World Builder

This tool was created to better structure the world of Westerado: Double Barreled.

World Builder is used to link together the individual levels that make up the world map of the game. The way this is done is by dragging level files into the world map. After dragging a level into the world the designer can then place it somewhere and scale it to fit into the map. This level can then be connected to the rest of the world.

The way this works is that there are specific exits that were placed in Mapographer which show up in this tool as red anchors. By dragging a line between these anchors the levels are connected to each other. This allows for easy drag and drop reconfiguration of the world, without having to enter a lot of data to actually make it work.

After the designer is finished the world can be exported. This creates 3 files, an XML file containing all the levels and their connections, a world map image and a world map mask that can be used to show exploration in the game. After the world map is finalized the artist can then go in and paint over the world map to give it a bit of extra flavor.