Archive: 3 posts

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Acid ReignTekF Save the princess from evil King Soluble, by melting the walls of his castle with your acid gun! This is my first serious finished level! I started it several months ago but I never got round to finishing it until tonight. I'm pretty happy with it but I think it's way too easy until the final boss. There's a lot of bonus side-routes to discover, so getting all the prize bubbles is pretty challenging. Let me know what you think. If you like it maybe I'll finish some of my other half-made levels!

2010-04-25 03:41:00 Author: TekF Posts: 4

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Greetings, TekF; Overall, I think that the basic concept involved was fun and original, the level was enjoyable to play, and with some relatively simple modifications, the level could be greatly improved. The basic game-play is generally there -- now what is needed is some dress-up and polish! General comments: -- There was way, way, way too much raw dissolve vislble, which contrasted badly with the non-dissolvable portions of the level. There is a relatively simple way to make dissolve material look like any of the other building materials, which you should take advantage of: (1) Make a large block of the basic material that you want to mask your dissolve material with. (2) Set up your sun-angle (top Global Lighting slider) to match what you will be using in that part of your level. Leave Darkness and Fogginess set to zero (turned OFF). (3) Take a snapshot of the large block of material, making sure that the photographed area will be large enough to wrap around and completely cover your dissolve pieces in the next step. (4) Use this picture (of the masking material) as a sticker on your pieces of dissolve, making sure that the *scale* / size of the sticker and *rotation* of the sticker match the surrounding non-dissolve material. This method works about 95% effectively. The dissolve will still have the sharp corners of dissolve material, while your masking material may not. Also, where places of specular (shiny light) reflections occur, the green of the dissolve will 'leak' through the sticker. Otherwise, however, this method works pretty well. -- If you don't want your shootable-dissolve to be distinguishable from the non-dissolve, set all of your Paint-based health-bars to Non-Visible (Visible = X). -- Choose an appropriate sound for the dissolve-blocks to make when they are destroyed (done by placing a sound object on each block, and setting that object to emit its sound upon object "Destruction". If you don't want any sound at all, choose a sound on the sound object that is normally 'continuous' (marked with an asterisk, such as the water* selection on the Environmental sound object. Both of the above are generally better choices than the usual 'object dying'' sound. -- If you really don't want the player to be able to tell the difference, use the *exact same style* when working with the non-dissolve as you do with the "masked dissolve" (per above). That is, if you are using 10 unit (1 large grid) sized blocks of dissolve, then use 10 unit blocks of non-dissolve too in making your structures. -- Decide on a "theme" for your level, and stick with that theme throughout, and include an appropriate background, soundtrack, and building materials. I wasn't so sure if the "The Gardens" was the best match for the story you were telling, and it certainly didn't match the middle-eastern looking Aztec Jade you used for your non-dissolve building material (which I suspect you chose to look as much like the dissolve as possible). -- Consider building the entire level *off of the floor* of the studio, and where you have plenty of room to change, expand, and do whatever you want to with it. The floors and walls of the studio are a *hard* limit that you can't change (beyond choosing a different Mm background), and can't be expanded beyond once your level is in place (without a major effort to move *everything else*). Avoid beginning your levels in the 'lower left-hand corner' of your "studio" --> hidden bits of embedded Dark Matter can make any material you want to be your floor, wherever you want it to be in the 'studio.' Specific Notes: -- When I ran your level, the evil King and the Princess broke in mid-flight whilst running away, such that I uncovered the Princess a bit later behind some 'melted' wall. Done! <dusts off hands> Princess rescued! (although she still look unhappy...). From the pieces of evil-King I found on the ground too, he hadn't fared so well. You ought to move them far away and out of the picture when the King runs off with the girl. -- The first (spiked) enemies move far too slowly. They don't have much chance of poking anything. -- The paintinator and the gong are annoying apart in the area with the bolt-shooting bowman. It makes it difficult to get a weapon again if you die...you may have done that on purpose, however. Best of luck to you, and well done on an original idea -- run with it and polish it! -- Nanluin

2010-04-26 04:14:00 Author: Nanluin Posts: 98

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Thanks for the feedback, to answer your points: -- There was way, way, way too much raw dissolve vislble, which contrasted badly with the non-dissolvable portions of the level. ... -- If you really don't want the player to be able to tell the difference, use the *exact same style* when working with the non-dissolve as you do with the "masked dissolve" (per above). That is, if you are using 10 unit (1 large grid) sized blocks of dissolve, then use 10 unit blocks of non-dissolve too in making your structures. Actually this is the only point I really disagree with. I don't want it to look real, I want to telegraph to the player that they can shoot the blocks, and to make it very obvious that there's a difference between what they can shoot and what they can't. I also find it amusing that the king's "impenetrable fortress" would so obviously be made of LBP's dissolve material, sort of an in-joke for LBP players. Maybe it looks amateurish but I think it adds something. -- Decide on a "theme" for your level, and stick with that theme throughout, and include an appropriate background, soundtrack, and building materials. I wasn't so sure if the "The Gardens" was the best match for the story you were telling, and it certainly didn't match the middle-eastern looking Aztec Jade you used for your non-dissolve building material (which I suspect you chose to look as much like the dissolve as possible). I'm not sure why I chose the Jade stone, it was so long ago I honestly don't remember. In my mind it's a generic european fairy-tale setting (hence evil kings, princesses, castles) and I thought the background would suit that. But the king's built his castle out of a strange type of rock that's susceptible to an acid gun. I hadn't thought that the green rock would affect the level's "theme", but I see your point. I'll try swapping it for something else. -- Consider building the entire level *off of the floor* of the studio Good point, unfortunately this was one of the earliest levels I started building and at the time I thought the Garden's brick-floor would suit a castle quite well. In retrospect I'd rather build the floor myself, but lifting the level up now would be very tricky, and the level's starting to overheat so I'm not sure it would let me build much more. -- When I ran your level, the evil King and the Princess broke in mid-flight whilst running away, such that I uncovered the Princess a bit later behind some 'melted' wall. Done! <dusts off hands> Princess rescued! (although she still look unhappy...). From the pieces of evil-King I found on the ground too, he hadn't fared so well. You ought to move them far away and out of the picture when the King runs off with the girl. Doh! They're supposed to get pulled way up into the air, they never broke when I tested it but it's a fairly violent pull so I'm not entirely surprised. -- The first (spiked) enemies move far too slowly. They don't have much chance of poking anything. Yeah I'm not happy about them. They also have a few bugs (you can't kill them by shooting their heads!). I'll try to develop a more formidable guard, then drop a few more of them in later in the level. -- The paintinator and the gong are annoying apart in the area with the bolt-shooting bowman. It makes it difficult to get a weapon again if you die...you may have done that on purpose, however. Thanks for pointing it out, it was intentional but I might try placing them together to see how that plays. Thanks for the feedback, TekF

2010-04-26 13:42:00 Author: TekF Posts: 4

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