at csd: you're right, but I just wish everyone would stop worrying about all these issues when I keep trying to prove how they will be avoided.

and the problem with Zelda Classic and stuff is that they are ridiculously complicated. At least with my idea we don't scare off the average person with the complexity of the system. What I like about it is that it's simple for those who like it that way, but it still gives you more freedom and options if you ever want them, and without interfering with the original simplicity and stuff of the original setup.

But yeah, this idea really would change the overall type of game and community this would turn out to be. I just think that Aeon would be like 3 times better if we had this option. There are so many crazy ideas that I've gotten for levels while programming this game, mainly because of that debug option and simply planning things out to make sure the mixing of options will work fine. Maybe I should make a post with all of these ideas just to inspire you guys....

As I said in the previous post, I'm gonna post a ton of ideas that I've gotten in order to spark inspiration in all of you and further prove my cause of how cool the Custom Object feature is.

The first idea, you already heard: CSD's terrain pinball thing. Pretty cool...
Or you could turn on the gravity and simply have horizontal bumpers pushing you around. Could be great for fast-paced speed caves.

You may have also experimented with custom characters in the Debug Menu. If you feel like it, you could go in and make a character with running and crawling speeds set to your preferences. One interesting idea is to make a character that crawls faster than he runs, and you've just created a sort of "boost" button.

You can also experiment with character dimensions. For example, it might be cool if you made a really small character. And it might be even crazier if it had very agile movements, too.

And probably the best character option of all is to put in your own drawings and animations for the characters. You could literally make levels where you play as Super Mario, or as some guy from Dragonball Z, or make a new character yourself.

Another idea is to make tiles that fall up. Some people really liked this idea as you could use it to create elevators, flying platforms, etc.

You can also make flying tiles that fly in a certain path. This can be done by mixing a tile with the enemy commands to fly about a fixed path or maybe with some AI. You might want this for flying platforms that shift left and right. You could tease someone with a floating treasure chest if you want, or an arrow that moves around and you can hit it at a random time and get a different outcome based on when you hit it.

EDIT: Lol, I just got an awesome idea: make a level where the only treasure chest follows AI commands, and it's a speed cave, where you simply chase after the treasure as it flies through a bunch of traps.

And like the idea to create your own characters, you can also create your own enemies. For example, you can make Metroids that float around your level, or anything else you want.

You can also make enemies with your own dimensions, speeds, AI, or set paths. You can also make enemies that can interact with objects in the same way that the character can. You can also set their vulnerability, which specifies what kind of things (if any) can kill that enemy. You can also mix the enemy commands with object commands. For example, you could make an enemy that blows up like dynamite upon destruction. Or make it shoot a projectile. Or make an enemy that can never be destroyed, but it shoots an arrow at you when touched by something, or maybe at timed intervals.

You can also mix and match the entire projectile-shooting system. If you want you can make a crate that shoots an arrow at 30 degrees up from right. Or make an arrow that is affected by gravity. Or a dynamite arrow (technically, this will already be an option, I assume). You can also fire other OBJECTS, such as boulders or another arrow crate. 0_o Remember my idea to make a Flaming Boulder Cannon?!? You can make some really amazing things with this projectile system.

And if we never add an arrow crate that shoots 4 arrows in the four directions, you can make it yourself if you want.

You can also create custom dynamite, with explosions of different ranges and strengths. You can also change the explosion animation if you want.

You can even use features that weren't used at all for regular tiles. For example: extra friction when you walk on tiles. You can use this to create a sort of "mud" or "quick sand" to slow you down. Or you can use negative friction to accelerate you faster than your max running speed.

We can also make more custom object-exclusive options that weren't really used in the main game, such as the boost idea (which would work better than the negative friction idea) that some people really liked. Or you can create wind tiles, which would essentially be an invisible boost tile that doesn't push you very hard.

And as you've already seen, the custom terrain-background and level-background can be used to create some really cool effects

You can also create objects that, instead of staying floating in mid-air when you start a level, you can make them fall right away.

Also, projectiles (fired by arrow crates, for example) will be their own objects, and not a property of the parent object that it came from. This means that you could instantiate a flying arrow at the beginning of the level without having to wait for the character to trigger it. You can do this with dynamites too.

Also, you can mix an arrow with some enemy AI to make it travel a strange path. I'm wondering if we can make a system where we can possibly let you create your own AI path based on commands to change direction or speed or acceleration. Maybe...

You can also make objects react to water if you want. For example, each tile has a different falling acceleration for under water, and if you set that to negative, then it'll float, instead of sinking.


That's a lot of ideas, more than I thought I had. There are a few things here that we may be able to add without the Custom Object feature, but that would result in added options and decreased simplicity of the Level Maker program. Whereas, under the Custom Object idea, the Level Maker program would be made as simple as the CaveMaker: just pick your tile and your done; and if you want more options and stuff, go into the Custom Object editor. Then after you create that tile, you can just pick your tile and you're done. That, along with the idea to save tiles in a database, so that you can call up past Custom Tiles and essentially create a personal list of your custom tiles and maybe some favorites made by others.

Also to make the Custom Object feature easier to use, we'd have to set up the options in a sort of logical hierarchy where you go through a few categories to find what options your looking for. Such categories could be "Movements", "Destruction", "Projectiles", "Abilities", "Appearance & Animations". I dunno, this isn't very well thought out, but we could make it better with further planning and design.

But the biggest thing to make the Custom Object feature easy to use is to make a bunch of templates where people can start from that, as opposed to starting from scratch. Like a "General Enemy Template". You should also be able to import any already existing tiles (built-in or custom) and use that as a template. For example, if all you want is a steel crate that falls up, import the steel crate into the Custom Object editor, then change it's gravity settings.

Like I said earlier, if this Costum Objects thing will go through, it should be a seperate game from Aeon. Purely a level maker that will be hosted only on this site. I still won't like it, but if there will be a version of Aeon without Costum Objects that we can submit on other sites, I won't resist it either and I'll try to get the system to work as good as possible.

I dunno, that just seems impractical to me. It only makes sense if maybe it would be too big of a hassle to put in Custom Tiles in a version for other sites, but that doesn't mean that the version on this site can't have the full package. It just doesn't make much sense to me to break it up into two games. Other than that, I don't see any other good reason to break it up into two games because it's not like levels with and without custom tiles can't co-exist under one game.

And I really don't like the idea of planning the game to work best when put on other sites. I just prefer to think of making the best game we can and then figuring out how it'll fit into other sites later. And it's not like Custom Objects couldn't work on other sites either.

Unless your thinking is that such a feature like a Custom Object editor would only be acceptable in a sequel-type game because if it confuses anyone, they'll probably think "I'm confused b/c I didn't play the first game"? I dunno, explain your reasoning behind this idea...

Custom Tiles will most likely be too difficult to put on different sites. The best way to do this is by creating a Custom Objects database, otherwise the level codes will become far too big if you have to include stats and images for every costum object you want to include. A database like that won't be accessable by other sites.

Putting the game on other sites is basically a huge advertisement. There isn't any reason not to do it.

Actually, we can access the database from anywhere. The only way to gain access to it is if we make Flash load pages uploaded on this site, and then let the php on those pages handle everything else. Most likely the info will have to be put into the URL, unless I learn how to put in POST data when loading pages from flash. Either way, this means that it can be accessed from anywhere. The only thing stopping us is if those sites do not allow us to link to our own databases.

Thing is, if we do restrict them, then it means they are much much likely to join our site.

I doubt it. Just think of all the security and censorship issues if a person could upload an application that could load from different sites. I also doubt it would do the bandwith any good.

Edit: This was in response to Accel's post.

so that means a version of Aeon on another site will have to be completely dependent on copying and pasting in level codes. But like what Isa said, we could tell them to upload their level at interguild.org. Or would that be against the rules of some of these sites?

