Overview

The Game Editor is how all experiences are made, and can be accessed as easily as typing game.new into your browser. It has two modes, Basic and Advanced, which have different uses. You can access the Game Editor for any game you have created or remixed, and even start a multiplayer editing environment to collaborate in real time with friends.

Opening the Game Editor

There are several different methods to open the Game Editor:

1. Type game.new or dotbigbang.com/game into your browser to create a new project, either an empty world, or start from a template.
2. From any dot big bang page, click the Menu icon in the top right corner and select Build a Game.
3. From your dot big bang profile page, click any of the games you have made to open them, and then click the Edit button in the top left corner.
4. Open a remixable game like this one, and click the Remix button to open a new copy of that game in the Game Editor.

Saving

Games in dot big bang do not save automatically, so it’s important to press the Save button in the top right corner regularly to keep your work. In this menu you can specify a name for your project. To capture a new screenshot to represent the game, move your avatar or camera around, and then click the Snap New Thumbnail button.

Check the Published box to make your game show up on your profile and in the search of the dot big bang home page. If the game is not published, you will still be able to see it on your own profile when logged in, but no one else will. Check the Remixable box to let other creators make copies of your game that they can then edit.

You can use the Save As button to make a new copy of the game and save the most recent changes to it, allowing you to keep multiple versions of the project.

Mood

The Mood menu will let you change lighting and effects to quickly customize the visual look of your game. Choose one of the preset moods to start, or jump straight to customizing the sunlight, sky, and post processing effects that players see. In the Useful Scripts lesson, we will look at a no-code method to create different moods for different areas of your game using the remixable dbb_mood script.

Basic and Advanced Modes

The Game Editor starts in Basic Mode. This is a minimal, distraction-free way to start building a space in dot big bang that should feel more like the building experience in a game. Advanced Mode introduces more options, including customizing the way the camera works, and being able to search through all the entities in the game.

To activate advanced mode, click the Advanced button in the bottom right corner.

Camera Modes

There are three options for the camera in the game editor:

• Game Camera follows the player avatar. You can move the player with the W, A, S, and D keys, like in most dot big bang games, and rotate the camera around the player with the mouse by holding the right mouse button.
• Fly Camera moves the camera directly with the W, A, S, and D keys, and the Q and E keys to move the camera higher and lower. You can also hold the Shift key to increase the speed, and still rotate the camera with the mouse by holding the right mouse button.
• Orbit Camera will let you pan the camera with the mouse while holding right click, and always stay focusing an object (similar to the way the camera orbits around the player in the Game Camera) if you hold the Shift key and the right mouse button.

Stop, Play, and Pause

In Advanced mode you can use the Pause button to freeze your game and examine it at a specific moment in time. This can be especially useful for looking at things that only spawn temporarily, and then disappear.

Changes you make are updated in real time, so you won’t have to press Stop and Play to see your changes take effect, but you can use the Stop button to reset your game to the state before any of the code runs, and the Play button to get everything running again. Anything that spawns when the game starts will not be visible when the game is stopped.

Debug Options

The Debug Options menu gives you ways to test your games performance. The Stats Panel will show lots of information, including how many total entities you have in your game, and how long each script is taking to execute. The FPS panel just shows the number of frames your game can create per second and shows up in the bottom right corner. You can also disable Fog and Post Processing Effects to make your game easier to render, and sometimes improve the FPS.

Multi Tool Options

When you drag a new voxel object into the game, it will automatically move around and reposition itself on top of anything you drag it over. Under Multi Tool you can swap gizmos to Move entities on a specific XYZ axis, or along a plane, Rotate entities around their XYZ axes, or Scale them larger or smaller.

With the regular Multi Tool selected, you can make entities Snap by holding the Shift key, and drag a new copy of an entity by holding the Ctrl key.

Entity Search and Entity Panel

The Entity Search on the right side will list every single entity in your game. Entities that spawn during gameplay also show up here. When you select an individual entity, you can see all its properties and components in the Entity Panel on the right. We will learn more about both of these menus in the Entities lesson.