In game development, a variety of software tools are needed to accomplish the most disparate tasks efficiently. When such a tool doesn’t exist, or isn’t easily obtainable, the most sensible choice is often to just make your own. That’s what we did in the early infancy of the 2D version of the game, with the Dudebrewery tool.
This tool was developed rather quickly as a separate XNA application. It was meant for 2D artists and coders to visualize sprite sheets and superimpose shapes representing, for each sprite, their colliders within the physics engine (named “fixtures”). This would allow them to position and resize (“brew”) the sprites precisely.
Similarly to other tools used in development, the focus for Dudebrewery wasn’t making a user-friendly application with a neat looking interface. It just needed to work, so we could afford to leave some roughness around the edges.
Over time, we abandoned this tool for a more flexible solution that allowed us to work on each fixture directly within the game. Still, Dudebrewery remains a nice curiosity worth sharing, especially for those of you curious about game development.