I need help in creating game levels and worlds ?

Solar2D Composer
#1

Hi Experts,

I built a simple game using one of the tutorials in this forum. Now I am planning to develop game worlds and levels. So the players can select world ( this will be like a background) and levels to change the difficulty of the game.
I read storyboard but I am not sure if it is the best option and honesty I did not understand the real use of storyboard.
How can I achieve selection of worlds and levels at the start of the game? Is storyboard the right method or I am completely out of the solution , do I need to create separate .lua file for each level and then call the file based on user selection.

I appreciate sharing some tutorials about how to do such thing? Or explain how to start ?

Regards
Abdulaziz
 

#2

I would recommend Storyboard for this.  Back in the day, when I first started using Corona I didn’t understand scene managers and what they do (Director then eventually Storyboard) and my first app’s code is a disaster because I had to try and build all of these different “scenes”.   Once I made myself learn Director (then eventually Storyboard after it came out), it was a huge enlightenment.

When using a scene manager (and I’m going to be using Storyboard only going forward for various reasons), you have a separate .lua file for each scene.  In my apps that includes:

main.lua --\> splash.lua --\> menu.lua --\> help.lua                                      --\> gamecredits.lua                                      --\> gamesettings.lua                                      --\> levelselect.lua                                                           --\> game.lua (could be level1.lua , level2.lua, etc.                                                                         --\> levelcomplete.lua                                                                         --\> gameover.lua

Basically menu calls levelselect which calls the appropriate level for the game.  Just a note, main.lua is not a scene, it basically calls your first scene.  splash.lua would be optional if you want an intro or not.  You could go straight to your menu scene if you want. 

levelcomplete.lua would likely go back to your game.lua or the next levelX.lua if you’re using multiple files for your levels.  If the player looses, then the game level would go to gameover.lua and after gameover.lua you would go back to menu.lua.

It can get a bit tricky if you want to have a pause in your game where you save the existing level’s state, and then get  back to the menu in which case you would need a resume button that would skip level select and go back to your game level.

I would recommend building a simple app using multiple scenes before you get into more complex things, like maybe a menu, a level of game and a credit scene to get an idea of how they work.

There are multiple tutorials on using Storyboard available.  You can start here:

http://www.coronalabs.com/resources/tutorials/user-interface-scenes-and-widgets/

1 Like
#3

Thanks Rob for the detailed explanation and the comprehensive answer.

I do appreciate your time doing that. It gave me a very good idea about the storyboard usage. I will start playing with storyboard to build multiple screens and see how they work… 

Thanks a lot   :slight_smile:

Regards

Abdulaziz

#4

Hello, Abdulaziz

Here is my take on your question. I would definitely use storyboard to transition between scenes in the game, exactly as Rob describes it. Concerning the level files, you have two ways of going.

First way: If your levels differs in game logic and gameplay from each other in a major way, you can make the level files storyboard scenes. But I personally do not think this is the best design.

Second way: Levels with common gameplay call (require) a lua-file that contains the content of that level. The level-file is not a scene, but merely contains tables with words, image file names, etc. The specific things for just this level. The gameplay is most likely same across many levels and is using a single storyboard scene.

If your game contains many types of gameplay, you could arrange it in this way:

gameplayTypeA.lua (a storyboard scene) -\> calls levelA1.lua, levelA2.lua, etcgameplayTypeB.lua (also a storyboard scene) -\> calls levelB1.lua, levelB2.lua, etc
#5

Thanks Jensto,

You are right… my game is the same across the levels because it is just simple try to practice. The only change is the speed for enemies and background etc…

I am interested to know more about the thing you explained. How can I implement your idea? my game is as follows :

main.lua --> start.lua – > game.lua   ( all of them are storyboard scenes)

i want to do this way  : 

main.lua --> menu.lua --> levelselect.lua – > then goes to the game with parameters passed of speed and background pic etc but the code is mostly the same 

looking foreword for your advice,

Regards

Abdulaziz

#6

In your levelselect.lua you could have something like this. It calls gama.lua

local storyboard = require "storyboard" local levelList = {"level1", "level2", "level3"} -- Set your current level, maybe with a button... local currentLevel = levelList[1] local options = { effect = "slideLeft", time = 800, params = { levelSentToGame = currentLevel } } storyboard.gotoScene( "game", options )

In game.lua you need to take care of the variable (besides all other storyboard code…):

function scene:enterScene( event ) local params = event.params local currentLevel = params.levelSentTOGame -- This is the level passed from levelselected.lua print( currentLevel) local myLevelData = require(currentLevel) -- This gets the data in "level1.lua" end

You will in this case make sure the data in levelX.lua returns a table…

I hope this gives you an idea how you could arrange it.

