Finally a level editor!

Well it took a bit of time, but it's finally in working order! To elaborate a bit further, here's a list of things that are now possible in the Portal debug mode:

• Load levels from Ruined Level Portal files (*.rlp)
• Switch to portal editor mode - I edit individual portals at a time
• Select just about any object in the level, and edit its properties with the Property-grid control and my "gizmo" control
•  Load new models and collision meshes while the game is running
• Save portals into *rlp format

To make loading, and saving levels possible, I had a couple of options.

1. Use reflection to process and load the level data to and from XML files
2. Use reflection to process and load the level data to and from "binary" files
3. Write my own format, importer and processor

I went with option number 3, for a couple of reasons:

• I could make my format as size efficient as possible ( I'm using bits, bytes, and uint16's)
• I could store just enough data ,as opposed to too much junk
• I could store what I wanted and know where to find it in the file
• XNA makes writing importers and processors REALLY easy
• I just like the flexibility

Now my format may not have the readability of XML, but it is sure a LOT more readable than XNA's binary-serializer. If someone needed to, they could parse through the level files by hand and make changes - with the right documentation of course.

Here's a little bit of the level parser to give you an idea of what I mean:

ushort Type = input.ReadUInt16();
if (Type == 0x0000) // Torch
     portal.DynamicObjects.Add(new Engine.DynamicObjects.Torch(input.ReadVector3(), input.ReadSingle(), portal, input.ReadBoolean()));
else if (Type == 1)
{
     // Door
}
else if (Type == 0x0002) // Ladder
     portal.DynamicObjects.Add(new Engine.DynamicObjects.Ladder(input.ReadVector3(), input.ReadSingle(), input.ReadSingle()));
else if (Type == 0x0003) // Chest
     portal.DynamicObjects.Add(new Engine.DynamicObjects.Chest(input.ReadVector3(), input.ReadSingle(), Index, input.ReadUInt16(), input.ReadUInt16()));

So as you can see, I'm only reading the data used to initialize the torch, I don't need to store all the other fluff XNA's-serializers store - and I'm not talking about the stuff you can mark to ignore.
For example: things like strings can be stored as a char[] instead of 2 bytes per letter, or if i had an object that contains both a model and a collision mesh, I can have an unique type saying, "Hey, this object's model and collision mesh are the same, I don't have to store the file name twice."

Enough talk for now though, here are some pictures of the level editor in action-

I can even edit instanced-objects individually!