Editor Tips

  • Challenge.
    Players will enjoy a challenge, but something too hard could make them angry. Try to find that delicate balancing point between easy and impossible. A good strategy is to make your maps start off easy, and get progressively harder. That way, you're encouraging players to improve as they play.

  • Take advantage of room reset.
    When a player dies, the room will be reset to the state it was in the last time he entered it. This means that if he hasn't left the room, enemies and objects that were destroyed will be brought back. If you use the special locks (see reference) to lock a player in a room until all enemies are cleared, he'll have to destroy all enemies in one life before he can leave.

  • A shooter needs things to shoot.
    Even if you're designing a fiendish logic puzzle, don't forget to give your players lots of stuff to blow up along the way!

  • Layout first.
    A good room layout is key to an enjoyable map. A good strategy is to lay out all (or most of) your rooms in the Map view before filling in their contents.

  • Don't make big blocks of enemies.
    I know the temptation is there to use the Place Rectangle tool to make a room full of enemies, but any room with too many moving enemies can drag down even some of today's fastest PCs. If you want to use high concentrations of moving enemies, keep your rooms small. Keep the number of moving enemies per room under 30 or so.

  • Always playtest.
    Be sure your level works from beginning to end before giving it out.

  • Use the keys.
    Letting players see locked doors they don't yet have the keys for will help keep them motivated, and will make your level seem bigger.

  • Hide things.
    Bonuses and weapons hidden behind destructable walls, or in tiny crevices in canyons or caves can help keep your rooms interesting.

  • Vary weapons.
    Don't give your players enough ammunition of one kind of weapon to last the entire level. Make it so they have to switch weapons every now and then.

  • See how the Room Generator works.
    If you hold down the shift key when launching the editor from the main menu, it will start with 101 rooms from the Endurance Mode level generator. This was made as a way of testing the generator during development, but it was so cool that it was left in.