist. You can use terrain detail objects or any other object without the editor scripts on them for your template level. Save your template terrains to a prefab, so that you can load them in any scene you want.
XXX
X0X
XXX
2. Create the template of the user terrain. Make it fit the other 8 patches of the template terrain. Save it using the MR level editor.
3. When you now want to load a level you load the user terrain with the MR level editor with all the changes that the user has made and place your template terrains by adding their prefab object to the scene.

In this setup the user can edit only the center patch of the terrain landscape. You will need to solve some issues when you use the 9 patches approach. For example you need to make all the terrains fit to each other. You could run a script that would match the border of the user terrain to the borders of the neighbour terrains. See also Terrain.SetNeighbours

[EDIT:] I have written some docu on this:
http://www.freebord-game.com/index....cumentation/level-object-placement-limitation
This can be solved with simple event handling. I will write some documentation on this in the next days. In summary, you would register for something like OnDragObject and change the IsPlaceable property of the event args to false if you dont want the user to be able to place the object at the position given in the event args.

Again terrain patches. You could load the level of each user and move it (terrain+all objects) by a certain offset. This way you could place the current user in the middle and the loaded levels of the other users around the terrain of the current user. In this case all the terrains should have the same size.

[EDIT:] I have written some docu on this:
http://www.freebord-game.com/index....evel-editor/documentation/count-level-objects
No, BUT you can build it yourself. You would need to register for some events like OnObjectPlaced, OnDragObject etc... Everytime an object is placed you would need to reduce the currency. If the user has not enough money to place the next instance of the current object you would disallow to place this object. You could render some shop like GUI over or next to the level editor GUI.

You can set a limit for each object, for example max 10 trees and 5 stones per level. There is no overall counter, BUT again register for object placement events and limit the overall object count yourself.

 

Thank you for your reply. I look forward to seeing this soon.

 

UPDATE:
1. today I have submitted the first official version of the Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor to the Unity Asset Store. There is a good chance that it will be up in the store in the beginning of the next week!
2. @dreamlarp: I have added some documentation that will help you to implement the features that you need:
Level Object Placement Limitation
Count Level Objects
3. the demos are uploaded to all platforms now. Some are pending validation to see all the platforms that were tested click here

 

(Applause) !!!
Can't wait

 

Thank you!

 

Hello @FreebordMAD ,

1. Any news from the AssetStore yet ?

2. I wanted to ask you about an specific implementation of your asset. I want to achieve the following.

I want to have the terrain, flat and covered with a grass texture, and overlay it with some sort of a grid. Lets say a 10 by 10 grid. The terrain itself can be 1000 by 1000, so in this case 1 grid unit would be 100 terrain units.

In the editor, at runtime, I would mouse over any of the grid tile, and I would get a highlight of sort just to visually show the mouse over area (see image Area 1) . Lets say we are talking about tile [2,2]. Now when a click or tap occurs, I want to raise the entire terrain area (100x100 units) that is just below that grid cell to a certain height. Lets say from height y=0 to height y+1. I do not want the terrain to raise gradually, I want it to pop right away up to y+1. (see image Area 2)

Question 1 : I assume this is no problem ?

Now that this part of the terrain is raised, I want the raise 100x100 terrain units to still be flat on the top side. Obviously I would have very steep slopes on all 4 sides of the raised tile. I would like the tile top to be grass, while the slopes to take a rocky texture.

Question 2 : How can this be achieved via your component ? In the perfect scenario I would like the code to tell the terrain to show a rocky texture on any slope bigger then 75 degrees for example.

Now if the user click or taps on tile [2,3], I want the terrain units under that tile to pop up just like described in previous steps, and show the according grass texture on top. In this case I would have a perfect grass top surface at height y+1 for tile [2,2] and tile [2,3], while the slopes created by this new raise are again rocky textures. (see image Area 3 & 4)

Question 3 : This would function like I described it above, correct ? I am assuming it would, since you are using terrains, and as far as I know, that is the functionality.

I hope I explained the concept correctly. The image attached should show the general idea, but I hope that with your component the end result would look a lot smoother and a lot nicer.

Best regards,

 

I have asked the Asset Store review team if there were any news, but they only said to check in my account and it still says "Pending Review" for almost two weeks...

Although it would propably be possible to implement all what you have described with my tool, I fear this would be not the right way. I think Unity terrains are not the right way to go for this task. There are three problems that I see:
1. My tool is a full terrain editor like the built in one. There is no snapping to a grid possible. You could implement it by changing the cursor behaviour (you would need to hack a little for this). Howerver, still the whole UI does not fit to what you have described, since you would still see all edit possibilities like smoothing and painting the terrain. With other words you would need to completely remake the UI.
2. You could write a script that checks the slope of the terrain and sets the alpha texture values of the rocky texture to 1 if the slope is higher than 75° (this is not included in my tool, but should be easy to write), BUT to create such clean cut between grass and rocks as you have posted in the image you would need a very high alpha map resolution, which is not good for the overall performance of you game.
3. You would need to edit the terrain in the paint height tab of my editor there you can set the target height to a certain value and the amount to 1, but still you would need to hide all the UI otherwise the user could change the settings.

