--- DevDiary ---

<Back>

- 2023/06/10 -

This week, I started working on the stage editor.

Back when the trial version of SD2020 came out, the only playable content within the game was the custom stage builder and tester. The campaign was completely absent, and the button that was supposed to begin the campaign instead loaded the one and only custom stage from its designated spot. I had big plans for the custom stage editor, and now I have begun fulfilling them.

The custom stage menu.

I went back to SD2020 and looked into how it stored its stage data. One of the goals has been to make SDR compatible with the stages built in SD2020, and thankfully I had enough foresight to reserve space in the files for potential future features. SDR expands on what a stage can contain, and these new features neatly make use of reserved bytes of the original SD2020 files. They even have a byte for the version number, which may allow SDR to generate stages that can be loaded in SD2020.

The stage editor in SDR so far only consists of the menu that allows the player to select and load a stage. The file browser lacks sorting and filters, and only displays all files in the custom stages folder that have passed the quick formatting check, in the alphabetical order. Selecting a file brings up a small preview of its elements. The tempting "New" and "Edit" buttons are functionless so far, and the only way to create new stages is to port them from the functioning stage editor in SD2020. Or manually edit the stage files themselves.

The "trial.mbl" file that came packaged with SD2020.

SDR stores stage files in two folders: the custom folder and the campaign folder. The editor can only access stages in the custom folder, but the campaign files are not planned to be protected from being moved there and subsequently edited. I think I should add a feature to reset the campaign folder in case the player manages to ruin the files without knowing any better.

As soon as the stage editor itself is complete, SDR will be on par with SD2020 in terms of its feature completeness. The game would be still in its testing phase, since I do not exclude game-crashing bugs from happening left and right. I feel like the time for opening the game for the public is fast approaching.