I’m adding a couple of things to the post-compo version of Pico Planets, mostly driven by the feedback I have gotten on my submission so far. Top two critiques have been: 1.) a way to reset if you drift off into space (v1.1, available at picoplanets.com/latest/ now kills you off quickly if you’re drifting away); and 2.) more levels.

Making good levels is tricky. When you’re typing in planet coordinates and radii by hand, it’s hard to tell how it will turn out until you test it. That process takes far too long. Instead, I figured I should build a simple graphical level editor.

Level editor preview: http://picoplanets.com/latest/editor.html

Right now, you can add, move, and resize planets and suns. You can also move and resize the goal planet and change the player’s starting position. The result is a JSON string outputted in a text field below the editor. Unfortunately, the game currently does not accept this kind of input. So, the next step will be to update the game app to make the levels dynamic, rather than hard-coded like they are now.

The blue ring highlights the selected planet, and the little dot is the resizing handle. You can drag the stage around in case you want to lay out a large level.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 at 10:29 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.