#7

I see that I made a few spelling mistakes, but I hope it helps anyway…

#8

For my game(s), I make one file that has all of the gameplay and such inside of it, and load a single “data file” that gives level data. Something like this, since people are doing arrow notation :). I’ll just include the main file, the levelselect, and the game:

[lua]

main.lua -> levelselect.lua -> [save selected level as a value] --> maingame.lua [

  • Loads file corresponding to the saved value

  • Changes internal values like enemy speed, platform positions, time limit, etc according to loaded data

  • Sets up and performs level

]

[/lua]

If you do it this way, you can make a single change to maingame.lua and you won’t 'ave to go to each level and change it. That’s a nightmare, believe me - you’ll find yourself making millions of redundant changes 20 times every time you want to change something.

  • Caleb
#9

I think Caleb and I basically suggest the same approach. Keep the the game logic and the data connected to the level separate.

#10

Yep - the only difference is mine works even if you don’t use storyboard (I’m old-school and still use SceneManager… I probably ought to port over some day).

#11

Jensto, Caleb

there are always few ways to do the same thing :slight_smile: Thanks for giving more explanation to this issue.

Jensto,

i was able to send one variable only to game scene only such as currentLevel by making it global variable in levelselect.lua and send it as storyboard.gotoScene( “game”,  currentLevel )  then read it from game.lua as for example local level= currentLevel 

i was not able to send the options as parameters. i was getting error "attempt to index local ‘’ a nil value ‘params’  in game.lua line : 

local params = event.params

i tried to remove the local word but still not luck :) 

actually i did not get this working ? can you explain why what do mean by  :

 local options =
{
effect = “slideLeft”,
time = 800,
params = { levelSentToGame = currentLevel }
}

I appreciate your help

Regards

Abdulaziz

#12

Caleb,

how can you save the data back to main.lua?? what are you using to load the level file = saved data  ?? this is interesting too.

Regards

Abdulaziz

#13

I’m using my library, Singlefile, to save data; you can get it here: 

https://github.com/GymbylCoding/CoronaCode/blob/master/singlefile.lua

#14

I would recommend reading this blog post:

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2013/05/28/tutorial-goodbye-globals/

At the end I introduce the idea of having a “mydata” module (mydata.lua) that is a table that holds your data you want assessable from everywhere.  It’s like global data without the inherent problems of global variables.

Though generally speaking, main.lua isn’t a scene and you never really go back to it.  However, various events are best programmed in main.lua (like the android key listener, accelerometer, system events, etc.) and those functions may run at any time and could benefit from things  your scenes are doing.  This mydata method solves that.

#15

This link is very useful as well :

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/08/07/managing-state-between-scenes/

Regards

Abdulaziz

#16

As Rob says, it is never recommended to use global variables. Things can get really ugly and very hard to debug if by mistake use the same variable name in another module or scene.

Concerning the params you would like to send the hole options table. In that way you can control the transition AND send the parameters.

Check out the documentation for gotoScene also. The example code supplied with corona do not show parameter passing…

http://docs.coronalabs.com/api/library/storyboard/gotoScene.html

(When I test new stuff I always make a little test project to mess around in. Then you don’t have screw up your main project and have the possibility to toss the code if it is no good.)

#17

I have a question please.

I did similar as Jensto wrote above.

It works fine when level1 goes to level2. Images and variable are successfully loaded.

My problem is i cant’ go back to level1. It always show images from level2.lua.

I think the value of the last loaded lua is saved in package.loaded, so it wont load the level1.lua for the second time.

So how can i reload those images from level1.lua ?

This is part of my game.lua

[lua]

function scene:createScene( event )

  Level = nil

  local loadLvl = “level”…_myGlobal.lvl-- myGlobal.lvl save the value of level (1, 2, 3, and so on)

  Level = require(loadLvl)

  thisLvl = Level:new()

end

scene:addEventListener( “createScene”, scene )

[/lua]

Did i miss something?

#18

Are you using the same filename for the images? You could try to include the name as a string in the level files, and let them be different for each level.

You could also try to unload the the old level with storyboard.removeScene command.

#19

Make sure you’re adding all of your objects to the scene’s view:

[lua]

function scene:createScene(event)

  local group = self.view

  local myObject1 = display.newThingy()

  local myObject2 = display.anotherThingy()

  group:insert(myObject1)

  group:insert(myObject2)

end

[/lua]

  • C
#20

I realize you’re probably tutorialed to death, but checking out the JSON tute, along with Rob’s earlier method of JSON implementation helped me out immensely and is still useful for baseline file/variable management:

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2011/08/03/tutorial-exploring-json-usage-in-corona/

http://omnigeek.robmiracle.com/2012/02/23/need-to-save-your-game-data-in-corona-sdk-check-out-this-little-bit-of-code/