The first version of the Cadence Workshop is finally in a spot that I'm happy with. This is a combination of the Cadence game framework (split off from the Dungeon Crawler World game that now consumes it) and a Workshop project for building in-game content.

This first Workshop version uses readonly content tabs for viewing items, actions, auras, map areas, spritesheets, and UI controls. Editing will be implemented one tab at a time. The framework is already in place with the readonly data formats and codecs.

Items / Actions

  • List all items and actions in both the core game and any additional modules
  • Grouped by Activator (Potion, scroll, wand, toggle, spell, etc)
  • View the same item and action details that a player will see in-game, including targeting outlines.
  • View Related actions, effects, etc that the entry uses or is used by.

Auras

  • List the persistent AOE auras in both the core game and any additional modules
  • Grouped by attachment parent (terrain, items, buildings)
  • Same detail and relationship views as items and actions

Map

  • Placed Areas are for hand-crafted terrain areas. Displays the area's terrain, entities, and effects per layer using the same map renderer as the in-game map tiles.
  • Palettes to define the character-to-entity data mapping used in saving and reading the areas.
  • Placements for placing an area into a randomly-generated map by map seed. Used to test placement under various conditions while comparing borders with adjacent neighborhoods.

Sprites

  • FNA conversion of the previous sprite manifest builder
  • View sprite sheets and divide them into squares by a chosen tile size
  • Assign one or more sprites to a definition as options
  • Assign multiple sprites to linked sprite maps at specific positions (ex : walls with edges and tops)
  • Preview the sprites at various footprint sizes
  • Like the map tab, uses the same renderer as the map tiles.

Controls

  • One of every UI control
  • For testing enhancements to basic controls before utilizing them

Debug

  • Lunch Settings (like diagnostics options) that will be used whenever the game is launched from the Workshop.
  • Live tab that displays the diagnostics of an attached game instance. Memory management, data size per component per entity, frame rate, frame consumption per system, garbage collection, etc.
  • Reports tab for comparing saved data from past diagnostics.

Build and Play

  • Build the game project
  • Run the game project
  • Attach any selected diagnostics to the game instance
  • Used for testing when adding game content. (Visual Studio build and run are more efficient for testing code changes)