Here’s a little feature from Superforce that I really like. It saves me a lot of time during development.

Going through half a level just to get to the enemy that I’m working on? Boring. I really need to launch the game and see results immediately.

To do that in Superforce I have a special mode which I call The Construct.

You could also call it “The Playground” or “The Firing Range” or whatever.

It’s an empty level with just the things I need at the moment. It runs the standard game loop and renders everything just like the game itself. In addition to that, it has special functions I can use to manipulate the game objects in various ways.

For example, when working on a tank, I can move the mouse cursor around to make the tank aim at a particular spot, press a mouse button to make it fire and press SPACE to make the tank explode. Pressing SPACE again spawns a new tank. Fun!