Suppose I was making a platformer..

[Jourdy288]

If I happened to be putting together graphics for a platformer, what what should the dimensions of the world be?i.e. how large is recommendable for a map?

 

[mindlord]

If I happened to be putting together graphics for a platformer, what what should the dimensions of the world be?i.e. how large is recommendable for a map?

Make your map size flexible. Harken back to Super Mario Brother 3. Some worlds were very tall, some very wide. Some were just one screen (think inside pipes). You shouldn't limit yourself in any arbitrary way.

 

[Cameleon]

I hate to say it but that is pretty much asking how long is a piece of string? Level sizes can vary dramatically between different sub-genres of platformer. Take a game like Super Meat Boy, it's levels are quite short but punishingly difficult, then something like Wario Land, Sonic or Megaman...you get the idea. I'd recommend designing levels around time rather than physical size, how long would you like each level to take?

 

[lulzfish]

Make it long enough to be interesting, but give checkpoints or save state or something to keep the length from being Fake Difficulty.


If you're going for a technical achievement, design the game to stream everything from disk and have all the levels linked together seamlessly.

 

[WizardStan]

I hate to say it but that is pretty much asking how long is a piece of string?

"Exactly as long as I want it to be"

 

[Cameleon]

I meant it's a kind of question with no definite tangible answer like the string question. A piece of string could be 2 inches, a foot, 27 miles or even 12 parsecs long. I was basically saying as long as you like without being absurd, like a level thats 2 hours long.

 

[WizardStan]

I meant it's a kind of question with no definite tangible answer like the string question. A piece of string could be 2 inches, a foot, 27 miles or even 12 parsecs long. I was basically saying as long as you like without being absurd, like a level thats 2 hours long.

I know. It's a common interview question, I gave the commonly recommended answer.


Which, interestingly enough, also applies here to level design

 

[foxblock]

I know. It's a common interview question, I gave the commonly recommended answer.


Which, interestingly enough, also applies here to level design

But his point still remains valid as you should never limit yourself _before_ you start working on the game.


Eventually the level should be large enough to hold all the stuff you want to put in there as well as not being too large and becoming boring (i.e. because of fillers or empty space).


Think about GTA San Andres, clearly someone said before development had started "We need to make the world 3 times bigger than before", now half of it ended up empty and pretty boring.


So asking such an arbitrary question without giving any more information makes no sense.


It always is a good idea to stay close to similar games (good ones of course and look over bad ones to see what makes them bad).


So yeah in the end make it as big as it needs to be and as you want it to be, if you have no idea how big that could be take a look at some real world examples.


Start to layout your ideas for levels and you will get a feeling of how big it needs to be, never start with a fixed bounding box and try to fit your ideas in there.


foxblock out


PS: Super Meat Boy is awesome, if you want to make a side-scrolling platformer you should really consider taking a look at it (it also currently is -50% on steam, so only about 7€).

 

[Jourdy288]

Thanks, I had the feeling, just wanted to make sure

 

[Klaue]

Think about GTA San Andres, clearly someone said before development had started "We need to make the world 3 times bigger than before", now half of it ended up empty and pretty boring.

YMMV - I prefer san andreas to every other GTA game just because the level does not consist only of city, but also of "boring", but beautiful woods and "boring", but fun to fly around in deserts. Of course, that doesn't really translate well to platformers.


as for the level size, I'd say it depends on the speed of the character. A big level seems to be small if you have a fast one (sonic) and a small level seems to be large if you have a slow character (mario).


Way more important than the level size is the handling - most flash platformers fail because the character doesn't jump when you want it to or because it has weird clipping, not because of the level size.

 

[lulzfish]

Also remember to make the camera view big enough to see things that could attack the player, or things he might need to jump over.


It's very annoying to see a platformer where your character takes up a (relatively) huge part of the screen and he can only see 10 feet in front of him.


I might be thinking of Sonic here.

 

[Bosbeetle]

8 big is reasonable

 

[Yannick]

Redefining the question a bit:


assuming i load every tilemap i need at level loading time using an sdl with layers style rendering system, how much textures can i load?


I'd say 128 megs of textures and arrays of data would be cool. keep some memory free for the OS and for some other random library stuff you want to do.


if you stream your textures depending on player position, there's no limit.

 

[WizardStan]

Redefining the question a bit:


assuming i load every tilemap i need at level loading time using an sdl with layers style rendering system, how much textures can i load?


I'd say 128 megs of textures and arrays of data would be cool. keep some memory free for the OS and for some other random library stuff you want to do.


if you stream your textures depending on player position, there's no limit.

Assuming 16 bit colour, that'd be enough for a million 8x8 sprites, 1000x1000 tiles. Scrolling around a giant layer is not a very good way of doing it though, it's long to load, long to display, and doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else in memory.