Levels

[Dark RyNo]

I looked around and found advice for making levels.
I dont want to make the next level in a separate file as that would mean remaking my actors.
Ive been looking into the smiley catch activation regions thing.
I cant tell how the regions help with the changing screen.
To me it just looks like it is moving the view.
Please explain.

[Just4Fun]

Dark RyNo:

An Activation Region is a defined region that is inhabited by Actors that "live" within the region's yellow bounding box. The bounded region is loaded only when the "View" Actor intersects the region. The Activation Region is destroyed when the "View" Actor no longer intersects the region.

Activation Regions allow your game to have many levels, each level in a game can be defined in a different Activation Region. The entire game, along with all of its levels, is saved in an single game file. Activation Regions make envisioning an entire game easy.

In order to change levels without loading a new level .ged file, you can use "Activation Regions". You find the "Activation Region" creator on the Main Menu under "Regions".
Create a new Activation Region. Use the script editor to change the view to the new region when Level 1 finishes. The level change can be triggered by a certain score,time,a button down event, or just about anything you like.
The script would go something like this:
view. x = -360;
view.y = -160;
In "Smiley Catch", you are moving the view to the new region.
HTHs........

[Dark RyNo]

Ok.
But is there any way of finding out the x and y coordinates of an actor?
So I know where to move the view to?
Im making a platform game and its getting rather big.

[makslane]

youractor.x and youractor.y

[Dark RyNo]

Ah.
But cn you do that with regions?
Considering they dont have names.
I suppose I could just make a wire frame actor in the same place as the region.

[Cleve Blakemore]

First of all, you are correct when you say packing your levels into one file is a far more efficient way to produce your game than using a separate GED for each one.

I am doing quite a bit of this now, through a series of configuration screens for my game. I broke up the configuration into a lot of different screens so that it won't be too crowded if it is compiled for a PocketPC.

Each screen you want to switch to has to have an activation region, so that when you move the view on top of it to match it, it knows to load all the actors within the borders at that time.

I had quite a bit of trouble moving my custom cursor around to each screen until I wrote a subroutine that does it automatically for me. It is important to make your object a child of the view, then you should move it first before moving the view. This assures that when the view arrives it will look at everything bounded within the activation region and load it again - the act of moving the custom cursor outside the previous region will destroy it automatically.

It is also highly efficient to make your main screen background infinite on the y or x axis so you have a bunch of screens laid out in a line just waiting for you to use them. At least it is for me.

I am still getting the glitches out of my system for doing config screens like this, when I get it worked out I will put a demo up of sorts.

I currently use filled regions to detect clicks on text "buttons" in the menu.

[willg101]

I'm lost. What's an activation region?

[makslane]

Is a way to make multilevel games in a single ged file.
Look more info at: http://game-editor.com/docs/main_menu.htm#regions

[LEO (LCG)]

Activation regions are tricky to understand.
(I think it's because they are nameless/no reference)

My attempt to make a "camera actor frame" works fine.
Follow the player/projectile/"eye", change view on map,
etc. But it's not the same thing.

And now my "temporary key has expired"...

...dang... Back to work.

[brutalDeluxe]

Informative thread.

I use invisible actors as placemarkers for levels.

You just move your view to the invisible placemarker position.

Need to move your start position - just move the actor.

actor = level_01_start
actor = level_02_start
.
.
.
.

[Just4Fun]

brutal:

I use invisible actors as placemarkers for levels.

You just move your view to the invisible placemarker position.

Need to move your start position - just move the actor. Cool

actor = level_01_start
actor = level_02_start

Neat idea.
Thanks for sharing it.

[LEO (LCG)]

Nice idea Indeed.

It's a interesting way to make
"teletransporters" don't you think?

Eheh.

[Cleve Blakemore]

brutal:

I use invisible actors as placemarkers for levels.

You just move your view to the invisible placemarker position.

Need to move your start position - just move the actor. Cool

actor = level_01_start
actor = level_02_start

Neat idea.
Thanks for sharing it.

This is actually an excellent idea and it doesn't have to be hardcoded as fixed coordinates.

I was building a lookup array of integers in a global function to move my view around to the different screens. I think your idea is better. No runtime cost other than memory for the invisible actor and it doesn't have to be painted either. Just put the actor markers in the upper left corner and use a switch-case function to move the view to "screen1" or "screen2." That reads a lot cleaner too as code.

Thanks for that.

[willg101]

I love that idea of using actor's x/y coordinates!

[josh_sg1]

Yes! Finaly I can creat new levels. Thank you very much!