SlayerMaker 2D in simple terms is a no code game editor that specialises in creating and playing 2D top down "shootemups".
The goal was to create an editor with no boundaries. It had to be easy to use for someone with no coding, programming or
game development experience.
SlayerMaker2D a no-code game editor built with C++ and the SFML graphics library. With a variety of game modes, walls, enemies, items, power-ups, and objectives, players can create their games their way. While the editor is built with a type of general style of game in mind it is open enough to allow for a wide variety of games. Additionally, the project allows the players to play their game directly in the game editor and save their games for later. My goal is to make game development more accessible to everyone. I made a lot of progress towards this goal during my fourth year at SETU. SlayerMaker allows the user to create and play games with a surprising variety. An important middleground was required to be hit during the development, how do you allow a user to make their game the way they want, while still keeping the editor as simplistic and sleek as possible. The last thing someone looking to use a no code game editor needs is an editor that in and of itself has a learning curve. Avoiding bloat was neccessary, so the challenge came with doing that coupled with buliding a diverse editor.
Developer
Supervisor
So far I have managed to create an editor that allows the user to build, test,
save and load their games. This is all done by the user while writing a total of 0 lines of code.
A simple user interface was the key to this. Unlike other programs which show a massive toolbar and inspector all the time,
my editor splits the build process into sections, making the toolbar small and easily understood.
-> Creating a game: Users with no learning curve involved can open the editor and build an interesting game from scratch with a variety of gamemodes,
enemies, walls, objectives, powerups and items.
-> Testing the game: With a click of a button the game the player made comes to life allowing them to playtest what they have built. If they aren't happy,
they simply return to the create screen and keep building.
-> Saving the game: When happy with their creation, a user can again with the click of one button save their games information to a csv file.
-> Playing the game: The user can play any of the games which have been saved, they load directly from the neccessary csv file.
While I made a huge amount of progress towards my goal throughout the year there is still some work left to do.
-> Building Games: I would like in the editor to be able to click a button under a specific game and build an executable, of just that game. It would create a folder for this game,
and would include everything neccessary to run, including an asset folder with copies of the neccessary assets.
-> Upload / Downloading Games: I would like to have a similar button under every game to upload the neccessary data to a table in a database.
Addtionally a button to download all games currently on the database. This would have made holding all the gamedata on the PC unnessecary.
-> Overall Polish: The editor needs to be polished a bit to make the UI and UX more inviting and less jarring coming from another app.
