Curse

Today's Terraria Feature is a modding tool called TEdit 3 by TerrariaOnline forum member BinaryConstruct. Many of you may be familiar with TEdit 2, but with the major content patch 1.1, TEdit hit it's third version. TEdit 3 improves performance significantly over TEdit 2, not to mention a ton of new features and tools.

TEdit 3 is a huge step forward from TEdit 2, and leaps and bounds better than the orginal TEdit. First off, the program has been optimized heavily, using XNA to display the world. That alone makes the program run really smooth and dragging around the map is quicker than ever.

Another awesome new feature is the ability to create a new map from scratch. You can customize the width and height as well as the surface and bedrock levels, and in no time you have a blank world to start building in. There is a box to enter a "World Id (Seed)" but in my testing it didn't change anything, so that might possibly be a feature down the road.

The newest feature added, was the ability to add friendly NPC's to your world. From the "World Properties" tab you can add each NPC separately and change their name to your liking. Also in the "World Properties" tab you can toggle whether your world is in Hardmode or not, as well as which bosses have been downed.

The sprite placer tool has also been overhauled. With it comes the ability to see the in-game sprites in the "Sprites" tab and in the world editing window as well. You can use the sprite placer tool to place any sprite in your map and it makes creating trees a breeze.

Copy and paste is still here but it's been improved upon as well. Now you have the option to "Paste Empty Tiles" or not when you are pasting objects. Also undo and redo have been improved. TEdit now uses a temporary file for managing undo and redo, which has stopped the program from freezing quite a bit. Although, if you use the bucket and fill a blank world with dirt you will still get a lock-up. An easier way is to use a brush that is 200 blocks tall and 1 block wide so you can sweep across the map, painting it with almost no hiccups.

Chest editing has also been improved upon. Sign and Chest editing have been merged into a new tab called "Chest-Sign". As I was writing this I noticed a bug in editing chests. By the time I was finished with this article BinaryConstruct had an update to fix this. That's some fast bug squishing!

I asked BinaryConstruct some questions and he was kind enough to reply:

ahamling27(AH): TEdit has been around about as long as Terraria has, what prompted you to make a world editing program?

BinaryConstruct(BC): I really wanted a world editor and was disappointed the game didn't ship with one. I think having a world editor outside the game environment is a requirement for any sandbox style game. Since there wasn't an editor, I decided to try and be the first to create one. Also, I wanted to have an open source project and this was the perfect opportunity.

AH: TEdit 3 has come a long way since the first TEdit. What is the biggest thing you've learned while making this program?

BC: From the technology standpoint I have learned quite a bit from TEdit, primarily Mvvm, MEF and even a little XNA. However, the biggest challenge and learning experience was managing the user questions and problems. There have been hundreds of questions, answers and over 200 issue tickets created and completed. I did have a lot of help from the community, especially with wiki creation and documentation.

AH: Have you made any computer programs before TEdit? What's your programming background?

BC: I've been coding c based languages since 2001, so I have a little experience in the area. I dabble in embedded systems such as Arduino and arm, but mostly just desktop stuff.

AH: Do you have any plans to make some sort of custom map like an adventure map for Terraria?

BC: No, I thought about it, but every time I start, I just end up writing some code to do it for me. There are many far better map makers than I!

AH: I've noticed a ton of new features in TEdit 3, is there a new feature/tool we might see in the future that we don't know about?

BC: I don't have any secret plans, but I do plan on adding several plug-ins for parametric world and world feature generation. Also, I plan on adding a sample project where other developers can easily create plug-ins for TEdit.

Here's a time lapse of me building a castle using TEdit 3:

TEdit 3 is a powerful tool. I have not even mentioned the fact that you can now edit wiring. TEdit does pretty much everything you could want it to do. One last feature that I haven't mentioned yet is the "Display" menu. Now you can filter what is shown in your world. If you un-tick tiles you get a good shot of your background walls. With this powerful tool, I'm sure we'll see some great adventure and puzzle maps in the next coming months. I know I am working on a new adventure map, are you?

The latest TEdit 3 build can be found here. TEdit was created by BinaryConstruct and is an open source project. You can find it at here at GitHub. BinaryConstruct would like to thank Aimeryan, Kyphis, SineSwiper, and ahamling27 for their help on the project.