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Level Editor - Feedback
8 months ago  ::  Apr 17, 2009 - 12:26PM #1
Hazel.H
Posts: 2

First of all, great work!  It's a really nice little puzzle game.  I work as a level designer, so of course I went straight for the editor Smile  There are a few issues with the editor and some with the game in general.  Long post ahead...


 


Editor:


- The ramp pieces seem to unlock late in the game. Because they are key gameplay construction objects rather than decorative, I feel they'd be more useful nearer the start.   I was looking for the small wedge ramp for ages, and got somewhat frustrated unlocking treestump after treestump.  The ultimate comedy moment came at the end of the game, on completing it showed the ending screen and "you have unlocked.... another treestump!" Yell


- You can't build ramps next to eachother in the editor (unless I'm missing something).  Ramps can only be one square wide.


- Terrain edges between two islands are too wide apart to place gate-bridges across.  I got around this by placing a bridge start piece to shorten the distance, but I'm guessing there are some alternative edge pieces that stick out a bit more.


- Undo, selection and building ramps is buggy with edge pieces.  Sometimes terrain squares go missing and need to be replaced.  Edge pieces are sometimes generated around bridges when a ramp is placed nearby.


- It would be nice to be able to adjust the radius of catapult triggers, or even set a target for them.  I was planning a more complex puzzle with these, but because of a few trigger radius overlapping it isn't going to work.


- The "toys" limit seems low compared to the stock levels.  I understand the need for optimisation, but is there a reason why the number of toys seems so few compared to stock levels?


- Changing view is cumbersome.  In most editors I'm used to switching views often.  In flock, switching between the top down and zoomed out views is very useful to align things, but it's buried in two levels of menus.  Perhaps you could replace the click and drag selection on RT (which doesn't seem that useful) with cycling through camera views.  The view mode is also not retained after exiting test mode and returning to the editor.


- A show collision tool in the menu would be useful to determine where there might be small unwanted gaps or bad alignment, just by drawing a box around each object.


- When poo is placed, it usually goes under the terrain.


- There are two ground icons in the item list.  Unless it's something I haven't unlocked by playing multiplayer, is it meant to be there?  It just scrolls straight past and I can't select it (there is no padlock icon).


- Many custom levels in the download list have a name set as "BLANK".  It looks like users are just forgetting to set a name before uploading or not bothering.  Perhaps a warning could pop up when saving the map if the name is set to "BLANK".


 


Game:


- Shrunken sheep often get stuck on fence posts when trying to go under them (they try to go around instead).  I got around this in the editor by overlapping the fence posts with hedge pieces slightly.


- The gate-boulder mechanism isn't always reliable.  The gate often closes or swings into an awkward position.


- User profiles can't be renamed.  I tried to rename mine after finding out it always fills in the "author" field automatically in the editor, but messed up my savegame.  I can retype the author name, but the maps show up in the downloaded list rather than the my maps list.  Users can also rate their own maps this way.


- Fallen fences should not collide. Even after it's been removed as an obstruction, it still obstructs animals from passing unless you have the tractor beam to lift it up.


- Several of the levels (I think it was somewhere between 40-50) got a bit tedious.  There wasn't much new in some of these, like more complex combinations of puzzles.  They just seemed the same as before, but longer and more spread out.  Maybe that's more of a personal preference though.  I tend to like smaller levels with a challenging time limit.


 


Hope this helps, looking forward to the patch Wink


P.S: I've uploaded three levels if you're interested - Baaathtime, Thunderball and Bridgetopia Tongue out

8 months ago  ::  Apr 17, 2009 - 4:44PM #2
RobbyZ
Posts: 190

Thanks for the feedback Hazel.H


> The ultimate comedy moment came at the end of the game, on completing it showed the ending screen and "you have unlocked.... another treestump!"


You may not have noticed, but you also unlocked something way awesomer


> You can't build ramps next to eachother in the editor (unless I'm missing something).  Ramps can only be one square wide.


You have to turn off auto-edging


> - Terrain edges between two islands are too wide apart to place gate-bridges across.  I got around this by placing a bridge start piece to shorten the distance, but I'm guessing there are some alternative edge pieces that stick out a bit more.


Brigdes are supposed to work as one grounded bridge piece linked to one of the varying lengths of bridge linked to another grounded bridge piece... you might be able to get them working in other configurations though being the physics engine is pretty flexible.


> - Undo, selection and building ramps is buggy with edge pieces.  Sometimes terrain squares go missing and need to be replaced.  Edge pieces are sometimes generated around bridges when a ramp is placed nearby.


Yes, recommend you turn off auto-edging whenever you get to this fine-tune work.  Auto-edging works best for the large brush strokes of level design


> - It would be nice to be able to adjust the radius of catapult triggers, or even set a target for them.  I was planning a more complex puzzle with these, but because of a few trigger radius overlapping it isn't going to work.


> - Several of the levels (I think it was somewhere between 40-50) got a bit tedious.  There wasn't much new in some of these, like more complex combinations of puzzles.  They just seemed the same as before, but longer and more spread out.  Maybe that's more of a personal preference though.  I tend to like smaller levels with a challenging time limit.


Good feedback, we're looking at things we might add in for future patches now, so you never know... ;)


> - The "toys" limit seems low compared to the stock levels.  I understand the need for optimisation, but is there a reason why the number of toys seems so few compared to stock levels?


Yeah, we had to limit it on consoles to limit the possibility of players tanking their framerate by putting too many of the FPS-consuming entities in one place.  We could potentially unlock it on PC


> - Changing view is cumbersome.  In most editors I'm used to switching views often.  In flock, switching between the top down and zoomed out views is very useful to align things, but it's buried in two levels of menus.  Perhaps you could replace the click and drag selection on RT (which doesn't seem that useful) with cycling through camera views.  The view mode is also not retained after exiting test mode and returning to the editor.


> - A show collision tool in the menu would be useful to determine where there might be small unwanted gaps or bad alignment, just by drawing a box around each object.


Yes, good ideas! :)


> - When poo is placed, it usually goes under the terrain.


Hold down A button, it's actually a variable height thing


> - There are two ground icons in the item list.  Unless it's something I haven't unlocked by playing multiplayer, is it meant to be there?  It just scrolls straight past and I can't select it (there is no padlock icon).


Not sure on this


> - Many custom levels in the download list have a name set as "BLANK".  It looks like users are just forgetting to set a name before uploading or not bothering.  Perhaps a warning could pop up when saving the map if the name is set to "BLANK".


Possibly, or we'd get a bunch of maps named "asdf" instead :P


> - Shrunken sheep often get stuck on fence posts when trying to go under them (they try to go around instead).  I got around this in the editor by overlapping the fence posts with hedge pieces slightly.


Yes, we're looking at including in the patch a solution for this


> - The gate-boulder mechanism isn't always reliable.  The gate often closes or swings into an awkward position.


Yes, originally we intended to have the gates swing back into place after a set time, but in practice it seems a bit random.  In the patch, we may disable it altogether.


> - User profiles can't be renamed.  I tried to rename mine after finding out it always fills in the "author" field automatically in the editor, but messed up my savegame.  I can retype the author name, but the maps show up in the downloaded list rather than the my maps list.  Users can also rate their own maps this way.


Hmm, interesting


> - Fallen fences should not collide. Even after it's been removed as an obstruction, it still obstructs animals from passing unless you have the tractor beam to lift it up.


We've noticed this too, looking at patching it.


Thanks for the feedback, and the levels! :)
8 months ago  ::  Apr 17, 2009 - 7:28PM #3
Hazel.H
Posts: 2

Thanks, I hadn't noticed the disable auto-edging option before.  That explains the greyed out terrain icon too.


Edit:  It would be handy to have that togglable with a button on the controller too.


I enabled auto-edging, but the side pieces for ramps aren't there.  Forgot to mention you can't rotate hedges or fences to go on a slope (I just placed a few short ones along the edges instead).


When I mentioned bridges, I meant the gates you pick up, rotate and drop over a gap.  With auto edging on, the default edges make dropping a bridge into place very fiddly (but possible).  With the double edge piece it sticks out further so the bridge fits more easily.  Not sure if this was intentional or not, maybe it should have a different description in the editor.



The auto-edging weirdness around rope bridges:


6 months ago  ::  Jun 15, 2009 - 5:37PM #4
soad667
Posts: 8

Today i started messing with the editor. I wanted to unlock as many items as i could, before laying my hands on it. Actually, the most important thing that i needed for a specific idea i had, were the small ramps.


Anyway, to make things short, i want to... add ten more votes for unlocking the maximum Toys number. It is way too small now and i'm glad to see that it's already been mentioned and you thought about unlocking it.


I worked on a couple of levels, done the basic terrain and the generic puzzle areas, but tuning the puzzles and filling the levels with details is something that we are very restricted to work on at this moment.


That's all................... ;)

6 months ago  ::  Jun 17, 2009 - 3:33PM #5
RobbyZ
Posts: 190

Have you beaten the entire campaign yet?  I'm trying to remember, but I think beating the campaign increases the total limit (but not 100% positive)

6 months ago  ::  Jun 17, 2009 - 4:56PM #6
soad667
Posts: 8

Yeah, i'm done with the campaigns, but haven't noticed if i got any reward like this. Except if it needs all gold or perfect (i'm missing 3 golds and 4-5 perfects totally on both campaigns).

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