Omnimaga

Omnimaga => Discontinued => Our Projects => Graviter => Topic started by: leafy on January 25, 2011, 09:57:08 pm

Title: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 25, 2011, 09:57:08 pm
I'm going to be posting some of my level concepts here, as well as some other ones drawn by my friends.

Levels by Phenomist:
Spoiler For Level set one:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/30joho9.jpg)
Spoiler For What is this I don't even:
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/0-ph2.gif)
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 26, 2011, 02:08:18 am
Nice so far. Make sure the early levels aren't too hard. It's best to make sure the difficulty gradually increase so we don't end up stuck at lv 3 then easily beat lv 8, 9, 10, etc.

Also do you know Phenomist in person? I noticed he joined :D
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: phenomist on January 26, 2011, 02:29:43 am
Yep, I'm here. I'm a random guy at school who was recruited to draw maps. Since I think leafiness0 knows how to draw easy levels by himself, I provided relatively difficult maps :P

Once he announced that scrolling maps were possible, I sent him a really large map (probably around 120x160 tiles?) that would be Flash-game worthy. Too bad I misheard his 256x256 claim in tiles, instead of pixels.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 26, 2011, 02:47:51 am
Lol ok XD. Well good luck to both of you for the project. Do you program, by the way?
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: phenomist on January 26, 2011, 02:57:07 am
Yeah, but I don't really have nearly as much dedication as leafiness does, so obviously my games are going to be worse. I created a tower climber game where the strategy is to... button-mash. I'll attach it into a topic later, I guess. Currently I'm working on a fun 2-player mode, but first I have to learn grayscale, lol.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 26, 2011, 02:58:35 am
Ah I see. Yeah it takes quite a bit of dedication to code large games, plus some people are less interested in programming than others, so that happens. I hope you enjoy your stay around here by the way. :)
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 26, 2011, 03:42:03 pm
Ok phenomist I uploaded your super massive level of intensity.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: phenomist on January 27, 2011, 12:01:30 am
Spoiler For 50x51 tile to "madness level":
(http://i55.tinypic.com/33kvvvk.png)

(Cut down a bit on the right due to space issues. Note that the far far right might not actually work, but can be easily fixed)

EDIT: Changed layout a bit, added spike direction, added wraparound house (@leafiness: you can delete that part if you want)

Spoiler For 50x51 tile to "madness level" v2.0:
(http://i53.tinypic.com/2vsfcrs.png)
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: phenomist on January 29, 2011, 12:06:07 am
[question: when can I start attaching stuff?]

More smaller maps, on leafiness0's request:
Spoiler For A variety of maps:
(http://i52.tinypic.com/28vez6a.png)

I'd like comments on level quality, because I'm churning them out quite quickly.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: z80man on January 29, 2011, 01:12:39 am
I noticed that in the madness level you can reach the finish by going through less than half of the map. A suggestion to allow the player to go through the entire map would be to move lock 6 to the bottom center. Replace lock 5 with wall and key 5 with key 6. Then replace key 6 with key 4. Lastly move key seven to the upper right. Hope this helps. Good work btw, I can't wait to see scrolling screenshots. ;D(http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif)

Spoiler For modified map:
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/2vsfcrsmodified.png)
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: phenomist on January 29, 2011, 01:37:06 am
Hm, actually I intended the gap between 7 and marked 6 to be a horiz-only gate, but it appears I lost a spike somewhere (4 squares left of key 7), lol.

Your way works too. Maybe they'll be two separate levels :P [Title: Deja Vu?]

However, leafiness0 hasn't implemented keys yet, so both level ideas are temporarily thrown out atm.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 29, 2011, 02:34:15 am
WOAH! THose levels look awesome! I didn't thought they would be so large. I like large levels like that. I hope they can be put in the game without too much hassle. I wonder if the scrolling would be hard to implement...
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: z80man on January 29, 2011, 03:20:06 am
@leafiness what is the size in memory of a tile token. I'm not sure if it would fit in your code, but half a byte for each tile might work. That would really help cut the amount of memory needed because if you use a byte for tile size the madness level would take 2550 bytes. With half a byte it is only 650 bytes.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 29, 2011, 03:21:56 am
I definitively think that half-bytes would be the best. It doesn't seem you use more than 16 tiles anyway. The only issue would probably be if you have smooth scrolling: it might be a bit slower if you redraw the entire map every frame.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: z80man on January 29, 2011, 03:28:20 am
On a secret project I'm working on now. The map data is stored as half a byte. But when you load a map to play it is uncompressed to a byte allowing it to be updated faster. I do this also because in game play each tile has far more than 16 possibilities.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 29, 2011, 03:29:02 am
Oh right that can be an idea. It just takes a bit more RAM I guess.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: z80man on January 29, 2011, 03:33:36 am
It might be possible to only uncompress only a portion of the map at a time, but that could cause delays when you move between sections.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: Darl181 on January 29, 2011, 03:35:46 am
Wow, these are looking great ;D
If at all possible, a level editor would be nice tho
Can't wait to see more.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 29, 2011, 03:44:37 am
It might be possible to only uncompress only a portion of the map at a time, but that could cause delays when you move between sections.
Yeah, that kinda reminds me of some new games in campaing mode. He would also need to code in stuff to check where it must switch map. I wonder if that would be hard to make such thing dynamic, especially if none of the levels are the same size...
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 29, 2011, 02:36:01 pm
The only comp language I know is Python. I guess I could write a level editor GUI with Tkinter but I'm too lazy D:
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: Builderboy on January 29, 2011, 02:41:20 pm
I have to say, those levels do indeed loop epic!  I can't wait for some screenies! ^^
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 30, 2011, 12:27:25 am
Okay phenomist,
The gravity axis thing in some of your levels has to be changed. Here's how the block works:

Falling down --> Falling left
Falling right --> Falling up

Falling up --> Falling right
Falling left-->Falling down
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: Xeda112358 on January 30, 2011, 12:40:16 am
I just have to say, those levels look cool! And I have to agree with DJ that large maps like that just make it so much cooler. It makes it feel like you are in a new world and that world is much bigger than the eye can see (which is only 8x12, but still). I think any maps bigger than 16x24 are awesome.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: nemo on January 30, 2011, 12:43:10 am
Okay phenomist,
The gravity axis thing in some of your levels has to be changed. Here's how the block works:

Falling down --> Falling left
Falling right --> Falling up

Falling up --> Falling right
Falling left-->Falling down

maybe you could have 3 different blocks to manipulate gravity. one to rotate gravity 90° clockwise, one to rotate 90° counterclockwise and one to flip gravity. when i say rotate, it might be easier to understand this way:

90° counterclockwise:
up -> left
left -> down
down -> right
right -> up

90° clockwise:
up -> right
right -> down
down -> left
left -> up
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 30, 2011, 02:05:52 am
As for map compression, I'm using half-byte compression. Which is not very good, but seeing as I have only 16 tiles it works
I'm planning on finishign all the maps, then converting them all to RLE.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: z80man on January 30, 2011, 03:00:58 am
I was wondering how do you format the maps so that specific keys match with their lock if you are using half byte tiles.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: leafy on January 30, 2011, 12:59:23 pm
I have a separate data set in the format
(number of switch/doors, [xcoord switch, ycoord switch, orientation switch, switch state, xcoord door, ycoord door, door orientation],...)
kinda messy but it works, I guess. Maybe if someone could tell me a more optimized way to do it.
Title: Re: Level Design
Post by: ztrumpet on January 30, 2011, 01:05:14 pm
I ended up doing something similar to that in Exodus.  There's not really much better than you can do. :)