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castle-editor-portable

README.md

Minimal and Portable version of Castle Game Engine Editor

For now, this is only a proof of concept. This version of the editor is not functional for any real work at this point. Use the real editor, based on LCL, in ../castle-editor/.

This is a minimal "editor-like" application, featuring a subset of functionality of the real Castle Game Engine editor but using our engine's user interface components for 100% of the work.

Compared to the real Castle Game Engine editor:

  • This is completely portable to all systems where CGE can run, e.g. also to mobile (Android, iOS), Nintendo Switch, web.

  • This is portable to all compilers we support, so both Delphi and FPC.

  • This looks the same on all platforms, and "dark mode" is trivial to implement here. Actually, we just do "dark mode" by default.

  • However! A lot of important functionality is yet missing. See TODOs below. This is not a replacement for the real editor yet. But with time, it can be -- we can copy here more and more "real" editor's functionality, and eventually make this a fully-functional editor version.

Try it out on the web

Try it out by visiting this page.

Detailed features and TODOs

Features:

  • Create a new project, choosing one of the templates.
  • Open an existing project
    • from cross-platform writeable space, in castle-config:/my-projects/,
    • from anywhere on disk (only on platforms that support regular filesystem with free access, e.g. desktops)
    • from recent projects,
    • from examples (only if CGE sources path is detected).
  • Choosing and displaying a given view in the project.
  • Displaying components hierarchy.
  • Displaying object inspector (thus, viewing and editing components properties).
  • Manipulating selected TCastleTransform (translate, rotate, scale).

TODOs:

  • Adding new components to the view.
  • Manipulating UI (extact functionality from castle-editor?).
  • Creating new views.
  • Build Project.
  • Run Project.
  • Run Physics Simulation.
  • Our object inspector has a number of critical shortcomings, e.g. it can edit only boolean properties for now. The rest is read-only.
  • Multi-selection.
  • Bottom pane with Files of the project, preview, ability to drag-and-drop files to the design, double-click to open files.
  • Bottom pane with Console output.
  • UI scaling: right now editor uses UI scaling and just applies it to the loaded design. Instead: editor UI scaling should be configurable and the loaded design should be scaled following project's settings. Loaded design should also enable zoom and scroll, that's independent feature (and would be nice to have in the real editor too).
  • Import/export project. And ability to just open projects at arbitrary location on platforms where regular filesystem exists (desktops).
  • ... All other functionality of the real editor. Duplicating, all integration with code editors etc.

Screenshots

Screenshot

Screenshot on the web

Building

Using Castle Game Engine.

Compile by:

  • CGE editor. Just use menu items "Compile" or "Compile And Run".

  • Or use CGE command-line build tool. Run castle-engine compile in this directory.

  • Or use Lazarus. Open in Lazarus castle_editor_portable_standalone.lpi file and compile / run from Lazarus. Make sure to first register CGE Lazarus packages.

  • Or use Delphi. Open in Delphi castle_editor_portable_standalone.dproj file and compile / run from Delphi. See CGE and Delphi documentation for details.

License

Just like the real editor, based on LCL, in ../castle-editor/:

This version of Castle Game Engine Editor is provided on the GNU GPL >= 2 license terms. Not on more permissive terms of LGPL (with static linking exception) >= 2 (that are used for the rest of the Castle Game Engine). See https://castle-engine.io/license for details. This means that:

  • You can use the editor to create your own closed-source programs,

  • But you cannot fork the editor into a closed-source program (and distribute it publicly). If you want to fork, the fork has to be open-source as well, following GPL.

  • You are of course free to extend Castle Game Engine editor for internal purposes (if you don't distribute it publicly, the GPL license terms don't concern you), or you can extend it publicly on terms of GPL (thus, keeping the whole work open-source).

When contributing (sending pull requests etc.) to the castle-editor-portable source code, you agree that your contributions may be used under either GPL or a more permissive "LGPL with static linking exception" terms, at the discretion of Castle Game Engine Developers. Castle Game Engine Developers are defined as people with write (commit) access to the official CGE version control repository (referred to from https://castle-engine.io/ , currently https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/ ). The idea is that we sometimes want to move code from castle-editor to the engine core, for technical reasons, and we want the freedom to do so. Still, the complete editor stays GPL, as we don't apply this dual license to all our editor code, and complete editor is only GPL.