Randomnicity

I know that isn’t a word, but I couldn’t think of anything clever for a title that had anything to do with the subject of this week’s work.  That’s right, I figured out the logic that allows me to randomly select doors to open at the beginning of the race.  The main microchip looks a little like this…

I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, how do two microchips and a sequencer randomly choose which doors to open?  It’s magic…  Well, not really, it takes a little more than two microchips and a sequencer.  Follow along and I will open those up so you can see how this really works.

The sequencer holds 2 batteries.  The first battery triggers the random generators, and the second battery triggers the final reset of the randomizer.  If I don’t reset it, it will create way too much havoc later in the game.  Also, I have a little surprise I plan to add later, by suggestion from a co-worker.

 

The first thing triggered on the randomizer is a “single-shot switch”.  Basically, it is a counter that counts up to 1.  The switch activates the randomizer chip, which sends a signal to either port 2 or port 3 on the selector (the thingy with the pointing finger on it).  Port 1 on the selector is reserved to act as an “off” switch.

When the selector ports activate they trigger another single-shot switch, which turn on one of the two magnetic tags at the bottom.  One of them has a label “rnd up #” and the other has a label “rnd down #”.  These magnetic tags are sensed by the doors, which open the doors if they are closed.  You may ask, why do you need a second state that will close a door?  Well, that’s one of the little secrets I’m working on.  Can’t give away all my genius before I publish this level.  Anyway, you also see a couple OR gates and a single AND gate.  These take the various signals and use them to determine which parts of the logic needs to be reset.  On the left hand side, the OR gate takes either signal from the selector, and feeds it into the AND gate.  The other half of the AND gate comes from the first single-shot switch.  If either port 2 or port 3 are activated on the selector, and the first single-shot switch are active at the same time, the first single-shot switch resets.  This enables the whole process to activate at a later time in the race.  The OR gate on the right side takes input from the second set of single-shot switches and sets the selector back to port 1.  This resets that part of the logic for another go.  The final reset comes from the second battery on the sequencer.  When it activates, it resets the second set of single-shot switches.  This fully resets the entire path and makes it ready for use later.

I put this logic on a microchip so I could copy it to reuse for each set of doors in the maze.  I’m not sure how many I will have, but once it is copied all I have to do is rename the magnetic tags/sensors with the number of the door set.  I also need to rename the parts on the doors as well. And, speaking of the doors, I had to modify the logic there a little bit.  Check out this picture, I highlighted the changes with red boxes to make it easier to see the changes.  I added two sensors, at the top, that sense when the “rnd up #” and “rnd down #” magnetic tags activate.  I also added two more AND gates, to check for “door is up and rnd down #” or “door is down and rnd up #” conditions.  The new AND gates connect to an OR gate with the previous checks for door states when then feed into the respective movers that open or close the doors.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 

This latest round of logic work actually brings me to about the 90% completion on the logic.  I still need to figure out how to get the players to the starting spots in the maze, but I won’t work on that until I finish building the maze.  That being said, this is probably the last entry for a few weeks, until the maze is built.  I’m kinda thinking of making two versions of this level; one for two players, and one for up to four players.  The logic will be the same for both, just different designs for the mazes.  Please send me some feedback on what you think about that. 

Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door, Somebody’s Ringin’ the Bell

Trust me, The Beatles in no way inspired, or assisted me in the design of this logic.  Today I present to you the logic controlling the doors in my maze level.  You might think that it shouldn’t be that complicated to open and close a door and normally you would be right.  However, these doors do a little more than that.

If you remember me mentioning that when you press the “X” button, while driving the hovercraft, it “generates” a power pulse that triggers the doors in the maze.  If you don’t remember that, please go to my previous entry and get caught up with everyone else.  For the rest of you, continue reading.

