Anyone wanna join in designing some (super simple) levels for my Silly Venture 2019 Lynx game?

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Hi guys! Anyone wanna or have the possibilty to join in designing some (super simple) levels for my Silly Venture 2019 Lynx game "Scroll of the Time Lords - Lovejoy Prologue"?

 

I'm really pressed for time so I thought it could be fun having some community created levels in the game, they're super simple to create too. I'd need more levels within a couple of days ? so even one single level from one person would be of help so I can accumulate a bunch of levels. Anyone who would submit even one level will get their name in the readme.txt credits, yay! ^^ and if I create an enhanced version after the competition you'd get your name or nickname in the in game credits (your choice), double yay! (there's no time for that now in the competition version unfortunately). I'd need both easy, medium and hard levels.

 

I don't want to spoil anything about the game now, so I'm not going to reveal the mechanics or any graphics which I guess can make it less fun to design for ? But anyway, the only things that's really needed to know about it to create levels is:

 

1. To come up with a creative or funny path out of the level to the door by placing obstacles/enemies.

2. To place the eye of ra somewhere, if the level is hard.

3. To only place the door in the furthermost right column AND Only the door can be placed in the column furthermost to the right

4. To only place one number of any number/obstacle in the level, like only one instance of 1, only one instance of 2 etc. *Also please note, you obviously don't have to have all the obstacles in every level. You can leave some of them out, and that's probably the main way to make a level harder or easier.

5. You need to place the key somewhere, as it's needed to exit the level.

 

 

An empty level looks like this:

	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

If having uneven rows created by one digit and two digit numbers messes up how you see your design you can do this to help:

	00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00,
	00, 00, 08, 00, 00, 00, 14, 00, 00, 00,
	00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 18, 00, 00, 00, 01,
	00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 19, 00, 00,
	00, 02, 00, 17, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00,
	00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00

List of objects you can put into the level (only one of each):

1 = Door
2 = Player / Main character
3 = Egyptian 1
4 = Egyptian 2
5 = Egyptian 3
6 = Eye of Ra (good thing)
7 = Key (need it to exit level)
8 = Mummy 1
9 = Mummy 2
10 = Mummy 3
11 = Snake 1
12 = Snake 2
13 = Snake 3
14 = Spider 1
15 = Spider 2
16 = Spider 3
17 = Spikes 1
18 = Spikes 2
19 = Spikes 3 

The reason why it's done like this is that I didn't have time to add some pathfinding algorithm so I had to simplify, same thing goes for not adding obstacles/"enemies" dynamically, I just "hardcoded" a list of enemies.

 

I'd need more levels within a couple of days, so if you make some, just submit them here or PM me them, however you please. Thanks beforehand for any help!

 

Cheers!

Edited December 1, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx

[LordKraken]

Sounds like a cool thing to spent some time on (over lunch at work tmr ), but without the ennemy pattern/movement/tricks, that looks like a random exercise...or did I miss something?

Edited December 1, 2019 by LordKraken

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I don't wanna spoil it, buth the path is really the focus, or a nice pattern of everything layed out (that you're not supposed to run into) forming a path via the key to the door, no need to know about the enemies. You'll see in a couple of days! ?

[KevinMos3]

I was trying to visualize what you've got in that example, but I just don't see enough to know what you need for a level design.  I'd have to see more in order to help.

 

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

@LordKraken @KevinMos3 Thanks for looking into helping me out with creating some level(s)!

 

I created a private club for those who want a closer explanation of how the game works without spoiling it for others. -> Anyone who wants to join just let me know and I'll invite you to the club. But as stated earlier, it's perfectly possible to create those levels without knowing more than told in this thread (if you don't wanna join the club). The path to the door via the key is the focus.

@LordKraken @KevinMos3 I already invited you guys if you wanna have a look.

[+karri]

I already sent in my game. So I might join in also. What are the dimensions of the map? Is diagonal movement allowed?

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

@karri Diagonal movement is not allowed. The dimension is static 9x6, or 10x6 if you count the column for the door. I'll invite you to the level design club if you happen to get excited and want to create levels, so you can check out how the game works.

 

It's going to be hard to beat KevinMos3's levels already, he came up with such creative levels with so little at hand to make levels with.?

 

I do need a few more levels, so everybody is welcome to join in.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx

[+karri]

Thanks. I am a bit unsure of what you want. A path is something like this? With a key somewhere on the path and with monsters in any white squares?

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Ah, that's true, it can actually be any path via the key and then to the door, so actually you could place all the stuff randomly as long as there is at least one path to the key and then out the door.

 

But I went with designed levels, since I didn't have the time to start understanding creating levels randomly with a*. It seems already that the designed levels should be more fun.

 

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I mean you can move freely, but there needs to be at least one open path to the key and then to the door.

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Hi guys, I've gotten a lot of levels already, I think more than I can handle before the deadline.  Big thanks to everbody! 

 

I don't know if they're all going to fit, or if I have the time to go through and add everything, but I will make sure at least one or two of every contributors levels will end up in the first version / compo version of the game.

As I mentioned I'm hoping to make an enhanced version of the game after the compo, so if I have the energy left for that I will put in all the levels everyone has submitted.

 

[Igor]

That's very cool getting community involvement! The game that I wanted to enter into the competition was level based too and I even made a simple JavaScript based level editor. Here's what it looks like. Unfortunately I had to stop work on it due to other commitments, but I do plan to pick it up in the new year. Maybe this level editor can be made into a general purpose editor in the future too. 

 

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I was in such a hurry and the levels are simple so I thought it would make sense to ask here for levels. I'm very happy for the submissions, and hoping to put in as much of them as possible.

