User Manual: The UI of Phyard Builder
From Color Infection Wiki
Contents |
The image above show the initial screen of the phyard builder. It contains 5 areas:
- At the top (red box) is the Main Command Bar.
- Below the main command bar (green box) is the Secondary Command Bar.
- At the left (yellow box) is the Component Create Commands Panel.
- At the bottom (blue box) is the Status Bar.
- The center is the working area, it is called World Scene Area.
Editing Mode
Designing Views
Before introducing each part of the interface, we should know there are 3 views:
- Scene Editing View is the initial view. You can create entities and modify their properties in this view.
- Collision Category Editing View is for creating Collision Categories, modifying their properties and creating friend links between collision categories.
- Function Editing View is for creating and editing custom functions.
Main Commands
| Left three commands | Center two commands | Right one command |
|---|---|---|
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| Commands in center left panel | Commands in center right panel |
|---|---|
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Load Save Info Clear Entities World Setting Clone Delete Flip Horizontally Flip Vertically Move To Top Move To Bottom
Secondary Commands
From left to right:
- Go To Entity command. Every entity has an unique id. If there are many entities in the world scene, then it is some difficult to find the entity though a specific id. This command is just to make this job easier.
Notice:
- You can input more than one ids in the input box.
- When you click the "Go To Entity#" label, the entities specified by the input ids will be selected.
- Show Commands are used to show some special informations.
- Show Entity IDs
- Show Links
- Hide Commands are used to hide some entities so that the world is tidier.
- Hide Invisibles
- Hide Shapes & Joints
- Hide Triggers
- Scale View Commands. The scale range is from 1/16 to 16.
Component Create Commands
There are 3 tabs in the component create commands panel. The first one is General Components Create Commands Panel. The second is Trigger Components Create Commands Panel and the third is More Components Create Commands Panel. Followings are the simple introductions of these create commands.
General Components Create Commands
| Create Rectangle Shape | Create Cirlce Shape |
| Create Polygon Shape | Create Polyline Shape |
| Create Hinge Joint | Create Slider Joint |
| Create Distance Joint | Create Spring Joint |
| Create Weld Joint | Create Dummy Joint |
| Create Force Power Source | Create Torque Power Source |
| Create Linear Impulse Power Source | Create Angular Impulse Power Source |
| Create Camera | Create Text |
| Create Gravity Controller | Create Text Button |
| Create Rectangle Bomb | Create Circle Bomb |
Trigger Components Create Commands
| Create Action | Create Task |
| Create Basic Condition | Create Condition Door |
| Create Entity Assignern | Create Entity Pair Assigner |
| Create OnLevelBeforeInitializing Event Handler | Create OnLevelAfterInitialized Event Handler |
| Create OnLevelBeforeUpdating Event Handler | Create OnLevelAfterUpdated Event Handler |
| Create OnJointReachLowerLimit Event Handler | Create OnJointReachUpperLimit Event Handler |
| Create OnWorldMouse(Click | Down | Up | Move) Event Handlers | Create OnShapeMouse(Click | Down | Up | Move | Enter | Out) Event Handlers |
| Create OnKey(Down | Up | Hold) Event Handler | Create OnEntityInitialized Event Handler |
| Create OnEntityUpdated Event Handler | Create OnEntityDestroyed Event Handler |
| Create OnTwoShapes(Start | Keep | End)Contacting Event Handlers | Create OnWorldTimer Event Handler |
| Create OnEntityTimer Event Handler | Create OnEntityPairTimer Event Handler |
More Components Create Commands
Status Bar
In scene editing view, the status bar will show the followings:
- basic informations of the selected entity.
- mouse coordinates by pixels.
- mouse coordinates by meters.
Collision Category View
There is a Collision Category property for shapes. This property is only for physics shapes (the Enable Physics property is true).
Sometimes, we don't want to 2 physics shapes collide even if they are overlapped visually. To make this possible, the concept of collision category is introduced. You can put the 2 shapes in 2 different collision categories and set the 2 collision categories as friends.
To create collision categories and set categories as friends, you must select the toggle scene editing view / collision category editing view command and enter the category editing view. This main command bar is different in the category editing view:
From left to right, the commands (in the red box) are:
- Create Collision Category
- Delete Selected Collision Categories
- Set The Selected Collision Category Harmonious, all shapes in a harmonious category will not collide with each other.
- Set The Selected Collision Category As The Default Category, when creating a new shape, the shape's collision category property will set as the selected collision category.
Notice:
- From now on, we will call collision category as ccat.
- There is a default hidden ccat. If no new ccats are created, all new created shapes are put in the hidden ccat. The hidden ccat is not harmonious.
To create a new ccat, first select create collision category command, then click mouse in the center view field.
To set 2 ccats as friends, drag a link from either of the 2 ends of one ccat to the other ccat. Breaking a friend link is the same as creating the friend link.
Custom Function View
Playing Mode
You can select the Enter Playing View command to play and test the current level in editing. To exit the playing view to scene editing view, select the Exit Playing View command.
