Dash 3in1 Editors
Hi there. This is a description of how to make new CustomGames and/or new levels for High Carats. First you have to make your choice.
Do you just want to make your own new levels or do you wanna build up a complete new World?
1. Just new levels for me.
2. Gimme all the stuff!
How to make your own levels :
Start the Dash 3in1 Editor. You see a window containing three big buttons above. These are the three editors to build and
configure the worlds. First of all you have to create your world.
As long as you just wanna make your own levsls choose the world you want to use on the right side and press the button "Linked & Copied".
(Cause this is the Demo of the game in progress you have only one world to choose)
Now you have a world identicly in graphics and objects to the coopied one, but without any levels in it. You can now ignore everything else
and press the third button above to open the Leveleditor.
Head over to the Leveleditor explanation.
The whole stuff :
Open the Dash 3in1 Editor.
This part is for handling all worlds. You can rename available worlds if you want.
There are four ways how to make new worlds.
- Create New World : Adds a completly empty folder. No graphics, no sound, no configs.
- Copy World : Copies everything from a selected world except for the levels to a new foler.
- Link World : Creates an empty folder with a mark that this world uses the graphics and sounds from another world you selected.
The advantage is a big decrease of the size of your new world if you do not wanna make your own graphics or sounds.
- Linked & Copied : Copies everything of a world into a new folder, but links the graphics and sounds, so your new worlds size does
not get too big. Ideal for just making new levels.
In the lower left corner you see the GFX and Sounds Button. Here you can set up the sounds for the loading-wall moving in and out the screen and you can set up
the JPEG images for the loading screen in this world.
Be sure that your World Name does NOT contain spaces!
The Media Editor :
Theres not much to explain about this editor.
- With the three sliders you can change the textcolor, which is used in the loadingscreen and for the score in game.
- Sounds :
You can add/delete items to the wavelist and import WAV Files into them. These WAVs HAVE to be in standard PCM Format 16bit 44Khz. No compressions like ADPCM (sorry)
Important for the later developement : Sounds that are used for objects falling, digging ect. must be numbered. (stone1, stone2...) The Game can
variate these sounds. (Listen to diamonds falling to see what i mean)
- Graphics :
You can add/delete items to the gfxlist and import BMP Files into them. Use just plain bitmaps, no RLE compression (sorry again). The transparent color for all
images is Fuchsia (r=255 g=0 b=255) so prepare your images with this color before you add them.
Be sure not to name two or more pics or sound as same, or the editor will mess up things.
Be sure to include a "blank" Item in your graphics list which is absoluty necessary!!
The Object Editor :
The Object-Editor consists of six parts.
I excuse myself for the design of this editor. It is... well... a bit overloaded. So what...
- SFX :
SFX are things like earth pieces falling down, afterglowing of an collected diamond or drips of an amoeba. The listbox in the top shows the available
sfx in this world. You can watch all of them in the Box to the right.
You can rename them, set the Speed or the steps of the animation. The Middle X and Middle Y sliders are for the position of the animation.
For example : When earth is digged it looks better when the pieces fall a bit under the object (See the square)
The lower left listbox shows the available graphics you can use. This listbox (as also the black box in the upper right) is in all of the
parts of the object editor.
The last box shows the steps of the animation. You can choose the images from the graphiclist. For all animations in the game the maximum of
steps is 15.
- HUD :
Set the graphics for the HUD in the game and some standardsounds like timeup, lifeup or the sounds when time is ticking away.
- Explosions :
In the Game are three kinds of explosions. The first type is used to be the standard explosion. The animations for the explosions have all six steps you can
set the images for. Also you can configure the sounds for them.
- Background :
Set the animation (or just the image) for the worlds background.
- Player :
The Playersprite (each world can have its own, but who wants to make 10 different ones ;) consists of 80 (!!) single images. 32 for running,
12 for standing, 8 for being bored, 12 for pushing and 16 for digging. All steps for these animations you can set by selecting the steps via
the Dropdown Menus. You will immediatly see any changes in the Black Outbox.
Also there are 2 events for the player (An event means sound played and a Sfx animation spawned) On Walk is for setting up the sound when
the player makes a step in the game (Not for digging earth, this is an extra sound) The same for the Push-Event. You can use a grunt sound
for example.
The sounds you select can variate randomly in the game. There for you can set the VAR value on how many different types of sounds can be played.
The soundlist item's names have to be numbered and you have to select the one with an "1" at the end. For example : The diamond has 6 different sounds
when it falls.
- Objects :
The Objects Part is the mostly full packed window ever, i guess :)
For beginning... the three listboxes at the botton are the available graphics, sounds and sfx to choose for different things. The very first DropDown
Menu in the upper left shows all the objects there are. You can add, delete or dublicate items with the buttons. You cannot delete the first two objects which are
the start and the finish object, nor you can add more of them (for logically reasons :P) You can change the entry name of all Objects, this
are only necesarry for the leveleditor. The game itself does not care on how they are called.
The second Dropdown Menu shows the type an object has. There are 11 types to choose from, but first lets get the animation done.
You have a list for the 15 animation steps called "Ani-Pic". This list shows the selected images for your object. Almost all kinds
of objects can variate. That means one same object can have several styles. (Look for example the stone, there are 3 kinds of it) The
game will randomly choose one of all variations when drawing the object. The List to the left always shows the selected VAR Number. You can
add or delete variations via the arrow buttons.
A Transformer and the Finishobject have two stats. One when they're closed and one they're opened (or on/off). Choose which stat to edit by
clicking on the statbox (ON/OFF) As for everything : Try to set other images for just viewing them in the black box how it will look like. As long
as you do not push the Save Button you can reload everything.
Additionally there are animations for an earh object being digged away. Three steps for each direction. Select the step via the "Earth Pic" Dropdown
Menu and set up an image for it. Ohh.. of course you can choose the speed and steps for all objects via the two sliders.
So... the configurations. Lets start with all these checkboxes :
Checkboxes
- Can Fall : For blocks and pickups.
- Side Fall : For blocks and pickups.This sets if another object laying onto this one can fall to
to left or right side. The metalblock for example does not allow this but bricks do.
- Fall Round : When an object falls to the side this configures if it will fall smooth like a stone
or if it takes a straight 90°.
- Pushable : Determines if an block can be pushed by player.
- Hot : This effects enemys only. If checked enemys touching this object will die.
- Head to left : For enemys. Sets up which direction an enemy will usally face to when moving. Left or Right.
- Bang on Fall : For blocks and pickups. When they fall down and touch the next ground they will explode, like dynamite.
- Destroyable : These three ones makes clear on which type of explosion this object will die or not.
- Death on Hit : Checks if an block or an pickup can kill the player or enemys by falling onto them.
- Death on Contact : The same as "HOT" but effecting the player instead.
- Active on Pickup / Active on Fall : For the Transformer object only. This object can be activated by
an item falling through it and/or an item collected.
Dropdown Menu
- Radius : Sets up the explosion radius for all object that can explode. 0 is "1" tile and 5 is "21" Tiles
- Exp Type : Sets up which kind of explosion the object will spawn.
- Heavyness : Only for blocks. If pushable is set to true, the block can be pushed. 1 means no delay
when the player trys to push it.
Numbers
- Delay : For the transformer. Sets how many Game-Seconds the object will be active after activation.
- Ratio : For slime - Set 1 to 9. 1 means everything falls through slime without any delay. For amoeba - Set how fast the amoeba
will grow. A standard value would be "320" A higher value means the amoeba will grow slower.
- Full Time : For amoeba. Sets the time for how long the amoeba will grow. (The "stones or diamonds" stuff)
- Activate : For pickups. Pickups can activate transformer (magic walls) and / or respawn objects. Enter the number of the object that
shell be activated when this pickup is collected.
- Up Diamonds, Up Lives, Up Time : Only for pickups. Enter what of these stuff is added when the pickup is collected.
- Up Score1, Up Score2 : The first is the score that will be added before and the second one after you have reached the quota of diamonds in a level.
- Transform : Enter the number of an object this object will change to when falling through an transformer (for blocks and pickups) or touching an Umwandler (For enemys)
- Closed Spawn : For amoeba only. Set the number of an object that the amoeba will turn into when its completly closed.
- Spawn : For amoeba - The Objectnumber the amoeba turns into when its not closed. For Respawnobjects - The objectnumber that will be spawned when the respawnobject is activated.
For all other objects that can explode - Enter the Number of an object that will be spawned when this object explodes. (The butterfly spawns diamonds.. ect)
Events
Every type of object has its own kind of events like OnGrow for amoebas, OnCollect for Pickups ect. Like in the player part you can set
a sound that is played and a sfx that is shown when the event happens. Also here the sounds can variate.
Last thing : You have to set one of the block objects up as border, so that the level editor knows which object to use.
The Level Editor :
This editor is quite easy to use, let me just mention some things :
- Before you can save or test a level it HAS to have a start and a finish object.
- You CAN use more than one start or one finish object in one level. For the start object it does not make
any sense cause the game will use the upper left (or lower right?!?) start object for spawning the player. For the finish object
instead you can use more than one exit, cause all of them will be open together and can be used as exit.
- The biggest level size is 80 x 60 Tiles. This size mostly slows down the game, so if you wanna use it : Do not use
too many objects like amoebas, cause these are quite intensive in speed killing and do not fill the whole level up with randomed objects.
With this size it starts to get just boring for the player (and clicking repeatly on the random button is not a very honorfull way of building a level, huh? ;)
- Depending on the levelsize and on your system the MAP function (for getting a complete view of your level) takes a few seconds to draw the
overview.
- The only object you can insert into the border is the finish object.
- Theres a maximum of 99 Levels per world.
- When you create a new level you can select with which object the level is filled up. So think about what kind of level you wanna make.
Thats it :) Happy building. 2001/2002 Zimond Remakes.