The power pulse from the hovercraft turns on a magnetic key, which is detected by a sensor in the door logic, if the player is close enough.  On the circuit board, the sensor is on the right edge of the circuit board, shown above.  While this sensor is activated, it triggers the three timers, just to it’s left.  The timers count up from 0 to 1, 2, and 3 seconds.  As each timer reaches it’s limit, it triggers a magnetic key, and a sound generator.  Each of the magnetic keys trigger, wirelessly, pieces of sticker panel attached to the top surface of the door.  The first one lights up the two outermost pieces, the second one lights up the next two pieces, and the third one lights up the middle piece.  These are only in place to give the player a visual clue that the door is charging and will open or close soon. 

The other action that takes place, when the last timer reaches the 3 second mark, is sending a signal to two AND gates.  These gates are located on the left side of the circuit board.  The other leads, coming into the AND gates come from a sensor that checks to see in the door is currently open, or closed.  This sensor is at the upper left-hand corner of the circuit board.  I turned on the setting that checks to see if the magnetic tag it is trying to sense is on the same layer as the sensor.  This means that I only need one tag/sensor pair to determine the status of the door.  Just below the sensor is a NOT gate.  When the sensor does not “see” the “door open” tag, the NOT gate triggers, which activates the AND gate that leads to the mover that closes the door.

Below the AND gates are two timers.  These timers are set for 0.5 seconds.  This creates enough delay that the last piece of sticker panel on the door lights up before the door opens/closes and everything resets.  The timer on the right, sends a signal to the mover that opens the door, and the OR gate to the right.  The timer on the left sends a signal to two OR gates.  The OR gate on the right, the one with three inputs, is used to reset the three timers, thereby shutting off the magnetic tags, thereby turning off the pieces of sticker panel on the door.  The final OR switch, the one that triggers the “door close” mover, also takes input from one last sensor. 

The last sensor on this circuit board looks for a signal that indicates that one of the matching doors, from another section of the maze, is closing.  Since each section of the maze will be the same, they all have doors in the same locations.  The magnetic key, in the lower left-hand corner, triggers when a door closes, and the other three matching doors will notice this turning on and close, if they are currently open.  Confusing, isn’t it?  The idea is that a player can take the time to close the door behind them, and close the matching doors for their opponents.  One of the special obstacles I have planned.

I know this was a bit long, but there was quite a bit of logic on this one.  If you have any questions, please post them in the comments.

And now for something completely different…

No, this isn’t going to be a blog about anything Monty Python, I just had an idea for a new level, and decided to run with it rather than do additional work on part 2 of my Yeti level.  This new level is going to be a versus level, for 1-4 players.  Yes, I know it’s kinda hard for a single person to play a versus level, but I figure if I design it right, and by right I mean that a player can pick their starting position, a player could practice each path.

That being said, the idea is to create a maze with 4 sections that dump into a central location.  Each section will be the same, except that they will be mirrors of each other.  Throughout the mazes I am placing doors that the players have to open.  I want to add some element that lets a player close a door in an opponent’s maze to slow them down.  I think I will make this element in such a way that it slows them down on their own path, so they need to choose between possibly slowing down an opponent, or just charging forward.  We’ll have to see how that goes.

The Vehicle

 

I started by designing the vehicle the players use.  I settled on a hovercraft, and wanted to use repulsors for steering them.  The final design looks a little like this.  Somewhere between the X-Men and Green Lantern logos, and the player sits in the middle.  The materials I used are a pebbled dark brass for the top layer, freaky clouds for the internal pieces, and sticker panel for the repulsors, which are arcs on the outer edge of each quarter.  At the tip of 4 points I placed small LED lights.  The cool thing about this design is that I can change the basic color of the LED lights, the sticker panel repulsors, and the freaky cloud pieces.  This enables me to make a different colored hovercraft for each player.  That will give the players a clue as to which part of the maze they are in.  The other clue will be the position of the starting box. 

