Entities

Entities are point data such as player start locations, and non-locational data such as level attributes that you define for each level. The system defines two special entity types--light and spotlight--that you use when you're applying lighting effects to your level. Any other entity types are user-defined. User defined entities have arbitrary properties which are defined by the application programmer in cooperation with the level designers. The programmer creates a C header file that describes the custom entities, and places that file in the editor's extensions directory. The details of the C header file syntax are given in Appendix A.

An entity contains data that is packaged with the level and made available to the programmer directly at program startup time. Each entity has a list of properties that you may edit. These properties can be of may different types: numbers, text strings, colors, and locations being the most commonly used.

When you create an entity, the editor assigns it a name that consists of the entity type with an appended number. Each entity of a particular type is given a different number in order to make the entity names unique in a level. For example, the first light in a level would be assigned the name "light1", the second "light2", etc. Currently, you cannot rename entities.