Anyway, I've started working on Udo again but I have some bad news for fans of my leaf monsters and rustling bushes - both features have been ceremoniously dumped from the game.
I know people seemed to really like them, but somehow they just weren't fitting in my mind into the overall game. It's a bit abstract, but they just didn't feel right.
I've made some minor improvements to my map editor to make it slightly easier to work with these multi-layer maps.
Haven't posted any map editor screenshots for ages actually...
Lot easier posting pictures here than on GGE. Have to say I really didn't get on well with that site. I haven't been there once since GDNet arose from the flames.
EDIT
Just finished implementing the autosorting of items order thingy, so it now doesn't matter what order you place items in the level editor.
The basic Item interface had a virtual GetZ() method added, which is then implemented in each class type, just returning constants at the moment, although of course individual items could store a personal Z value if needed later.
Then an InsertSorted() method was added to the ItemList class that replaced the Add() method that was being used by the level loader.
Simple as that really. Now you can declare items in any order in the editor and they will be drawn in the correct order during the game.
The only actual change this forced was to convert the door frames from being instances of a CStaticBlock type into their own CDoorFrame class. Even simple static blocks will now need specific classes to describe them so that there can be an implicit Z value for the class. I could have added a Z field to the StaticBlock class and set it in the editor, but it is precisely this kind of low-level fiddling about in the editor that I am currently trying to improve upon.
Next issue to tidy up is the management of all this messy additional data that each level file needs.