And would also mean that Custom Objects may or may not be included, depending on how much code they take up

Remember those games we rejected because you had to sign up to another site to use the level makers? That is never fun.

actually I don't think I remember those

and we're not really forcing people to sign up for the level maker, just to put them in a database.

we could say something like:
"Here's the level code. Copy it and share it with your friends!
[level code text box]
Or upload this level to the Aeon level database at interguild.org!"

or maybe that would just be weird

If you have a custom object database, you'd hope to have a way to create, upload, and import "packages".

That's really all I had to say. Carry on.

that's a great idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that.

I suddenly had an idea. You want a level maker with many costum objects. But why stop there?
Why, instead of a platformer level maker with near limitless options, we don't make a platformer game maker with near limitless options? A flash aplication with an easy interface, where you can make a set of levels, a basic menu, basic achievements and perhaps even an automatic level maker, which will allow you to make your own full game. You can make your own characters, your own style, your own story. RPG Maker XP, but for Platformers in Flash.

that's actually a really cool idea.

that way Aeon can be its own little game, and then it would make more sense to have such a feature as its own game. So it'll be like "The Interguild Platformer-Game Maker" or something? (assuming we want the site's name in the name for marketing purposes...). Then all the "games" will be hosted on the Interguild, and different engines built by players can be shared and even made levels for by other people. it could be awesome, and we could do so much more with it.

Not to mention it would probably mean that Aeon wouldn't take so long to make either

Well, I'm pretty much instantly sold on jell's idea.

which means that I can code Aeon to be rigid and not flexible at all, which makes it faster to code and everything, but less easy to change options around.

but this new idea is one heck of a project. It'll probably be the next big thing to work on after Aeon, and I imagine that we'll have to release a "simple" version of it first (mainly containing everything that would've been the Custom Object idea in Aeon) and then add updates to it over time. For example, I imagine that a good feature to have on such a thing would be the option to use either simple collisions or advanced physics. I'm not sure if I would ever get around to learning how to make my own physics engine, but I've seen at least one guy who made this physics engine in AS3 and was giving it away for free.

The coolest thing would probably be that people will be able to save their own games/engines, where everyone else can then go in and actually make levels for those games/engines using a level maker. I also imagine allowing people to tweak those engines a bit when they make their levels (for example, using tiles that the original engine-creator did not make, or changing an aspect of the character). But how we'll organize this in the level database, I don't really know. And hopefully it won't take a lot of memory...

but then again, now that this would be a new project, I should be thinking more about Aeon and then think about all this after Aeon is completed.

I dunno about this. As long as Aeon is created I'm happy, but if we go with this it has to be user friendly.

Got no experience with RPG Maker, hence my scepticism.  

yeah, the biggest selling point for this new idea would be that it's easy to use and no crazy learning curve required. It'll definitely be a challenge, though..

It's easy to create a new game in a pre-existing game creator versus it's easy to create a new level for a pre-existing game? Eh.

well, the user also has to realize that they aren't going to make something in 3 seconds. As long as the thing is easy to use and it doesn't freak you out by how complicated it looks. It should be like Photoshop, where there are several options but they are hidden and they only show up when you need them, as opposed to throwing them all at you at once.

plus, we'll have to set up the process of making a level to be as logical as possible. Maybe make a step-by-step intro process that holds your hand as you begin working with the features?

It usually takes me at least one week to create a level. To create a new game could possibly take me at least two months, easily, if the UI isn't VERY user-friendly. Don't you ever forget that things has to be user friendly for people to ever try your thing out if they're not hardcore gamers/programmers.

exactly. the point is that the program will handle all the hard stuff for you and that it's fast to make something. Since this is a platformer maker, that's already a huge part of the engine set up for you. And then we can go further and add several types of templates that you can start working off of, such as a tile-based game template, and even some templates for objects, such as standard block. Also character and ability templates: whether all you can do is run and jump, or grab things, or wall jump, slide, hover, fly, etc.

I have to REJECT Jell's idea.

Why?