Basically, yeah! The editor saves a JSON that's basically a table full of numbers, and then if I like it, I copy that file into the project. I personally work in Aseprite for assets because I imagine it'd be kind of a pain to do it in-engine, and I'm trying not to go too overboard with dev tools, haha. Although, Loren Schmidt is doing some really inspiring stuff with editing sprites in her game.
Anyway, my update function isn't too bad! Things are broken down into objects, and an object called game manages pretty much everything. I wrote a little about my state machine elsewhere, but I might as well repeat it here. Basically, this goes in the init:
-- game states
self.states = {
world = self.worldState,
edit = self.editState,
transitionToMinigame = self.transitionToMinigameState,
minigame = self.minigameState
}
-- starting state
self.state = self.states.world
This will expand as the game gets more complex, I'm sure. And then the game object's update looks like:
function Game:update()
-- Perform State
self.state(self)
end
and then I make a function for each state like function Game:worldState() etc. Even then, those functions aren't holding much because the individual objects (the player, the world, the editor) are off doing their own thing with their own state machines. The game object sort of loosely makes sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing, haha. When I want the game state to change, I just do something like self.state = self.states.edit and that changes what the update will be next frame.