 

Actually I realised later that I'm not able to visualise the levels very good by only looking at the tables, so I should've set up some tile mapper file for everyone, but I didn't have the time.

 

At the moment I'm cleaning up all the double digit level submissions to one digit with np++, going through every level to check for accidental duplicates of numbers, giving the levels names to be able to differentiate them later, putting them into the game and taking screenshots for later recognisability and ordering by difficulty. I've made it through perhaps 50% or 60% of all submitted levels in two nights. I'm in a hurry! I did do some bug fixes, failed feature additions and one succesful feature addition too in between.

Ah, too bad you couldn't make it this time, but good luck with your new game always fun and exciting with more new Lynx games.

Edited December 4, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx

[Fadest]

For the future, maybe you could used Tiled with CSV export ?

This is the way I used it for Ynxa, then paste in Excel, add some level specific information and a macro to export as binary for loading from the cartridge.

For A Bug's Lynx, I made an Excel tempate with layers (background, walls, doors) and a macro to generate the binary file.

 

[+karri]

Same here. Tiled exports csv like this:

0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0
0,1,1,0,0,1,1,0,0,0
0,1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
 

Then I just have a python script that adds something for cc65.

 

static unsigned char levelmap[] = {
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,
0,1,1,0,0,1,1,0,0,0,
0,1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

};

 

[Fadest]

Tiled is a very great tool. I wish I had something like that when I was younger and started so many games on my atari ST that ended because of lack of levels or because I spent too many time in trying to write a specific level edit and lose motivation.

 

@Turbo Laser Lynx I guess it is useless to send you levels now, you aready have everything you need ?

Can't wait to see your game, seems it is the kind of game I will like.

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Yup, I had a look a tiled not too long ago, and it seems very, very nice nowadays. Tidy clean interface etc.

For creating and exporting maps it's obviously perfect, but this time with all the level submissions I would've needed it to work the other way around to import tables/arrays/csv (which it might do, but I couldn't find an import in one minute so I couldn't risk wasting more time on it right now) so I could've gotten a better visual representation of every map for "cataloging" the levels, to be able to order them in a somewhat reasonable manner from easyer to harder levels. However importing the maps straight into the game and taking screenshots worked OK so far.

 

@Fadest it's not too late if you want to create a few levels. I realised that on Silly Venture the games wont probably be played for thaaat long each, so there's time to put in more levels before 24.12 too. I'll invite you to the level design club so you can have a look there too if you want.

 

[rj1307]

@Turbo Laser Lynx, and maybe your next production will be a generator of your own levels for this game? Just like Robbo Creator on XL / XE?

 

[Igor]

I use a trick in my level editor where the lower 4 bits of the map tile are used to tell me if that side of the tile is solid or not. This works well and gives me a variety of tile variants still too, 4 bits for graphic variant, 4 bits for solid flags ?

[+karri]

6 hours ago, Igor said:

I use a trick in my level editor where the lower 4 bits of the map tile are used to tell me if that side of the tile is solid or not. This works well and gives me a variety of tile variants still too, 4 bits for graphic variant, 4 bits for solid flags ?

I added a "Custom property" to my tileset. 4 lower bits for solid flags, higher bits for objects you can interact with.

 

The value "enter" is the solid bits.
The value "key" is what the tile turns to when you pick up the object. In this case it becomes an empty floor tile.

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Hi guys! As I'm going to add more levels to the game I made a tileset and empty level template for the "Tiled" map editor. I share the files here if someone would happen to get excited again to create some more levels!

https://thorbjorn.itch.io/tiled

 

I added a number on the tiles that there's more than one of (so you'd know that you'd only placed one of each). Also there's the E tile for "empty". It's not necessary to use it, I just added it because Tiled exports empty tiles as "-1", but E is "0" (that the game expects) so that I don't have to do any "post processing" in notepad++.

 

*Please note: if you use it please choose "Tile Layer 1" (the grid is not offset correctly on bg layer).

 

Example screenshot:

 

Anyone joining late to the party, just let me know and I'll add you to the private SotTL level design club:

 

 

SotTL_Tiled_011.zip

[LordKraken]

Why dont u just read empty tile as -1 in your level loader code?

Edited December 16, 2019 by LordKraken

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

2 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Why dont u just read empty tile as -1 in your level loader code?

Well, for no big reasons, I just prefer it that way around so it ended up like that. Firstly because I've used 0 for empty spaces since I ever started using tile-map editors (at the dawn of time), so I simply don't like -1, it looks wrong to me then secondly perhaps a slightly more valid reason is that while I was coding I remembered cc65 code hint No.5 in the back of my head, "Use unsigned types wherever possible":

https://cc65.github.io/doc/coding.html
(Not that I ever really would think those small levels/arrays would be a threat to performance by any stretch of the imagination).
 

[Lillapojkenpåön]

Sorry for asking an unrelated question but since you seem to have experiene with tiled, when I open a tileset it doesn't match with the 32x32 grid and some of it's cut out, how would you solve this?

 

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Actually I used it properly for the first time the other night ? but I've used some other tilemappers before. It seems like at least @karri and @Igor have been using it in a more advanced way though.

 

I don't think tiled has some automatic way of arranging the tiles properly by itself, so I would first try modifying the offset coordinates and see if you get things to line up with the grid (if you're sure that the tiles are supposed to be 32x32). Otherwise I would edit the source image in some image editing program like Aseprite, Gimp or Photoshop and place everything correctly within a 32x32 grid manually -> and after that create a new tileset in Tiled and import the corrected source image.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx