[Work-in-Progress] Twinspire, an editor specifically for OpenFL

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#1

This is an editor written in C# that will eventually aid the development of OpenFL video games. Because it is written in C#, it will unfortunately not be available on Linux and Mac, and versions of it will sacrifice libraries such as FastColoredTextBox, as they use GDI+ (which is a Windows-only API; whether Microsoft will open source this is an entirely different cause versus them open sourcing .NET). It is still possible to recompile these libraries to Linux/Mac but with some work.

Apart from that, the editor is designed to be extensible. This means that you can create your own Templates and use them with Twinspire. The API is fairly simple, and designed not to be exhaustive.

Other features will include live previewing. The idea behind this is to use node-webkit to host an integrated OpenFL application, and for each change you make, the editor will automatically build to the HTML5 target, report back any issues with your code (etc.), and your application be testable on-the-go.

The application will come with two templates to begin with, and I intend to give one template away for free - that being a blank template. The template you see in the image above is for “Written Story”, for an engine I have already created that is free and open source. The editor portion for this engine will not be free, at least at release.

During the Alpha and Beta phases of this project, all source code will be available on Github. Once the templates and the editor is in Release phase, the Written Story template will no longer exist on Github, but the blank template will. There are more templates intended, including the Blank Template - designed to aid visually designing video games including auto-generated code for things like TextFields, Sprites etc.

This may not look like much yet, but I do wish to expand it out and make it available for everyone here wishing to make OpenFL games in Haxe, with a more visual approach. The source code for this project can be found here, on Github.

If you have any questions about this project, ask away!

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#2

Hi!

Is there somewhere compiled editor’s binaries?

#3

Yes, it’s under /Twinspire/bin/Debug/Twinspire.exe - but all you can do with it is “Create” a project, but not even that can open the actual editors parts from the StoryDev.API dll. I have been trying to figure out what would be causing the issue but to no avail.

#4

This is now becoming a commercial project, but that does not mean this will not be free to download and try. After giving much thought into this project, I felt that it is more appropriate to set a price for this and be more willing to complete it as a consequence.

After about a month of no updates, here is one:

https://github.com/twinspire/twinspire-engine

This is the engine which will be the basis for the upcoming editor.

Currently, this engine is more of a utility library at the moment, at least until it grows and gets better. It is designed with simplicity in mind, and currently has the following features:

  • Font class for managing your fonts easier.
  • Skins class for setting up skins for GUI controls.
  • GUI controls include: Checkboxes and Radioboxes

You can download the latest version using:

haxelib install twinspire-engine

I will keep you up-to-date here, but maybe not as frequently as on my website or social media networks. Feedback is greatly appreciated!