 

The Logic

I made some simple movement logic using the controlinator, in case I wanted to add some features the players can access by pressing one of the buttons. Starting with the picture on the left, you see the controlinator setup.  In the upper, right-hand corner, I placed a microchip where I put the elements that will always be on.  The first object is a game camera, used to control how much of the surrounding maze the player can see,  Below that is an anti-gravity tweaker.  I use this because the game will be a top-down perspective, it allows the hovercraft to move around easily.  One of the settings, dampening is set low so the vehicle will slow down gradually if the repulsors are off.  The last element is a gyroscope, to keep it pointing up.  I also added a material tweaker on the “freaky cloud” pieces, and set the bounciness to about 30%.  This makes the hovercraft bounce off the walls when it hits them. 

On the left-hand side is the logic that turns on the magnetic keys that trigger the movement, and lighting elements.  The player uses the left joystick, or directional buttons to steer the hovercraft.  Each of the magnetic keys triggers one or more of the magnetic sensors on the 8-way movement microchip, in the center picture, and the repulsor microchip, in the right-hand picture.  The 8-way movement uses simple movers to move the hovercraft in a single direction, or diagonally, at a set speed.  I’m thinking of adding a boost powerup, that would increase the movement rate for a short period of time.  In the right-hand picture, I use the magnetic sensor to turn on a sound generator to make the crackling electricity noise, a lethalizer to add electricity to the repulsors, and set the sticker panel (repulsors) to on and light up brighter.

The last piece of logic on the controlinator is a magnetic key and a sound generator attached to the “X” button.  Pressing the “X” button will trigger all 4 directional magnetic keys, which turn all 4 repulsors, a magnetic key which turns on the 4 small LED lights, and plays a pulsing sound, which plays in addition to the crackling electricity sounds.  This also has the effect of stopping the hovercraft in it’s tracks.  This “pulse” is how the player will trigger the door switches in the maze. 

That is all I have planned for this weekend.  I might put the hovercraft on my “CommToad’s Creations” level in case you want to get a copy and play with in on your moon, or even use it in your levels.  If you have any suggestions for additional functions, let me know.  That’s what LBP is all about.

The Good, The Bad, and the Beta

Hey there everyone, I thought I would share some of my thoughts on a recent Beta test I had the privilege of being part of.  This wasn’t the first time I got to be part of a beta test, but the first time I actually enjoyed the game.  The game I got to play with this time is Little Big Planet Karting.  Yep, I know what you’re thinking, another go-kart racing game.  This one is a little like Mod Nation Racers, in that you can build your own tracks (levels), and publish them for other players to enjoy.  It takes many elements from Little Big Planet, like characters, themes, and design tools.  Since this was a beta, I’m not sure if the tools, materials, stickers, etc. we got to use will be in the final game, or if there are things they didn’t show us.  Guess I’ll have to wait until November to find out.

Anyway, the game play was pretty standard go-kart racing.  Accelerate, decelerate, drift through the corners, and gather/use a variety of weapons.  One neat feature is that you can create your own weapons.  It’s similar to LBP’s creatinator where you create an object, and set that as the “ammunition” for your weapon.  Also, you can use some of the weapons to defend yourself from incoming attacks.  Defending was something I had a hard time doing, probably due to poor “twitch” skills.

On the development side, laying out the initial track is pretty easy.  Your tool is a giant paint roller and you draw the track.  In addition to making left and right turns, you can change the elevation and put inclines and declines on your track.  Once the track is drawn, you can modify the terrain, add water, objects, and obstacles.  My biggest problem was that since I was working in a fully 3-D environment it was harder to place and manipulate objects.  Requires a completely different mind set than in the mostly 2-D world of LBP.  There is a grid you can use to align objects, but it is doesn’t always line up with the track.  This made placement a little tricky sometimes.  One suggestion I read in the forums was to build all of your objects first, then lay down the track.  It makes sense, but would require more planning than I’m willing to do.

You also have most of the logic tools from LBP available, this allows you to create interesting traps, or customize the driving experience for the players.  Again, since it is a fully 3-D environment, it was trickier to work with the circuit boards.

Overall, it was a good experience.  I’m looking forward to this game and have pre-ordered it already.  I may not do as much designing as I have in LBP and LBP2, but I look forward to playing community levels and tracks from others.  Based on what I saw in the beta, there are some talented folks out there.

The one thing I hope carries over is the costume I used during the beta period, it was aptly titled, Bacon Beard.  I let you wonder about that. 

Sack in the Saddle Again…part deux

I was reminded yesterday that it has been a year since I posted anything on this blog.  Time flies when you’re having fun.  Fun, like playing Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, and participating in the LBP Karting beta testing.  I’ll say this about LBPK…it’s going to be alot of fun!  I had a chance to play tracks from the story line, and some from some great level builders.  We also had a chance to build our own levels with a sample of tools and materials that will be in the final game.  The interface was a little tricky since you are working in a full 3-D environment, but I was starting to get the hang of it right before the beta ended.

Since my last post here I have made some progress on the conclusion to my Yeti level in LBP2, thanks to a video on the LBPlanetorials YouTube channel.  He talked about modular level design and it enabled me to break my level down into small manageable chunks.  It also showed a technique for building without gluing.  Makes it easier to rearrange pieces of the level without alot of fuss.

I am about 60% done with blocking the level in, and about 50% done with the details on the sections that are blocked in.  In this part of the level I am including the grappling hook to give the player a way to avoid some, but not all obstacles.  One of the techniques I am using to make design easier is using gravity modifiers (with dampening set to 100%) to keep pieces from moving around without gluing them in place.  It’s easier to switch stuff around this way.  Also, using a piece of sticker panel, with a gravity modifier attached (and dampening set to 100%), as a surface to attach things like pistons, cameras, etc. I can move those things around easily too.

Well, rest assured I am back to working on this level, but keep in mind I just got Tiger Woods 11, and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, so I might be a little distracted.

Multi-floor elevator with controls

Let me start by giving a huge thanks to DEFCON01 who’s Youtube video showed me how to build the original elevator in LBP1.  Without that start, this would not be possible.

Really, all I did was translate that design into something using the LBP2 tools.  With the new tools I was able to create a design that only involved one moving part, the piston that raises and lowers the elevator car.  Everything needed to make this elevator control fits neatly on a single microchip.

You might recognize some of this design from my previous post about elevator logic.  I just added 2 AND gates, 2 timers, a directional combiner, and a sound object.

Starting on the left edge are the tag sensors.  The blue one activates if the elevator is at the top floor, the purple one activates if the elevator is at the bottom floor, and the green one for all floors in between.  In this picture, the purple one is activated.  You can see that the NOT gate’s output is off, therefore the first AND switch cannot close and complete the circuit to move the elevator down.  The blue one is not activated, so it’s NOT gate output is on and the first AND gate is awaiting input from the elevator’s “up” grabswitch to close the circuit and move the elevator up.

In the center is an OR switch with input from all of the tag sensors.  When one of the three sensors activates, it sends a signal to the reset switch of both timers.  This sets the current value of both to 0, and starts a 2-second interval where the output from both timers is turned off.  This turns off the input to the second set of AND gates which cuts off the signal to the elevator’s piston.  This stops the car long enough for the player to let go of the switch and exit the elevator car.  This time can be adjusted by tweaking the settings of the timers.  The other function of the OR gate is to trigger the sound object which makes a nice elevator “ding” tone.

The last element here is the directional combiner.  The up grabswitch is connected to the positive input, and the down grabswitch is connected to the negative input.  The “Input Action” on the piston is set to Forwards/Backwards, which gives the up and down movement based on which grabswitch is used.

Elevator logic

 

I worked a little on my elevator logic this morning and came up with the following microchip. 

Starting at the top, I have a blue tag sensor attached to a NOT logic gate, which connects to the AND logic gate.  The other thing connected to the AND logic gate is the grab switch for the “up button” in the elevator.  The purple tag sensor is attached to a similar NOT, then AND switch for the “down button” in the elevator.  The green tag sensor is used to stop at all floors in between.

To create the stopping location for the elevator, I placed a blue tag at the top floor, a purple tag at the bottom floor, and green tags at all floors in between.

Basically, the NOT gate is used to make sure that grabbing the up or down button will always work, unless the elevator is at the top or bottom floor, respectively.

The OR logic gate is connected to all three tag sensors so that no matter which sensor is activated, the elevator will stop.

All this work got me thinking of something another player asked in one of the forums, how do you make an elevator call button?  Give me something to think about for improving on the design.

Taking a Little Break

 

Well, since I seem to have a case of trigger finger in my thumb, and it is encased in a brace for the next 1-2 weeks, I won’t be doing any actual building on my levels.  It’s a shame because I just picked up LBP2 and the design tool are incredible.  In addition to the new tools, I can also access the add-on packs that came with the Game of the Year Edition of LPB1.

With all of that, and a punch list of things to fix in my first level, I decided to update that level and republish it in LBP2.

I am already making good use of the circuit boards as a way to clean up the design and take advantage of the updated logic gates.  Other new features that I like are the material movers and sackbots.  With these features I can create doors that slide between the three layers, to add a little depth, and replace the cardboard and sticker characters I currently have.

The elevators are getting a major upgrade to ones that have up and down controls that the player has to trigger, instead of proximity sensors that sometimes make the elevators take off without the player.

This will most likely push the work on my second level to the side for a while, but I think that updating my first one, will be worth the effort.

The Next Big Thing

My first published level is doing well.  I have 24 people who have played it now, a couple of hearts, and a couple of thumbs up.  Some of those folks gave me some great feedback on how to make it better, but at this time I am unable to make any changes.  I downloaded LBP so I could trade in my disk towards buying LBP2.  Turns out that the content I got with the disk version (Game of the Year edition) is not available to me anymore unless I purchase it.  Oops!  Until I get around to buying those packs, I decided to begin work on my new level.

As with the last one, I am working out all of the technical parts first.  The first big one I am working on is a puzzle akin to the old “pipes” games.  The player needs to create an electrical path to two locations by rotating either a row or column of “path pieces”.  The first step was to find a way to rotate the pieces. 

My design is a 5x5 grid of wheels that will rotate in 1/4 turn increments.  Since each wheel has a single motor bolt, and that means I can only have one trigger per wheel.  I finally came up with a matching 5x5 grid of pistons and magnetic keys that activate either one row or one column of motors.

This grid is controlled by a 2-way switch and 5 buttons.  The buttons allow the player to select row/column 1-5 based on how the 2-way switch is set.

The switch allows the player to select either rows (lever to the left) or columns (lever to the right).  The switch moves a line of magnetic keys left and right to move them under the magnetic switches that are activated by the 5 buttons.

When the players activates the button, one of the two magnetic keys will activate a piston in the controller unit for the row or column selected.

The piston will push a magnetic switch towards the matching magnetic key until it activates.  The magnetic switch is connected to the pistons for all 5 row or column pistons in the “OR” switches that control each motor bolt in the 5x5 grid.  This will activate all 5 magnetic switches for a row or column, which start the matching motor bolts.  Since I am in the development stage, I just have them connected to a 5x5 grid of LED lights.

In this example the 2-way switch is set for row and I am standing on the 2nd button.  You can see that all lights in the 2nd row are lit.

In this example the 2-way switch is set for column and I am standing on the 2nd button. You can see that all lights in the 2nd column are lit.

Eventually, when I add the wheels, I will add the connections that briefly break the connection in the row/column control unit that will turn off the “OR” switch and stop the wheel rotation each 1/4 turn.

The controller units for each row/column are part of a multi-level elevator, with controls, designed by DEFCON01.  I just adapted it for this use.  If you want to see his elevator design, which will be used in this level and my first one when I can edit it again, just search for “DEFCON01 elevator” on YouTube.

Are We There Yeti?...version 2

After much delay, and much video gaming, I finally republished my level.  Taking into account suggestions from fellow game developer Ben, I fixed the problems he encountered, and made some modifications to enhance the level.  One cool thing I was able to do was to make the snowball emitters better. 

He told me that having them just pop out of nowhere was very frustrating and didn't look good.  They needed to look like thery were coming from somewhere.  I found some great looking pipe pieces in my tool set and used those for a location where the snowballs come from.  To make it so it didn't look like they were random pieces of scenery, I added a matching number of pieces and a stone wall at the top of the mountain.  I added a steam enging sound effect and a vent on the stone wall, and VOILA! A snowball machine.  I wanted to use stickers to make an "ACME Snowball Machine" sign, but the letters offered are not in the style I wanted so I just let it go.

There are a few other additions, changes, fixes, and so on.  If Ben wasn't reading this I might mention them, but I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Published, now on to version 2!

I did some final tweaking, added background music and sound effects.  Tested, tested, and re-tested, and decided it was time to publish my level.  I put it out and sent a message to friends, and folk I have met playing LPB online.  No sooner had I published it than I remembered I forgot to add one final element.  It was the yeti’s house, which doubled as the façade that covered up one of my more complicated mechanisms.

I jumped back into edit mode, added the yeti’s house and republished.  As I watched the count of people who played the level climb to 7, but nobody finished, I wondered what was going on.  I played the published version only to find out that my yeti destroyed itself as it snagged on something.  I went back to my workshop and found out it was doing the same thing there.  Who would have thought that adding an object would cause that to happen.  My friend Ben called that the “Butterfly Effect”.  Guess I should have tested after adding that object.

He also sent me an e-mail with some feedback, and much to my surprise, he had a problem before that.  Now, with his notes in hand I am working on version 2 of my level.  Making some changes here and there, hopefully for the better.  My only fear is that some of my shapes are too complicated to modify anymore so I might need to redo large pieces to make this work. 

It is what it is…

Sometime you gotta play a little to get ahead

I’ve been working on the section of my level that takes place in an ice cave.  I was having a difficult time giving it that snowy/icy look.  Part of what I did was use the glass material on the third layer, and stone on the other two layers.  I put a sticker over the stone that was actually the hair for the X-Men character “Storm”.  It had a nice fade from white to a frosty blue and did a decent job of looking cold.

Next, I was having problems with my shapes.  I kept getting a message that my shapes were too complicated, and I couldn’t add anything else.  I looked them over closely, but couldn’t see what was so complicated.  I tried deleting portions of the shapes, but it didn’t make much of a difference.  What finally made the difference was using the corner editor.  I discovered that when I was drawing the shapes, or erasing portions, that the process was creating 3-4 corners for what I thought was a single corner.  By going around the edge of the shapes, I deleted about 75% of the extra corners.  This allowed me to continue adding to the shapes and make my design a little more solid looking.

Finally, when I was playing this weekend, I managed to get to the final section of the game.  Trying to track down the “Collector”.  Apparently he is the big bad villain that is causing all the trouble.  One of the prizes I won was the “Snow Paper” texture.  This texture is a grabbable material covered with sparkling snowflakes.  The perfect thing for my ice cavern.  Using the material changer, I did a quick update on the pieces I had made so far and VIOLA, ice cave.  Glad I took some time out play.

Time to get back to work!!

So, after a brief hiatus, while I kicked some corrupted butt in Prince of Persia, it's time for me to get back to work on my level.  When I left off, I had finished making some changes after an impromptu playing of my "level so far" by a random person I met while playing online.  Got those little glitches fixed, and now I am moving forward.  The next section takes place in the ice cavern of the ferocious yeti (screaming in the background as menacing music plays).  I am experimenting with materials in this part by using a glass material to give it a shiny glowy look.  This section is also going to have a few surprises, and even a few ways to die.  One of the surprises involved something popping up in the background.  I used a "thin layer" piece of the glass to obscure the object a little, and added bright red LED lights on the object for evil-looking eyes.  Well, long story short, the LEDs are on the same "thin layer" so the object got stuck.  Thankfully I placed the object on the third level so I just moved the obscuring glass to the 2nd "thin layer" and all is well again. 

I am also experimenting with the thin glass layers to add icicles hanging from the ceiling of passages and such.  It's just one way I am dressing up the level to give it a more finished look.  Hopefully I can finish the rough design of the ice cave this week, and get alot of it built over the next week.  After the ice cave is done, I just need to add the finishing touches to the village and the rock cave and it might be ready for a full-on test run.

No more breaks, unless I decide to go back and find the last 30ish light seeds in Prince of Persia.

Sack in the Saddle…Again

Well, my break from working on my LPB level was a nice one, but now I am working on finding a balance so I can keep playing and working on this at the same time.  But I digress.

I was able to finish roughing out the first third of the level.  I put all the elevators in, a few moving platforms, and even a cannon.  I am having a problem moving forward, something like writers block.  I’m sure if I just keep working on it I will continue to move forward. 

One thing that helped was meeting another player online.  I asked them if they wanted to see my level so far, and they followed along.  One thing this helped me do was a run though with someone who didn’t know the level.  I found a few technical issues, so I need to redesign a couple parts.  Both are elevators.  Anyway, this person started adding objects and slapping up stickers.  They apologized for messing with my level, but I decided to keep the changes. 

When I saved the level, I got a new trophy.  This one is for building a level with another player.  Bonus for me.  I sent them one of the objects I built as a thank you, and I have a new PSN friend.  With that little break, I think I can get back to designing.

Been a productive week

This past week I made good headway on this project.  I learned how to place large blocks of material, one layer at a time, to make it easier to carve out passages and rooms in the level.  I built two mine-shaft-style elevators, a hidden point bubble cache, and figured out how to use water to add a little detail to the level.  The biggest piece I completed was a giant “ferris wheel”, but that’s all I’m going to say about that.  Don’t want to give away too much.

One lesson I am learning, and it is something I read about in a forum, is that scale is an important thing to consider.  I started working on a vertical passageway, trying to add a little platforming element.  I quickly discovered that if I made the player jump their way to the top, they would probably quit playing the level.  I need to figure out how to eliminate some of the vertical climb while maintaining the pieces I already placed.  Shouldn’t be too hard, I hope.

The Game is Afoot

Well, on the heels of a big breakthrough with the combination lock door, I decided it was time to start building the environments the player will run through.  I was a little concerned since the door used about 1/16 of the allowed storage space for the level.  That did not bode well, since I have other relatively complex pieces to add. 

I put some large blocks of materials into the blank level to see how much of the space they would take up in the allowed limits.  The good news was that they didn’t add that much to the used storage space.  It looks like I will be able to put in all of the elements I have, and will design.

Today, I build a door that will give the user access to the first section of the level.  It went pretty well.  I used a wiggle bolt to connect the door to the stone background.  When it is activated, the door swings open, like it is on a hinge of sorts.  Like the other door, I found a sound file called “creaking cog” (or something like that) that plays while the door swings open.

Next on the agenda?  Either working on the decorations in the village, or start working on the cavern portion of the level.  I need to figure out how big to make it to hold the elements I want to have.  That, and design the elements that are going in there.  I have the sketch done, just need to find out if I can actually build the things I want.  If this continues going well, I think this is going to turn out nicely.

And now, the rest of the story. . .

I thought that I would take a moment to talk about the rest of the pieces of the door/combination lock I showed in the previous post.  Other elements I put in the device are a sound emitter, and the door itself.  Both of them are activated when the two-way switches are set correctly and the blocks in the lock are extended fully.  If you take a close look at the top of the door, and the last block in the lock (hey, that rhymes), you can see what I had to do to make sure the door only slid up. 

I added a magnetic key on the door, matched with a magnetic switch at the top of the door pocket.  When the door pulls all the way up, it activates the switch, which triggers…wait for it…wait for it…the last block in the lock which is made out of dissolving material.  When the block, which holds the magnetic key that activates the door and sound emitter, dissolves, the magnetic key is destroyed and the magnetic switch that turned on the door and sound emitter shuts off. 

