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Multiple Rooms/Levels Game-Editor Tutorial

So your character has happened upon a dwelling and wishes to enter or perhaps your character has reached the next level in your game. Either way you need to change the scenery and quick...

Two methods are:

1. Use Destroy Actor and Create Actor simultaneously to change the game environment.

2. "Transport" your view and/or actor to another area of your game environment where other artwork is drawn.

You can use any graphics you want for this, the key thing to keep in mind is the size of your view. Since I am a Pocket PC guy I like to use 240 x 320. I like the transport method also unless for example very few objects are changing and I don't want to leave my particular scene.

Let's start with a Splash Screen being our first "level" - when the game starts this is the first thing we see, then we make selections such as "Intro, Credits, Play" - and leave the screen.

Example: Grail Quest intro screen

Here we go!

1. Create your Splash Screen like I have shown, use an Art editor like Adobe Photoshop or PaintShop Pro. It's good to save your original project files so you can edit your text later but you will need to export out one of the recognized formats for GE such as GIF or PNG.

2. Crop the artwork around "Play" and save that off as it's own image.

3. Start a GE session, under Config set your Game Properties resolution size to 240 x 320 (Pocket PC).

4. Add an Actor "splash" and add your splash screen graphic as the animation.

5. Add an actor on top of your splash screen named "play" and add your play graphic as the animation. Adjust it so it blends right on top of the splash screen background, it should be able to match perfectly.

6. Add a Mouse Button Down event to "play" use the left mouse button as the event.

7. Use Add Action Script Editor:

view.y -=320;

THAT'S IT!

This will jump the view above your splash screen where you have your game waiting. I have a walking character there now who is the parent of the view so it follows him now. I have also set limits on his range so he can't walk onto the splash screen.

Now you can add onto this and add a Help Screen, Credits screen. Maybe when you press "Play" the button will change color, etc...

Tips from Makslane:
Put a Activation Region around the splash actor, and another around each level.

Your game will load faster this way and save memory if your levels have many scripts, or actors....

How to save memory?

Your splash screen will be unloaded when your Activation Region no longer intersects the view!

This makes it easy to have multiple levels in one ged file.

ALL DONE!!!
Now go make MULTIPLE LEVELS!!!

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