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Unity’s level editing facilities can be a bit of a pain. Which is putting it mildly. I actually know some of the people people who currently work at Unity, but sadly not their home addresses. Yet.
So in the meantime, I created Atlas.

Atlas is a state of the art level editing tool that allows our handsome designers (Robin2 and American Donald) to throw various intriguing levels together. It handles all the object editing, linking and layout that would be an unimaginable nightmare in Unity. I actually can imagine that nightmare by employing my powers of memory – which is why I wrote Atlas in the first place.

One day I may even make Atlas into a full app – although it might take a little while to make it fully generalised for any game. But for now it serves me well, despite the creaky XNA underpinnings.

I need … a level designer! Some thrusting young buck with a keen interest in game design, looking for a leg-up in the industry, or some wizened old crone who’s keen to show these young’uns how things are done – either is absolutely fine. Or anywhere in between – we believe in equal opportunities exploitation here at Jubber Towers. There will be a monthly stipend to go with the job, which might well suit somebody looking to do design work in their free time or at weekends – you won’t need full time commitment to the project. Here is Atlas – the tool I built for the design work. It rather brilliantly meshes with Unity so you can build and test levels immediately from home – and won’t require a full licensed version of Unity either.

If you’re at all interested, give me a shout on the contacts page and I’ll respond within moments (unless England are playing football, or I’m in a pub drinking heavily)

 

“Give it a gun barrel with lots of sciency bits on it” I explained to Mr Jim in painstaking detail. “And a turrety bit that rotates and comes out of the floor” I elaborated. Mr Jim snarled and muttered and made some pencil sketches. “You’ll be wanting knobs on it I expect”. “Yes!” I agreed enthusiastically “lots of knobs and some lights too.”

Of course I had to make it detect the player without draining the cpu, make it rotate and lock on and stick some sound effects on it, but Mr Jim had done the heavy lifting and our vicious sentry droid was born. Not terribly bright, but persistent. And he can work with his chums to cover an area, which should be handy.

His robotic counterpart, who patrols the corridors is also taking shape – a shiny floating insect like thing which has to navigate the world without falling off bridges, bumping into the furniture and generally making a fool of itself. Of course he might be centuries old hence the occasional glitch – hurrah! an in-story explanation for crap AI. I’ll file that under handy excuses.