Level design tip

ApplaudApps

Hi guys, I'm working on the levels for my next game 'Feed it!' and thought I'd share a time saving tip with you... It might be how some of you do this as well. Would be interested to hear.

Basically to set up and test the many levels for the physics based game I have saved a separate GS project and added some rules to all the actors in the games so that in the preview they are a) movable and b) display their co-ordinates.

I've made some other changes from the actual game so that when the level is complete I don't lose the settings and i can tweak the positions of things until I'm happy.

Then I write down all the co-ordinates and fix them in the level settings in the actual game.

This saves so much time from trial-and-error positioning!

old_kipper

Thanks. You can also put on-screen sliders to vary rules/attributes as they run (worth having them display what they are changing as well). That way you can tweak as you test, and then fix on what works.

kipper

kapser

This is a great tip, but is there a way to show actor coordinate/rotation in GS editor?

tenrdrmer

kapser said:
This is a great tip, but is there a way to show actor coordinate/rotation in GS editor?

Display Text Behavior

@applaudApp

Good tip man interesting way of doing things

ApplaudApps

kapser said:
This is a great tip, but is there a way to show actor coordinate/rotation in GS editor?

Yes I can explain how to do this :

To be able to drag around the actors to find their places for the levels you're designing just add a rule to each actor that you want in different positions in different levels so that when touched you constrain self.position.x to mouse.position.x and the same for self.position.y to mouse.position.y - now you can drag them around.

To display information you need for the level settings add this rule to each actor (as tenrdrmer said) using the display text behavious and use something like : self.position.x.."/"..self.position.y plus any other info you need like rotation. I used a font size of 20 which works fine for iphone games.

Then just drag actors around the scene to find the position you want. test your game and write down the co-ordinates.

Important : In my level creator version I turned off any actions that would normally happen when you win the level since you don't want to clear the screen and have to start from scratch. So just change your level completion actions to something that doesn't destroy the scene i.e. re-position the ball/character to the start position again. Then you can tweak your positions until satisfied. Works like a treat!