Around the time I was working on the Spartan Mini NES project, I decided it would be fun to begin work on a level editor that I could use or perhaps my kids could use to customize NES games to play on the fpga. I wanted the level editor to be simple enough for kids to pick up and play with easily, thus was born the NES Game O' Matic.
For the windows framework I decided to use WPF because of its graphics and layout capabilities. This project borrows heavily from another great level editor, the CadEditor. The basic idea is that on the first screen you can select a game and level that you would like to edit. Then on the next screen are displayed all the tiles for the game on the left. A full map of the level is displayed on top. You can click anywhere on this map to bring the editor to that part of the screen. Simply click on a tile you want to use, then click on the editor screen where you want that tile placed. Finally, when the level is how you want it, click on the Play button to bring up the level using an NES emulator.
This continues to be an ongoing project. I hope to get back to it at some point. But for now, here's some screen shots of the progress so far.
Game/Level selection screen:
Level Editor Screen:
