How to Design a Level for Appel

hello fellow scratchers i'm grifbatch and i'm super excited to introduce you to my latest game apple this game has been in development for around three months and it's quite possibly the most ambitious platformer i've worked on to date this video is going to focus on the level designer but before we do here's a quick overview of the game itself you play the part of this little chap named apple a character originally designed by legobauer9 look him up on scratch and who you may have noticed had a cameo appearance in my getting over it game earlier this year the premise of apple is that the very world is out to get you you'll frequently notice it watching you with its big eye and very often trying to spike or squish you now the first challenge you have is simply to get through each level reaching checkered flag the game keeps track of the world record fastest time so that should be a bit of fun for the community to make things even more interesting we also record the fastest time for the player who manages to collect all the yellow apples on a level and also one more time but the player who manages to find and collect the one big red apple hidden on the level and collect all the glasses too so that's three records to try and beat for each level in the game making this probably quite a fun game to speed run talking of levels apples currently has nine official levels the first being the easiest and as you progress through the game each level introduces more of the game's mechanics and content by the time you reach level nine you should be in theory a master of all things happen but things don't have to stop there because apple contains a very handy level designer right here on the front screen and everyone can share their hand crafted levels with the scratch community okay so the apple level editor you'll find the menu option on this front page to enter the level of editor now we spawn on a nice blank world i can use the was store the arrow keys to move around and i can fly quite nicely which is very useful for editing levels and i can go through anything and i can't die so very indestructible so how do i test a level rather than just flying around simple click on edit menu hit play and that toggles for a second into play mode and now i'm unable to walk through walls and i can play the game again i hit edit menu to go back into edit mode and now i can go through again there's a shortcut for that which is really very useful when editing levels quickly hold down q and tap the m key and that toggles it into play mode hold down q press m back into edit mode again right so i've got a brush which is this block under my cursor i can hold down the left mouse button and drag and paint blocks onto the screen which is great and if i happen to start dragging from a block that i've already painted it deletes so i can really quickly just drag in bits of level like this move around and draw it as i go so what about swapping to a different type of brush well that's the number keys so number one key toggles between different solid blocks different shapes different textures like this and some different sized ones too like this i can put in little blocks if i test it by holding q and tapping m and see now i can test out my level great q m again back into edit mode now what about different type of things so how about spikes that's the number three key so here's some spikes different spikes i can put some spikes down in this pit like this it looks cool doesn't it and there's another shortcut here if i want to use um the same brush that i've already used like if i wanted to paint with this one put my mouse over that block press the e key which means eyedropper there look i'm now drawing with that block he over the spikes becomes a spike so i can quickly go around find a block i like like that one and then i can draw with it okay so there's some spikes let's just test they work i just press the q and m yep spikes work treat okay so what if i wanted to change where i appear on the level so if i press the five key that shows me things like collectibles so i can drop in an apple six so five again is a checkpoint flag five again that's a used checkpoint flag i don't really need that one to be honest uh five again it's the end of level flag very important let's put one of those over here the end of the level okay five again now that's a special apple that's an apple that will follow a platform so don't use that for anything else but for moving platforms i'll show that later keys and here we go there is the spawn point so that was the number five key to find that and i wanted to spawn up here okay so when the game starts now i'm going to appear up there i've got an apple to collect i've got a checkpoint and i've got an end of level um before we do anything else's level let's just try to get an enemy in now that's the number four key so here's the default enemy i'll put him here like this now let's just see what happens if i run that so i'll just use the play button he starts and he falls into the spikes not a very good way what i wanted to do is go left and right up here so toggling back into game mode i have to use a special block which is number two but number two button is kind of um non-solid blocks so i've got this decoration block so again i get this grey x the grey x is a special one which is very useful for enemies and moving platforms and it means no enemy or moving platform can move into this block so i put them like that and then started off [Music] now the enemy is constrained to being on top of this platform brilliant and that is a reasonable quick level so let's give it a save and see if it works so hit edit menu hit save you get your code this big long string here so if i double click it and then right click and say copy that now copies that to my clipboard now these codes you can paste into the scratch form here is my scratch form the link will be under the video and i'm going to paste this code just here like this so i'll say here's my test level code enjoy like that so there's the entire level hit submit there we go the level for someone to try now how do people go about trying these levels so let's quit out of the level editor back to the main menu and now we hit the play button like normal and rather than choosing a level click on load and now we're prompted to enter a level code so where's that so if i double click on this copy it to the clipboard either right click or press ctrl c go back to apple paste it to here my paste with right click yeah i can paste it with the right click click tick and here comes our custom level see i spawn at the top [Music] and there we go four seconds excellent so that's a quick way to be able to edit levels so what else can we do with this level editor let's go back in and learn a few more extended techniques so far we built this little level here now what if we wanted for example to have spikes not just on the ground but on walls okay so if i go over the spike and press e i can pick up my spike sprite pick up my spike of course i could just press the three key and toggle through what i want but you'll notice they're always pointing up at the moment so what i can do is press the r key for rotate and that toggles me around all four of the possible positions this spike can go in so then it's just an easy matter of just drawing them in where i want rotate it around over there so that's really really easy and the same applies to things like flags checkpoints on walls uh even um enemies but this enemy although you can put him on the side he won't react nicely at all if you try it doesn't that's just not not meant to happen but there are enemies that can for example saw blades they can be put on the edge of walls like this i click one on and then start it playing it attached itself to the wall that i put it on that rotate it around like that it would attach to that wall like that it uh attaches to an imaginary wall which doesn't really work should be on that wall anyway so what are we going to look at next we uh looked at enemies and how they could be bounded so they fall off should we just have a look at all the different types of things that we have in this game so let's click main menu and do new yep okay so let's look at the [Music] enemies first so meshes let's look at those so i generally put these too high up or one block high up put a couple of those in a row like this and then i'll push the normal blocks thing in between in fact no not for now let's not do that bit let me put a run of level blockers like that across the top then we can see what's going on here if i run the game using the q and m key together stick to the ceiling here so you'll see that these all go together and they're going up as far as these x's i put in if i hadn't put these in it would have done this goodbye yep not a very good plan so usually you put in two of these blocks above like this and if i just put in oops not eyeballs oh well let's do that why not okay now that having two blocks high hides this top part of the masher so it's all nice and neat okay now something much more extended um enhanced what if i want these meshes not to be striking at the same time but to be like one two three one two three so this is a bit clever um so we enter edit mode what we do is we put the mouse over the top of the first one and we press the slash key so this pops up and enter data and then ask block at the bottom here where we can enter commands now these are strings of letters and numbers um with no spaces in between but each letter means something so in this case i'm going to hold the masher which is an h key i'm going to hold it for zero what that means is that this mesher is going to instantly mash down a of the level second one press slash i'm going to hold it for 10. that's 10 frames that'll be a third of a second and then the third one slash hold 20 so we've got h0 10 and h20 and now let's do here and then run the game and now beating one of the other but they're keeping nicely in time with each other okay what if i want them to mash at different speeds so what you can change is the amount of time they stay at the top so at the moment they can mash down they rise up and then they stop for a bit and they match again if i press slash over this again so i have to type h0 again if i want to keep that but i also have a d for delay so h for hold that's at the start holds it then d is how long it delays at the top so the delay of zero would mean it doesn't wait at all so if i run that now this first one is going to go up and then drop straight away which is much more deadly and over this one here then so if i have a hold of 10 but then a delay of 30 would be a whole second delay at the top so this one here should come up and wait for a whole second or topping i actually didn't really see that much glowing i must hold for about a second anyways if i delay so i delay it for 60. that should be two seconds which is longer than normal let's give that a go so it goes back up and then it waits two seconds before dropping again there we go you can add a lot more interest into your level by programming these things like this now what if i want these to mash only when i come near them the first time so you can't make it so that they otherwise at the moment you can't at the moment make it so that they always drop when you stand on a certain place but you can make it so they drop the first time let me show you how to do that so if i come over here and i put in here a g code which is group i'm going to call it g1 for group one and i'm going to do the same for all of these g1 g1 okay so these are all linked to g1 for group one now press 2 key and select this new one this here this is a trigger block and it means if i touch this it'll set off some trigger group so wherever we're going to put it let's put it just here okay and then i'm going to write not nicely then i'm going to press the slash key and i'm going to give this a g1 tag as well so that's group one now start the game and behold the meshes are all waiting for me and when i touch this [Music] they all get set off [Music] now why didn't they drop straight away and kill me because by default these have a slight hold on them and i've taken the hold off so if i do g1 hold a zero that one now drops as soon as i go underneath it so as soon as i touch it so if i put them all as g1 hold zero they will all now drop the moment i touch that but then they continued dropping until the levels we started so it's more for speed runs that you can do that it's an interesting technique for setting up your level how you want it where this is really useful is for things like lifts so if we switch now to the lift which i think is the number uh six yes that's it so number six is lifts and moving platforms so this first one is a lift that would go left to right here's a lift that goes up and down so if i put in let's just go through them again i think there's one more lift this one here another up and down lift but it's got this special x here which is the block that stops things moving through them which is great for lifts so this lift here can go in the ground but it doesn't go further down so it doesn't bob down there so if i just run that straight away that just becomes a moving lift and it just goes up for infinity so we need to bound it how do we stop it from moving well we've seen this before we use the hexes so where do i want to go to will be here so to move up to level with the top of this let's give that a go [Music] perfect that just pops up and down between those two x's and of course i can bind this to a a trigger block so if i put a trigger block above the lift and then i put this into group two this time because that's group one i'll also tag the lift with the g2 so both of those are grouped too now the lift stays where it is until i stand on it it goes up what if i wanted it to stay where it is at the top and then come down so pause at the top before coming back down well that's the slash key keep it in group two and now we use the delay and i'll have a delay of 60 for two seconds that means so 30 is a second okay i'll give that a go it goes and it should stop for two seconds and then it did it comes back down stops two seconds beautiful what if i wanted it to move faster okay so again that's the slash key so group 2 delay 60 so we've got two things we can do here we've got s for speed that's how fast it moves and we've got a for acceleration it's how fast it gets to that speed so speed we can set to let's say 6 16 yeah why not it's quite fast uh acceleration we do in hundreds um an acceleration of 100 is pretty fast um i think by default it's something like 12 or something i'm not sure so this is going to be really fast now this lift let's give it a go here we go way much more dynamic feeling cool okay what else can we have a look at let's have a cycle through the blocks so number one key we've got the normal block we also have things like eyeballs which when we play the game they look really cool they follow the layer around then we have half sized blocks like this again you can rotate those so they look really nice and we have tiny blocks and we have these now this is to do a really big nice block so if i go in here like this and rotate it rotate it rotate it you can make a big block like that and then we've got kind of diagonal blocks hidden blocks these are really cunning you can hardly see the things um let me get rid of this one here and play this there we go you see so watch out for those who can put some nice hidden bits in the game with those um what else so number one key we had those i think then we've got some darker blocks body blocks and we got these blocks these are meant to be put underneath these meshes like this so they look like the ground has been squished [Music] okay so that's that's all the ones that's pretty much it you have just those number twos you have these darker blocks which are kind of used a bit of decoration you have the x's to stop mobs from getting through them and stop moving platforms half half stoppers this is a special block this one if i pop it say here what this means is don't let the screen scroll up while that's on the screen it doesn't go any higher than about the middle of the screen until you force it to by going really high down again so that way that way you can hide um secrets in the level are above this okay that's what that's for trigger blocks you've seen this what is this this is number two key still this is a hidden area so look if i was to drop a few of these down like this if i go down there look i actually dropped behind us into a secret area now this is useful for hiding coins and secrets so if i was to go into number five let's say coins apples so here's number five apple press that a few times and you'll find there we go i hid an apple if i put that in like this and pause it you'll see that the apples are hidden they can't see them and then oh yeah don't jump to that if i come down here they appear since i go into the secret area that way you can hide extra apples around the level okay what else can we find so we've done that we've done that mob we've looked at this one so we can say we can put this on any wall we like we can have it hang up and down here i do that just put some things we'd stand on and run it watch what happens it goes right off the end and flies away now why does it do that because this is going up down here so i need to put a little x on the end number two key that run it again and now it goes between those two points always useful to remember to put those in okay um number four key again what else have we got we've got bird bird likes to do mayhem two players if i just unpause that there he goes dropping bombs like nobody business and he'll always fly towards the player so from whichever side he is on i'm not sure we've done now this is more like a pop-tart eye you put that in how high you want it to go to like so and of course you have one there and then you need to press the um which key is it the yeah six key until you've oh that was it cyclone again there we go it's little pocket you put one of those underneath each eye like that um now if you just run that it should just work it will start in there they pop out the height that you set cool these can be put at any angle as well so you can take them and you can put one in like so put in this little pocket and run it [Music] and that just works beautifully okay let's just remove all those actually before we do go back one thing you might want to do um let me just put these in all the same height you can choose how long they take to re-pop out the ground if i put my mouse cursor over them press slash i can use the d key again for delay i have a delay of zero on that one a delay of five delay of 10 and a delay of 20. okay so you can mouse over and see what they are set to if i run that time it takes for them to re-launch is now set by that delay okay so what else have we got these little chaps are nasty they just run at you like crazy little things just pop one down and they all just look at you like that okay and then we've got the big guy let's pop him in here just get rid of his eyes he just sits where he is until you get close does his flashy thing that's it um and let's see worms now they like to just um move around whatever you've put in a level so let's put in some blocks here like this okay and then back to our worm so put in the direction that you want him to be like this and now if we unpause they will kindly run around that shape for you and there is a uh that's four again there's one in the opposite direction so you can have them going against the direction of each other really good now there's a little trick with these guys i'll show you now so if i was to create a long line like so and there's four find the little guy i'll put one on this side and i'll put one on this side now if i start that off you'll see them all nicely perfectly timed with each other but this is not always the case if i come over here it started off and then come across there they're no longer in sync even though they were supposed to be opposite each other now why does that happen so the way that enemies work in apple is that as they are about to appear on screen as i walk along here they start moving but the other worm on the other side hasn't yet come near enough to the screen to actually be affected and spawn so by the time i come over here they're not in the same place anymore but i can get around that by using groups so if i slash press the slash key on that worm and do g3 for group three and slash on this one g3 again they're now both grouped together and now if i start the level the other worm automatically starts as soon as one worm starts the other one starts okay so what else have we got anymore we got this guy he's a big version of the red one the only difference being you can't kill this one and just bounce on his head um and that's all the enemies so what's number five so we've got apples to collect flag checkpoints um completely check flag checkpoints but we don't really use those um we've got the end of level you can only have one of these if i set one somewhere either one disappears and what's more the level stops scrolling once you reach it if i put one here and run the game i can no longer go further right than that so just remember that um hear me pressing here five so we've got apple with a down arrow now what's that for this is um let me come over here a bit more space if i wanted to put an apple on a lift so pressing one five six six key sorry uh and put a moving platform underneath i'll stop there moving that one from moving right further than that and start the game this apple likes to stay on top of that lift and it's the same for press the six key do it up and down lift i can put an apple on top of the lift in that case too and if it goes [Music] if i just used a normal apple the lift would have just gone through it so why don't i use normal um sorry these special apples all the time well because they use up a whole nother clone and you don't want to fill your level full of clones these apples are special and they don't use extra clones um so they're much better to use these apples whenever you can only use these apples for special cases where they need to be moving on top of an object okay so done those keys yep that's nice and easy stick a key in the level um and this guy is the spawn point so where the level i start so i could start a little just there if i wanted again you can only do one of those if you haven't got one he starts where he started on when i started level up originally um so if we had a key we need a door um where the doors i think they're under the six key there it is so i can pop those like that then uh let me just go i can't go through the door until i click the key and i can okay and that's all oh pop them the big apple you can only have one of these too there's always one of those to find on my level hidden away somewhere number six key i've got the lifts i've got these which are crumbling blocks so these act as normal blocks until they've been crumbled and lifts obey the blocking of those two which is quite cool and you can do all sorts with those number six key trampolines okay let's move through here to a trampoline how do these work simply place one and it just does its job and you can have all different angles of these like so um you can also affect how far they fling you so um if i go over here and press the slash key if i press a y code here for y up and down and give it a value of 30. now use it [Music] so it's taking about this high at the moment let's put a block in there [Music] so let's try a one a y of 40 instead okay so that's much more springy and if you really want you can make it go sideways as well at the same time so you'd give it a y of 40 and an x of say five let's just give that a go see that now takes me slightly to the side as well so you can make these kind of take you somewhere it's quite fun so if i just jump on that again a second it's taking me to about here it's let's give that a go really taking me too far to the side i need to kind of i don't know if that'll do it [Music] almost there we go straight on top so you could like line things up to clever things um and the same for this one here you could give it a a y value to make it move you up more or x value of much more to take you further to the light okay six key again yes you've got the pop-tart we've got the crumbly blocks ah so this conveyor belt and you just drop them in you can see the direction it's gonna take you in on your arrow the six again it takes you the left-hand one like that and you can rotate these they take you wherever they go and i can stick to the wall stick to the ceiling and they can take you in all different places okay what else i think that's all of them sixes so that take us through everything so look so we've done the ones then the twos decorations three the spikes fours are enemies fives are collectibles flags keys spawn points sixes are moving platforms crumblings trampolines and conveyor belts doors seven seven is a boss now boss i haven't actually put into the game but you can use him if you want you have to put him down on some level and then you have to make sure that he's contained like so um and yeah have a go you can have a go if you want but he's not meant to be there so i wouldn't use him in your levels if i were you and i think that pretty much counts for everything um so you're able to then save your game and when you've saved it go to the forum and post it for other people to play with and enjoy i can't wait to see what you create with this um i had a great fun creating my nine levels and uh it's quite interesting to see different people's designs and takes and the clever mechanics you can make by combining all of the different elements that apple has in store for you well i do hope you're going to enjoy this i am really enjoying it and i just i cannot wait to see what you make to post them on the forum and i'm going to play them and i'm sure everybody else will too um and who knows maybe i'll take some of the best levels and add them to the game or a new version of the game we can all play together later so thank you for watching do subscribe um love this video and see you on scratch guys [Music] bye

Channel: griffpatch

Views: 113,139

Keywords:

Id: iqdKA810a3Q

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020