Level Editor and Storing Levels Internally

[Steven]

Hey Guys,

Is there any object where I could do this? So that the array with all the objects and positions etc gets built with the SWF? I know that the Playtomic extension allows you to do this and call them from their server but they were down for a whole week not so long ago and have therefore lost their 'reliable' tag for me

My preference would be for the data to be bundled up with the swf which can then be used by the game. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Steve

[DizzyDoo]

The way I did this for a game I worked on this summer was to save a level's data in a string form. At its' simplest this could be a collision string looking like this: 111111111101011010100000101001111.... (where 1 = obstacle, 0 = not obstacle) and it gets looped through to transfer that data to an array object. It's not too tricky to write a separate level editor that compiles an array to a string, and then write the reverse of that for use in game.

Of course, you want something more complex, storing objects and positions. If there was an XML or (even better) a JSON extension, then this would be a pretty simple case of iterating through those, yet it's not impossible right now. The game I wrote held all map data in an off-screen Active object. It had an alterable string for the collision data, it had others for storing where the players would enter the map, where they would leave, where the enemies would enter and walk to, and where chests would be spawned with what inside them. Splitting it across different alterable strings worked for me, but you will probably want a system where you could read a single Global String and build a whole level from that, which would take a whole lot of delimiting inner values.

None of that is ideal, but on the plus side, you get complete control of that, it's internal and you're not dependant on an outside service. I've also found Playtomic's downtime very frustrating the last few weeks.

[Steven]

Thanks Matt.

Good idea on the string. Trouble is I might have up to a thousand objects (I'll be loading/unloading them on the fly). Might have a word with the super Matt Esch to see if he can come up with something

Steve