ShiVa Desktop

ShiVa Desktops are divided into Shelves and Views. The shelves are on top of the main window, the views make up the entire rest of the desktop and can be freely arranged however you want them to be.

Desktops can be freely arranged and saved as presets. You can switch between each defined desktop preset through the selector in the top right corner of the window. Add your own through the Settings panel:

Shelves

On top of the editor, you can find the shelf. It hosts the most important ShiVa functions, tools for game creation and shortcuts for exporting your apps.



The shelf can also be extended with custom scripts and shortcuts. You can add your own bits through the settings dialogue:

Editor Views

ShiVa Desktops are divided into Shelves and Views. The shelves are on top of the main window, the views make up the entire rest of the desktop and can be freely arranged however you want them to be.

View Types

Instead of having dedicated modules for each aspect of game design as we did in the 1.x editor series, the new ShiVa organizes its functionalities in a very limited number of view types that dynamically change their content depending on which type of asset you are currently editing.

The following View Types exist:
- Property View: displays properties of the selected asset
- Stage View: displays the selected asset itself, or a graphical representation of it
- Outliner: schematic view of the asset

ShiVa currently also ships with the following predefined modules:
- Project Explorer: contains a list of all files currently in your project directory
- Navigator: HTML viewer for help files, documentation, tutorials, etc
- Log: displays editor logs, module messages and debug.* output from your scripts
- Authoring: static view of all available export targets and their options

Views can be static (like the Authoring view) or adapt to the current selection (like the Attributes view) and be displayed either in single, multiple, or hierarchical modes.

Arranging Views

Views can be added and removed, resized and rearranged, docked and undocked, maximized and stacked. The controls for these functions are located in the corners around the views.

You can select the type of view you wish to assign to the window by clicking on the top left corner button:



You can stack multiple views on top of each other by repeating this step over and over. The stack will appear on the left side under the View Chooser.

Maximize and minimize views with the arrows in the top right corner:



Next to the maximize button is the dock/undock button:



Undocked views get their own window that you can drag around and place wherever you want, even other monitors. To redock, move the view over the place where you want it to integrate into the main ShiVa desktop, then hit the dock/undock button again.

Export Panel

The Authoring Tool which allows you to export your game to a multitude of target platforms is now fully integrated into the Editor. You can access it from the Export Shelf or through the dedicated Authoring Module:



For dedicated tutorials on how to export to each platform, please check out our Publishing category in this documentation.