All that is left to do is to go back and build all of this using grids.  That will ensure that everything lines up nicely, and that I use the minimal amount of materials to build it.  Once that is done I can save it as an object and prepare to place it in the final level.

Lock Success

My idea was to create a combination lock to open a door.  I did a little searching on Youtube to get some ideas for the combination lock, and I was not disappointed.  There were a number of solutions using two-way switches, connected to pistons, which moved blocks of material back and forth.  The last block has a magnetic key on it.  The basic idea is that if you set the switches in the correct combination of off and on, the pistons extend fully and the magnetic key on the last block activates a magnetic switch, which is connected to the piston for the door.  If the switches are not in the correct position then the magnetic key cannot activate the switch.

In order to make it something more that just “flip a switch and open the door”, I discovered I could reverse the pistons that move the blocks.  What this does is to collapse the piston if the switch is in the “on” position and extend it if the switch is in the “off” position.  Since all pistons need to be fully extended, this allow me to create a combination of “on” and “off” needed to open the door.

The best part is that you can reset the combination to anything you want just by modifying the “reverse” setting on the pistons.

To give the player a visual clue, I added small colored LED lights that turn on and off with the switches.  This way you can leave a clue about the switch settings somewhere for the player to find.  Since I couldn’t connect the two-way switches to the lights, I had to build the device just above the wall.

Here’s a picture to give you visual to go with my description.  Any yes, that is the one and only Ironman building my level.

Still Trying

I spent some time trying to get the “object spitter” (see the drawing in the previous post) working better.  One of the tricks I had to use was to add a “loud crash” sound emitter for every object that gets spat out.  I had tried to use a single emitter, with a range that would sense the magnetic key the entire time, but it only played the sound once.  There was no setting that would loop the sound.  It still works since the “comic boing” sound, which is played each time an object is spat out, can still be heard over the crashing.

The next issue is to get the right settings for the object emitters.  I had to find the right combination of the various settings to get a single object to pop out.  I finally decided to go with a 5 second delay between objects, infinite life span, infinite number emitted, and one emitted at a time.  It works a little better, but still not quite what I am looking for. 

The only other thing that would help with this is to find a way to make the piston only push down, without destroying it.  My solution for that was to make the block, that the piston pushes down, out of dissolving material.  When it reaches the bottom it activates a magnetic switch which “activated” the block of dissolving material causing it to dissolve.  This works fine, but I have to reset the level each time I try it.  This gets a little tedious, but if I don’t connect the switch to the block, then it doesn’t dissolve.  There has to be a better way.

Sometime Failure is Funny



Disolving Material Switch

 Today I decided to take a break from my combination lock to design an element that should be much easier.  Basically, the device "spits out" various objects combined with sound effects.  My original idea was to use a stack of blocks made out of the special disolving material (DM).  This stuff is cool in that it vaporizes when you activate it, usually with a magnetic switch (squares on the left in the picture).  I thought I would place an iron block on top of that stack, with a magnetic key attached to it.  The key would activate the magnetic switch which, in turn, would activate the block of disolving material just below it.  This would cause the iron block to drop onto the next block of DM which would trigger a magnetic switch to "spit out" an object (circles on the right in the picture), play a sound effect, and activate the block of DM just below it.  This cycle was supposed to happen 5 times.  Well, to paraphrase Thomas Edison; I didn't have a failure, I just figured out how not to accomplish this.  The DM blocks disolved so fast, my iron block pretty much just dropped straight to the bottom without any hesitation.  I got a good laught out of that and went back to the drawing board.  I ended up attaching a piston to the iron block with the key.  This piston slowly lowers the block, activating each switch with a slight delay in between each one.  Now to fine tune the "spitting" and sound effects and all will be good with this device.  Maybe I can get back to designing that combination lock later in the week.