Modding PlataGO! 02

PlataGO! is a level editor that allows its users  to dive straight into creating 2D platformers levels using the built-in resources. With this project, I aim to create a brand new pack of free resources that could be used with PlataGO!'s constraints.

User Folder

As soon as you open PlataGO!, you will land on the main menu. You might want to explore a little if its your very first time opening the tool.
Please do as you wish =) Again, I will not go over the user interface and such, as there are existing resources that do that perfectly well.
Once you're done, go back to the main menu and click the Open User Folder Button.
You will get sed to that folder, as all the modding work will take place inside that folder.

Clicking the button will pop up a new window, directly opening the customizing folder.
I strongly recommend  to copy/paste the "Template" folder and to rename it to your liking.

Now open your custom folder. There's not much there indeed, but it is plenty enough already to make games!

- The folder SFX is pretty self explanatory and contains all the sound effects that our game will use as well as one music track.
- assetinfo.xml is a data related file, just do not mess with it and don't touch it.

Now wa are going to have a closer look to the remaining files. All of them are PNG files, meaning they all are image type file.
Basically, PlataGO! uses 3 atlases for the whole graphics of the editor. (An Atlas in gamedev is one big image file that contains a lot of other smaller images used for characters animations, visual effects or background elements)

- entiteis.png : this is a 4096 x 4096 pixel image that containes ALL the graphics for animated stuff like characters, enemies, props and vfx. We will see later that not every elements use the same texture space, and some of them need more than others.

- gui.png:  this a 512 x 512 image containing all the user interface graphic elements. By editing this file, you can personnalize the UI it self of the tool.  An interesting and nice feature, which is not directly related to making a game, but if you choose to share you assets, you might want your own buttons and theme to make it consistent and stand out.

- Icon.png: a 256 x 256 pixels image which only use is to display the name of the current used theme. It is written "USER' by default, but as you can see, I changed it the "BLASTALT" with a color scheme that matches the color of my main character.

- tiles.png: finally another 4096 x 4096 pixel atlas which is used for all background and level design elements. Walls, blocks, background images, columns, you name it.

Now that we've learned that, the biggest part of the wrk will be to replace the original graphics in those atlases by custom ones.

Next time, we will have a deeper look at the Main Character Entity.

Stay tuned!

Cheers.