I hate designing levels!

[-AAG- 78]

There! I said it! 😡

 

[mattstyles 667]

Ha ha

Procgen to the rescue

[-AAG- 78]

I was hoping that was some app that will help me do my levels, don't know the first thing about procgen. 

[mattstyles 667]

Procedural Generation.

Enter the deep deep pit that is procedurally generating all of your levels, and the everlasting plight to make them interesting and fun.

[-AAG- 78]

What's the point? That sounds just as bad.

[b10b 224]

Level design ... aka the retro-engineered steps needed to get the Player to the game mechanics worth playing?

 

[-AAG- 78]

Level design as in I made a puzzle game, got the mechanics done, but now is just so tedious to make levels out of them ( level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc...) 

[mattstyles 667]

Procedural generation can be a load of fun, but its a butt-ton of work to get working well.

You could even use a genetic algorithm (GA) to create levels, have an automated actor play them, test the 'success' of the actor using fitness functions and then loop that process until you get levels (again, based on a heuristic function) that are fun to play. The up-shoot is that you can, potentially, create a near infinite number of levels like this. Or at least generate a manageable amount (say, 30) and manually curate them. Depending on how good your heuristics are you can create levels that are harder or easier for humans to play.

It's a ton of work though. So depends on your mindset. Some crazy people find that a wonderful coding challenge.

[-AAG- 78]

Had to look up the word heuristic so this can't be something I can do 😀. But I can see how this could be a lot of fun to someone who actually knows what they are doing. I guess that is how those guys that make the Flow games have so many levels plus daily challenges. 

I do appreciate all the feedback. Thanks!

[alex_h 114]

On 3/26/2019 at 10:04 PM, -AAG- said:

Level design as in I made a puzzle game, got the mechanics done, but now is just so tedious to make levels out of them ( level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc...) 

What means do you use to create the level layouts? I found the easiest way for me was to use an old copy of flash I had lying around, use that to drag and drop images into place and then use a custom jsfl script to export all their positions and names as json. It worked really well, used it for loads of different games. I hooked up the script to a keyboard shortcut so it was really quick, like instantaneous.

[-AAG- 78]

Oh no. That part is easy. I am on GameMaker: Studio so its all visual. Just pick, place, and drag around. What I am talking about is the actual design of the levels as in making levels that are puzzling and actually fun to play rather than being obvious or obtuse or involving too much trail and error or being a shore to solve. 

[alex_h 114]

2 hours ago, -AAG- said:

Oh no. That part is easy. I am on GameMaker: Studio so its all visual. Just pick, place, and drag around. What I am talking about is the actual design of the levels as in making levels that are puzzling and actually fun to play rather than being obvious or obtuse or involving too much trail and error or being a shore to solve. 

Ha ha, I see    Well yes, that part can be a real bitch, agreed

[josehzz 0]

I usually layout the movement/steps I want the player to do and them fit the mechanics to it. With this approach I get levels done quickly and most of them get to be good enough for a release build.

When a task is long and tediuos it tends to get boring fast.

[-AAG- 78]

This is exactly what I'm doing with my current game and it is so much better than everything I have done before. Good advice!