Kandria Editor

Kandria ships with a very capable level editor which allows you to modify existing worlds and create your own. This document describes how to use the editor, for information on how to distribute your worlds and manage those of others, please see the mods documentation.

images/editor-quickstart.webp
A crash course for making a new world

Opening the Editor

You can open the editor by loading into a world in edit mode directly from the mod manager, or by pressing the Section / Tilde / Grave Accent key (the one immediately below Escape), or the F2 key at any time during gameplay.

images/editor-start.png
The editor as it should appear on start

At the left is where properties for objects will appear. It should automatically "select" the world you created and allow you to set its name, description, etc. Above it lies the toolbar and the menu bar. If you want to quit the editor, you can either hit the Section key again, or go to File > Close Editor.

Browsing and Selecting

When the world is selected, clicking anything inside the view with a bounding box will cause that entity to be selected. If you don't click on anything, you'll instead pan the view. While an entity is selected, you can either hold Alt at any time to drag the view, or select the Browse tool at the top left in the toolbar to explicitly browse.

To change the zoom level of the editor view, you can drag the slider to the right of the menu bar.

If you want to change which entity is selected, you can hit the Tab key, which will select the world again, or simply double-click on another entity.

Editing Entities

After selecting an entity such as the player, you'll be presented with a new set of properties on the left that you can edit, and a new set of tools. The editor will also automatically switch to whichever tool is the default tool for that entity.

images/editor-entity.png
The view after selecting the player entity

Some entities have different sets of tools available, too. For instance, the Trace tool is only available for the player.

The tools shown in the screenshot above do the following:

Editing Chunks

After selecting a "chunk" (a screen displaying tiles), the editor will also show you a new side panel. This is one of the most complex of the editor tools, so take your time to get familiar with it.

images/editor-chunk.png
The view after selecting a chunk

In terms of tools there's now a few more available:

The useful properties shown on the left are as follows:

NOTE: Unfortunately you cannot add new tilesets, backgrounds, etc. without involving code. For that, please see modding.

On the right is the tile control panel. This controls how you paint and interact. At the top is the layer slider, which controls which layer to paint on:

To the right of the layer slider is a toggle that shows or hides the layer of solid tiles. All of the other layers are visual only, and the solids layer defines how entities interact with the chunk geometry.

Below this is the box to select the currently active auto-tile set. Some tilesets will have multiple auto-tiling sets available that you can mix between.

Right below this is the recent tile history. When you select new tiles they will appear in this history and give you easy access to previously used ones.

Below that is the actual tileset. Every tileset is split into two parts: the top part composes all visual tiles. These tiles do not have any interactivity and can be freely placed on layers 0-5. The bottom row is always reserved for solid tiles, which define interactivity and can only be placed on the solids layer. Picking a solid tile will automatically switch to the solids layer and vice-versa. The solid tiles have the following behaviours:

images/editor-solids.png
A usage example of the various types of solid tiles
  1. Solid block. This block is solid on all sides and defines the surface geometry.

  2. Platform. This block can be jumped up on and jumped down through, but can also be walked on.

  3. Death. This block will kill the player on contact.

  4. Slopes. The player can jump through these from below, though usually they're used together with solid ground.

  5. Stopper. This is a marker tile used to define elevator floors and prevent enemies or NPCs from escaping outside their intended areas.

  6. Spikes. These are directional spikes, and the player can pass through them when facing the same direction.

  7. Slip block. This block is solid but cannot be climbed.

  8. Inside. This tile marks the "inside" of a geometry and behaves the same as a solid block. It is used by the auto-tiler to determine which parts are inside or outside.

If you want to select more than a single tile, you can do so by clicking one corner, then shift-clicking the other. This will select the whole region of tiles between the two clicks.

images/editor-stamps.png
Selecting and placing tile regions

Below the tileset is information about the currently selected tile. You can see the size of the stamp in tiles, the albedo, absorption, and normal maps, and the index of the selected tile.

Inserting Entities

If you need to add new elements to the world you can use the Insert button. It'll pop up an entity creator, with a list of all creatable types.

images/editor-insert.png
The editor creation tool

After selecting a type, click OK, and it'll be inserted in the middle of the view and automatically selected. Here's a list of some particularly useful types:

World Construction

Triggers

Gameplay Elements

Shortcuts

The editor has many keyboard shortcuts available:

Additional Tools

The menu bar also gives access to a few more useful tools: