Working without an IDE - GameDevWeek/CodeBase GitHub Wiki

Asset Artists (Level, Sound, Image, etc.) usually don't work with the code or don't know how to compile the code. It is possible to change files without the help of a developer. The only thing you need is a build of the game (jar file). Ideally this will be created automatically by a build server, but developers can supply you one manually as well. Once you have this jar file, you can put changed files in the "data" folder.

For example:

• your jar file is located at: "c:\gdw\gdx-test-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar"
• create a folder "c:\gdw\data" and put all your changed files there.

You can get the original files in a couple of ways:

• Ideally you'd learn how to use git/sourcetree to get the latest development files yourself from the server. (ask the management)
• Another way would be to extract the current files from the jar file. A jar file is just a zip file with a different extension. Just extract the folder "data" from the jar file.
• If all of the above are too confusing, just ask a developer to copy the resource files onto a usb-stick for you.

Once you have the files extracted, you can start modifying them. Note:

• Some files are loaded during startup, so if you change them, you need to restart the application.
• Other files are loaded during certain points of the game (the map, tileset, etc. for example). When you change these files, you don't need to restart the application, just the level.

When you modified the files and want to put them in the game, either commit and push them into git (if you are able to), or give them to a developer or colleague to do so.