GS Editor Help

GS Editor is a program in your browser where you create exercises. You place pictures and texts on a scene, choose what the player can do with them (click, drag or connect), then check the exercise and save it to a file. You do not need to know how to program. Every page of this help shows step by step what to click and what you will see afterwards.

Where to start

Go through the pages in order. At the end you will have your first exercise, run and saved to a file:

1. Start a new exercise — the start window, the name and the languages of the exercise.
2. Add an Image to the scene — a picture from your own file.
3. Add a Text to the scene — a caption with your own words.
4. Add a Component to the scene — an element the player does something with, and how it looks.
5. Select, copy and delete elements — how to manage the elements of the scene and undo mistakes.
6. Set a Component's behavior — whether the player clicks it, drags it or connects it.
7. Make an exercise in several languages — a second language, translating the texts, missing translations and running the exercise in the chosen language.
8. Add an image in language versions — a separate picture file for each language.
9. Run and check your exercise — how to see the exercise the way a player sees it, and what the error messages mean.
10. Save and export your exercise — how not to lose your work and how to open an exercise again.

Steps 7 and 8 are needed only when the exercise is to be in more than one language. If not, go straight to step 9.

The most important words

• The Scene is the board with a grid in the middle of the editor window. You build the exercise on it.
• An Image is a picture (a background, a decoration, a character). The player does not click it.
• A Text is a caption: an instruction, a label, a message. The player does not click it.
• A Component is an element the player does something with: clicks it, drags it or connects it to another one.
• A Container holds Components and arranges them in a row, in a column or in tiles.
• A Target is a place where the player drops Components.
• An Element is everything that lies on the scene: an Image, a Text, a Component, a Container or a Target. You can see all of them in the Scene elements list.
• A Behavior is a setting of a Component: whether the player clicks it, drags it or connects it to another one.
• A Pair is two elements that belong together: a Component and a Target (dragging) or two Components (connecting).
• A Rule is a setting of the whole exercise that says what counts as a good answer. The editor sets it when you choose the behavior of a Component, but you can change it later, and you fill in the pairs yourself — both in the Exercise configuration window.
• The Engine (GS Engine) is the program that plays the finished exercise the way the player sees it.
• Exercise languages are the languages in which the exercise can be run. One of them is the default language: the exercise starts in it and you write the base texts in it. You write the texts in the other languages on tabs.
• A common and a language asset — an asset is a file in the library, for example a picture. A common asset is one file for all languages, and a language asset has a separate file for each language.
• A Project is a set of settings shared by many exercises, for example the scene size and the language. A new exercise gets them from the chosen project.
• A ZIP is one file that holds the whole exercise together with its pictures. You use it to save your work and to move it to another computer.

The names Image, Text, Component, Container and Target are the same in every language of the editor.

Common mistakes

• The editor shows an old exercise right away and there is no start window. The editor restores your last work from this browser. Start a new exercise with a button on the toolbar — see Start again.
• The exercise does not run. First look at the problem counter on the toolbar and fix what the editor points out — see Check the exercise before you run it.
• Your work is missing when you open the editor again. Saving in the browser works only on this computer. Also save your exercises as a ZIP file — see Save the exercise as a ZIP.