Game Development Rule: Create your tools first

Several people asked me how I am developing Darkness Springs, because it is not that small and with all the quests and items even a bit complex. And especially after the announced big update of DS has been released today, more people seem to be interested in this so here is a small view behind the curtain.

In order to add a new area to the game, I simply open a web browser, type www.darkness-springs.eu and edit the game, which would look like this:



Simple as that. So yes, I created a full game editor in flash with which I am even able to edit the running game in realtime. Of course this was quite a bit of work to accomplish, but the advantages are worth it. Generally speaking, it is always a very good idea to create your game tools first and invest a lot of time into creating them. The easier it is for you to edit your game, the better it will get, which should be quite obvious. [But even the best tools won't help if you are a bad game designer, By the way ;)]

The advantage of this special game editor which is written using Flex like the game shares a lot of code with it and shows the results as they are looking in the final game. The Darkness Springs editor contains a quest editor, an item placer, map management and event a 'test' button which makes it possible to test a just created map directly in the game without saving. It helped me a lot to create Darkness Springs and I can really recommend: Create you game tools first and invest some time into them, and after this start creating the game.