FyroxEd Overview
FyroxEd - is the native editor of Fyrox, it is made for one purpose - be integrated game development environment, that allows you to build your game from start to finish with relatively low effort.
You'll be spending a lot of time in the editor (FyroxEd), so you should get familiar with it and learn how to use its basic functionality. This chapter will guide you through basics, advanced topics will be covered in respective chapters.
Windows
Once the editor is open for the first time, it will confuse you by amount of windows, buttons, lists, etc. Each window serves for different purpose, but all of them works together to help you make your game. Let's look at the editor's screenshot and learn what parts of it responsible for what (please note that it can change over time, because the development is quite rapid and image can become outdated pretty easily):
- World viewer - shows every object in the scene and their relations. It allows you to inspect and edit the contents of the scene in hierarchical form.
- Scene preview - renders your scene with debug info and various editor-specific objects (like gizmos and stuff). Allows you to select, move, rotate, scale, delete, etc. various entities.
- Toolbar - shows available context-dependent tools.
- Inspector - allows you to modify various properties of selected object.
- Message log - shows the important messages from the editor.
- Navmesh panel - allows you to create/delete and edit navigational meshes.
- Command stack - shows the most recent actions you've done, allows you to undo and redo the changes on demand.
- Asset browser - inspects the assets of your game, allows you to instantiate resources in the scene and so on.
Creating (Loading) a Scene
FyroxEd works with scenes - scene is a container for game entities, you can create and edit one scene at a time. You
must have a scene created (or loaded) to begin working with the editor. To create a scene click File -> New Scene
.
To load existing scene, go to File -> Load
and select desired scene using file browser.
Populating Your Scene
Scene can be filled with various objects, there are two equivalent ways of creating game entities:
- By clicking
Create
main menu item and selecting desired entity. - By right-clicking on a game entity in
World Viewer
and selecting desired entity fromAdd Child
sub-menu.
Saving Scene
To save your work, go to File -> Save
. For the first time (for unsaved scene), the editor will ask you to specify
file name and path to a folder where the scene will be saved. A scene loaded from a file will be automatically saved
to the path it was loaded from.
Undo/redo
FyroxEd remembers your actions, and it is possible to undo (or redo undone) your changes to fix some stuff in the scene.
You can undo or redo your changes either by clicking Edit -> Undo/Redo
or by standard shortcuts: Ctrl+Z
- undo,
Ctrl+Y
- redo.
Controls
There are number of control keys that you'll be using most of the time, pretty much all of them works in Scene Preview
window:
[Left Mouse Button]
- Select[W][S][A][D]
- Move camera forward/backward/left/right[Space][Q]/[E]
- Raise/Lower Camera[Ctrl]
- speed up[Shift]
- slowdown[Middle Mouse Button]
to pan camera in viewing plane[1]
- Select interaction mode[2]
- Move interaction mode[3]
- Scale interaction mode[4]
- Rotate interaction mode[Ctrl]+[Z]
- Undo[Ctrl]+[Y]
- Redo[Delete]
- deletes current selection.
Play Mode
One of the key features of the editor is that it allows you to run your game from it. Use Play/Stop
button at the
top of Scene Preview
window to enter (or leave) Play Mode. Keep in mind, that editor UI will be locked while you're
in the Play Mode.
Play Mode can be activated only for projects that made with fyrox-template
(or have similar structure). The editor
calls cargo
commands to build and run your game in a separate process. Running the game in a separate process ensures
that the editor won't crash if the game does, it also provides excellent isolation between the game and the editor, not
giving a chance to break the editor by running the game.
Additional Utilities
There are also number of powerful utilities that will make your life easier, which works without any scene, they can be
found under Utils
section of main menu:
- Animation Editor - allows you to create and editor animation blending state machines which are responsible for animation mixing.
- Curve Editor - create and edit curve resources to make complex laws for game parameters.
- Path Fixer - helps you fix incorrect resource references in your scenes.