Aqua IV 0.11
Documentation Editor Engine API
Documentation /Engine / Technology

The editor

What you see is what the game draws

The editor's 3D view is the engine's own renderer, not an approximation. Shadows, ground blending, cliffs, animated units with particles and your own shaders look the same in the editor as in the game. A shader you save appears in the view within half a second.

Native

The editor is a native Rust program on GPUI. Lists only draw the rows you can see, so a map with thousands of objects or a library with tens of thousands of files stays responsive. Startup opens a window, not a web page. The interface keeps its own frame rate while the 3D view renders.

What stands out

  • The command palette jumps to a module, runs the main commands and opens recent maps. The plan is for every action to be in it, but not all are yet.
  • History jumps to any point of the map's life, not only back one step.
  • Activity keeps every notice with its detail lines, in the map.
  • Imports that think: keep both versions of a conflicting file, rewire on rename, fetch missing textures, an Unused filter.
  • Finding your game: the registry, the usual folders, then a scan of your disks, recognising a copy by its archives whatever the folder is called.
  • Your own code editor for scripts, with the SDK wired in so completion works the moment you open the folder.
  • Floating panels you can drag, widen and collapse to icons, remembered between sessions.

Compared with the World Editor

A generation of map makers learned on the World Editor. W4's editor keeps its idea (terrain, objects, triggers, imports, players) and changes some things: one window instead of one per module, scripts that are plain text files you can put under version control, and imports that keep both files instead of overwriting one. The six modules share one window and one 3D view, and they all use the same editing model: select, tool, undo, history.

Where it is now

The editor is an alpha. Terrain, objects, triggers (as a script manager), imports, players and shaders exist; water, ramps, regions, cameras and the outliner are planned. The editor reference lists what each module does today.