Dev Diary #119 - New Editor Features

Adam Snellgrove · March 12, 2020

Hey there Ylanders!

So while in the last few weeks we talked a lot about new features coming into Exploration, we haven’t forgotten about the Editor either. We made a total UI overhaul of the Editor to make it more approachable to new Creators, but also to make life easier for seasoned Creators.

We reorganized the Editor Header. We have grouped all tools into categories to help new creators to better navigate them. However, for more experienced users we added "Advanced mode" which still provides quick access to all the tools at once. Tools that were hidden in the Editor Menu (i.e Custom controls) were moved to the header itself, to be always at hand. Also, object properties were moved from a standalone window to a designated panel on the left and are now always visible.

Another aspect we worked on is the terrain tools. Add mode now behaves more consistently and does not create terrain glitches. All terrain brushes can also be 7x bigger now and you can play around with the intensity, so you can make detailed changes or huge terraforming sweeps. Stamp mode will also give you the option to instantly add/remove terrain. Also terrain tools are much faster now. so you can really start making those mountains without performance issues.

Testing Mobile games will also become possible on PC, so you don’t have to run to your phone or tablet any time you want to try out a new script you made. You will be able to see, what your game will look like on high-end and low-end mobile devices and also Universal scenarios will be run now with optimized terrain to make the performance better.

The Editor look was reworked to look more "editorish", mainly the fonts were decreased to convey more information and panel colours are now unified.

Editor key bindings were reworked to mirror the new Editor header layout and to make them thus more intuitive so check out Ylands settings to get acquainted or to rebind them to ones you were used to.

And that’s it for now, so until next time, stay classy Yslanders.