Using editor locally

Is it possible using editor locally on my computer, I need to make a program for the client and source can not on someone else’s computer or server? Without it, the system is useless?!?

Hi,

We do not offer an offline version of the Editor. If you have special requirements for a project, please email info@playcanvas.com and we can see if we can help.

Thanks,

You can use the Engine locally, and develop it with your favorite IDE. Here’s what my computer looks like when I’ve developing:

I’ve found that no matter what game engine I use, I end up with something similar: the game on one side, code on the other.

Of course, there is the disadvantage that there’s no nice drag-n-drop interface, but when you’re familiar with code, text is almost always easier.

@dave have you guys looked into using service workers for offline support? Or maybe something like pouchdb

What editor you use, the picture that you sent?

The main problem with offline support is how to handle re-syncing after many hours/days/weeks of changes…

If one person works online and another offline replaying hours of edits, especially including asset uploads, etc. doesn’t seem practical. That said, we haven’t really looked into it. We’re focussed on making the best toolset for working in teams. And that requires online connection.

I’m a strange person, I use a tiling window manager called i3. So what may look like a single program is actually two:
On the left is Chromium (open source google chrome), with the developer tools open.
On the right is Geany


I don’t think there’s any way to handle online-offline editing simultaneously. Even Google haven’t managed it yet. Offline-offline and you use Git or SVN, online only is a piece of cake (kind-of). But between the two is just awkward. But who knows, maybe diffs/commits are the way to go for online-offline as well.

I’m a strange person, I generally like just using text as an interface. And yet I’m finding I like a lot of the design choices you’ve made in the playcanvas editor. If you give me a few years here I may well come around to using the online interface…

There are few challenges associated with offline editing:

  1. Collaboration.
  2. Data syncing and versioning.
  3. Data is actually not stored locally, so to enable server<>client authoritative model so that it works with collaboration.
  4. It is too complex with whole API and many other things dependencies, doing it all offline, will lose too many benefits of being in a cloud: publishing, collaboration, no-install, community, and many more other things, that are possible only by being in a cloud.
  5. There are servers that process for you a lot of things, such as assets, exporting, validation of data, and many-many more.

Unreal, and others do not have a problem with off-line editor, can not see why you have?

PlayCanvas is all about game development on the cloud. So it’s focused on that side. Unreal and others are not about game develoment on the cloud. So they’ve built offline products.

That said we are always thinking of ways to improve offline development but there is a limit to what we can do without spending months of work on it :slight_smile:

Unreal or any other off-line tools do not have any features as we do because we are in the cloud.
Doing it off-line will eliminate those features, and become “clone of Unreal”? To me that seems it is easier to use off-line toolset for other engine if this is must-have requirement for you, that asking some engine and toolset to lose its all cloud features.

In this case it would be good to have two versions. Existing with fantastic cloud
features and off-line for people who do not need it and better suits them classic version.
I think the top developers would not be a problem to do?

The problem is that making an offline program is very different to an online one. You can’t just turn one into the other - you pretty much have to start from scratch.

I’ve worked with a number of game development platforms/engines, and as I said, I always end up with the same thing: a text editor. You end up programming, and all programming needs is a way to enter text. Models you build separately.
Editors are good for getting artists into the development scene, or for making simple games with a few levels, but as soon as you want any sort of complexity, you end up spending 5% of your time with the editor and 95% with regular programming tools.