I think for your task it would be best to use simple cubes. Make a cube with grass on top and rocks on the side. Add a script to each cube that will raise the cube by its size once it is clicked. Create a 10x10 area of that cubes and you are done. If you run into performance problems (if you create 1000x1000 cubes) than you can combine the meshes of all cubes to a skinned mesh, there are cheap tools on the asset store for this. I think this is much less work than hacking my tool to achieve this behaviour. I'm sorry to say that, but I think you are better off doing this by yourself than buying my tool.

Are there other features that you need from the level editor or is what you have described all what you need?

 

Hello @FreebordMAD ,

1. I do not want to snap it to a grid. I want to say, for the terrain, raise the vertices found within these world coordinates to y+1. I actually fought this would be easy to achieve.

2. I actually do NOT want a clean cut. I currently have the clean cut, and I want to get rid of it and make it more smooth and life like. This is one of the reasons I want to get your asset. Also I am ok with writing the slope script.

3. I actually need a complete custom UI, so hopefully I would be able to use the new UnityGUI from Unit4.6 and call methods from you scripts to manipulate the terrain and objects.

From what I saw, I like your asset. I think with mods it would suite my needs. I like that it is perfect for mobile as well as any other platform, I can place objects and also very important, save & load the map.

If you think that any of the things I mentioned above are completely unrealistic, please let me know !

 

Ok then, it seems I misunderstood what you want to achieve.

1. In my project there is a TerrainManager class. The terrain editing functions look all like:

Code (CSharp):

1. public void ChangeHeight(float p_delta, float p_targetHeight, Texture2D p_alphaBrushTexture, float p_relativeBrushSize, Vector2 p_relativeLocalLocation)

For example if you pass a brush texture of a square you can rase a square that has the size of 10% (p_relativeBrushSize) of the terrain in the center of the terrain (p_relativeLocalLocation) to 20% of the max height of the terrain (p_targetHeight) if you set p_delta to 1.

2. I got it
3. This sound good too.

Using touch/mobile controls in your own UI should also be no problem there is a class called LE_InputDeviceTouchscreen among other input devices you only need to pass an implementation of an interface defining functions like

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2.     // cursor
3.     void SetCursorPosition(Vector3 p_cursorScreenCoords);
4.     void SetIsCursorAction(bool p_isCursorAction);
5.  
6.     // camera movement
7.     void MoveCamera(Vector3 p_fromScreenCoords, Vector3 p_toScreenCoords);
8.     void RotateCamera(Vector3 p_fromScreenCoords, Vector3 p_toScreenCoords);

 

UPDATE: unfortunately, after two weeks of review the project was rejected, because there was no offline documentation included. I have fixed this. The package is uploading now. Thanks for you patiance, I didn't know that it would take so long to get my project published in the Asset Store, but at least the guys seem to take their job serious

 

It took quite a while, but now it's out!
http://u3d.as/content/denis-lapiner/multiplatform-runtime-level-editor

 

Superb ! Thank you

 

I think this tool is absolutely astonishing. Excuse me if these questions were asked already:
1. Is it something like the Warcraft 3 editor? Meaning my users could create levels, save them and share them with other people?
2. How does the tool access all the prefabs in my project? I just point out the folders in which the prefabs resign?
3. These newly created levels can be easly accessed by script (loading / unloading, changing scene, etc)

Thank you

 

Hello primus88!

Yes, you could say that. Check out my game Mad Snowboarding for Windows in the Windows Store. It uses this asset here.

Take a look at this page of the documentation for more information on prefabs in the level editor:
http://www.freebord-game.com/index....time-level-editor/documentation/level-objects

For loading and saving you should visit this pages of the documentation:
http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/multiplatform-runtime-level-editor/documentation/save
http://www.freebord-game.com/index.php/multiplatform-runtime-level-editor/documentation/load
http://www.freebord-game.com/index....time-level-editor/documentation/add-meta-data

 

Hello again and thanks for buying! So now it has been a week since the first of you have bought my level editor. It would be super awesome if you could give me some feedback now! To make it simple you could answer only the 3 questions below, but any feedback is highly appreciated!
1. Did you get what you have expected?
2. Is it usable for you? Could you include it in your game or make the modifications that you wanted?
3. Do you have any suggestions for the documentation? Is something missing do you have questions?

p.s.: also feature requests are welcome!