Simplex World Creator Overview

A quick overview of Simplex World Creator concepts and systems. This guide will help you understand how the World Creator works and will start you on your way toward making a new world.

Read This First

As of this writing, the world creator is in the beta stage. This means that there may be bugs. If you do find bugs or would like to see something improved, we’d really appreciate it if you let us know by creating a ticket on our support website here: http://flippfly.freshdesk.com/

A Note on Files and Formats

The editor stores your worlds as small .xml files in the Steam Cloud. There are plans underway to give more direct access to the files so that they can be easily edited (hacked) with an xml editor.

Important Editor Limitations

Before you get started with the world creator, it’s good to realize what types of things you can (and can’t) make with it.
 As we keep improving the World Creator we want to keep removing limitations and expanding the possibilities with input from you the community.

Here are some things you CAN do with Simplex World Creator:
•  Make endless game worlds that move in one direction, just like the built-in worlds
• Change the colors scheme for just about everything other than the player ship
• Create all kinds of new objects and obstacles, arranged inside of custom patterns
• Animate these obstacles with the “Events” to do all kinds of neat stuff
• Change the physics of the ship, as well as things like how fast the sun goes down
• Change the sky to a starry space texture and hide the ground, for the effect of a space mode on a fixed movement plane

And here are some things you CAN’T do:
• Make a game that lets the player move in any direction freely – maybe for the next game ;)
• Have complete control over the entire world creation. Read “The Basics” section for more on how the world is created.
• Create a new control scheme or add things like weapons (this might change in the future!)
• Create things that violate our community guidelines[flippfly.com] and publish them.

The Basics

For starters, here is a short overview video:

Before we get into the specifics of how to use the editor, let’s cover some of the basic concepts. Each Race The Sun world is made up of Patterns, Events, and Objects. To fully utilize the power of the World Creator, you will need to know how these things work together. Here are some definitions:

Object

Objects are 3D shapes that are made up of ‘primitives’. These primitives (like a cube, sphere, or pyramid) are added together to create more meaningful and interesting objects.

Event

Events are what adds interactivity and motion to a world. You could think of them as small programs that you can run on any object. These events are things like animations, color changes, or sounds.

Pattern

A pattern is a 64×64 grid with objects in it. During gameplay, the game engine will arrange these patterns randomly, to create the world around you. As you progress through the “regions” of the world, it will look at the rules for each pattern to determine which patterns to use for that region. As the world creator, you get to decide which patterns will be used in each region (or range of regions). This is how we make the world get progressively more difficult (in the built-in game modes) by using harder and harder patterns as you progress through the regions

Creating a World

To get started, click the “Player Worlds” button on the main menu. From here you can jump to workshop to find worlds - or browse worlds that you have already subscribed to. You can also see the worlds that you have created under the "My Worlds" tab

A good way to get your bearings is to duplicate the main "Race the Sun" world and take a look at it. To do this:
1. Hit “Player Worlds” from the main menu.
2. Hit the "My Worlds" tab
3. Select Race The Sun in the list
4. Hit "Duplicate" on the righthand side
5. Type in a name for your duplicate world and hit "OK"
6. Select your new world in the menu
7. Hit "Edit" on the righthand side

This will open the World Creator.
[Note: The World Creator only supports keyboard and mouse input at this time]

World Creator Modes

The world creator is divided into four distinct modes (buttons on the lefthand column). Each mode lets you edit different pieces of a world. These are the modes:

World Properties

This mode allows you to edit the global settings for your world. These settings include lighting, sun behavior, sky color, sky and ground materials, ship physics, camera position and other global settings.

Objects

This mode allows you to create and edit objects. A new world will start out with no objects. Creating an object goes like this:
1. Hit “Add”
2. Type a name into the “Name” field.
3. Hit “Create”
4. Select a primitive (hit thumbnail image to select)
5. Change Rotation, Offset, or Scale as needed
6. Add “Child Objects” as needed

Patterns

This mode allows you to place the objects you have created into a pattern, and set the conditions under which that pattern will spawn into the world. You will only have objects that have been created in the Objects mode available for placement. There are three object placement modes available, they are:
1. Add: This will add the currently selected object wherever you click on the pattern
2. Remove: The will remove (delete) any object you click
3. Select Type: This will make any object you click the currently selected object type. Alternative ways to change the current object type are to click the thumbnail icon, or use the left and right arrow keys.

Events
Clicking ”Add” allows you to select from a library of default events. Each event has its own settings and parameters and can be given a unique name. These events can then be “attached” to any game object by typing the event name in an objects “Spawn Event” field.

To get a feel for things, try each mode of the World Creator. Experiment with changing settings and moving things around. There is a lot of depth to the World Creator and we have just scratched the surface on this page! If you would like to learn more (or share your knowledge) please read and contribute to these workshop guides!

[mrmiller_0023]

how to download the world creator

[tamim.tamim]

Hi, I can't find this "Player Worlds" from the main menu as you mentioned in "Creating the world" section. I also can't find the xml file of the world I have designed.

I would be really happy if you could reply.

[Kaiman]

This is a lot more limiting than it ought to be.

[Nero]

this could really come in handy. many thx

[Tétris]

Usefull guide !