File Capability – Making the Editor Support Multiple Levels

[desertgamer]

This request would be nice. It's likely some designers would be getting nowhere without it. The wish is for Game Editor to be more capable for games with multiple levels. By means of multiple levels, I mean that separate level files would be more capable with each other.

The Explanation:
The drawback of the current way is this: with separate levels, you need to specify each actor individually with everything in each level. I'm mostly regarding the player. You need to have the player exactly as you want it in ALL your levels. So if you decide to update the player, you would need to go through all the levels and do so. And updating occurs often. Since the player would have the same characteristics and actions to how it functions in the entire game, it would be nice to have the player “loaded” into a level from a main “player” file.

The Suggestion:
An example is that one file would contain the level itself (the “level file”). Another file would contain player data (and nothing else). When the level file loads, it would tell the player's file to load it's data into that opened level. In this way, the level file contains the settings of gameplay, with player data that would be universal.

Wouldn't that be nice? This would really increase productivity toward the designer's goal...

[DarkParadox]

this would be quite helpful, that way the health, score, etc. wouldn't change on level switch..
i say maybe, although it would be helpful, it can already be done! if you want to know how, just ask me...
it would also mean a lot of work for mak..

[desertgamer]

this would be quite helpful, that way the health, score, etc. wouldn't change on level switch..
i say maybe, although it would be helpful, it can already be done! if you want to know how, just ask me...
it would also mean a lot of work for mak..

I didn't mean that. I meant the creation of new actors from existing files when the game loads. This way complicated actors can each have a file, so it wouldn't have to be changed in every single level.

[DarkParadox]

well, thats what i mant could be done.
i could do that.

[Thanx]

The idea is similar to the idea of the dinamic link libraries (.dll files). Calling routines from the file, only when needed. Saves memory and space. I think it is useful to have something like that with GE.
I suggest it could be done in a rather simple way.
Expand the capabilities of the .sav file! Let it not only store variables, let it also be able to store functions, actors, structs, etc. It would then be able to serve this purpose too.