The Serious Art of Designing Fun

It's official. I'm moving ahead with Tile Editor as my official map editor. What changed my mind? There were several factors:

1. It turns out that it did have the capability of embedding tags directly on the map instead of into a tile. It's not exactly how I would have wanted it, but it'll suffice.
2. The ability to customize the output from the editor is a huge time saver. I can focus on getting the maps working properly in the game as opposed to getting the map data loaded correctly into the game.
3. It had the most complete set of editing features - at least with respect to my work process.
4. I can add/modify features to the editor as its source code is freely available and compiles right out-of-the-box.

I cannot emphasize the importance of making sure that code packages should be a no-fuss install-and-compile procedure. This means not having to manually search and download Open Source libraries that a project is dependent on, not having to alter makefiles/project files, and/or not having to make obscure alterations to my environment variables prior to compilation.

The fact of the matter is that I'm not interested in how the project is compiled or what libraries it relies on. I'm sure at some point in time, I'll probably need to know these details (these details are documented in the package, right?). However, it doesn't change the fact that delivering a package that compiles as-is is a good policy - especially if you intend to turn said package into a business opportunity.

Next up, I'm working on integrating the map data into my game engine. This means my game development is now back on track albeit 2 weeks late.