Tetrobot and Co.

Tetrobot and Co.

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Tetrobot and Co. Level Editor - Step by Step - Make a simple level
By nitram and 2 collaborators
A simple step by step guide to show how to create a very simple level and how to submit it!
   
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Go to the new Community Menu


The Community menu is accessible from the main menu, by hitting the little Post-it on the upper right screen corner!
Go to the Create Menu

From the Community Menu, two main choices are possible:
  • "Play": this is where you will be able to play levels the that have been published to the Workshop and subscribed by yourself.
  • "Create": this is the place where you craft your own levels! This is where you should go to proceed with this little guide!
Create a new Empty Level

The big "Create new Level" button will launch a wizard that will ask you few details about your level.

Your freshly created level will be added to the list of levels just below the "Create New Level" button. here you can see that I previously created a level called "Make him smile!".


Go ahead and push the "Create New Level"!

A little wizard like this should appear:

You can start to fill some info here, but have no fear: you will be allowed to change those data later. Here I just give a Title and a Description to the level and I hit "Create"!

This is what I get: an empty medium sized level using the "Mechanic (green)" skin:
(optional) Tweak the size and skin of screens
Now that we created an empty level, it's the best time to determine if the size of the screen feels correct.

If you do that later during the creation of the level, you'll have to redesign all your screen since:
  • there will be empty space added to the right and top of each screen if you increase the screen size
  • there will be erased blocks if you decrease the screen size (all the blocks on the top and right of each a bigger screen that don't feet in the smaller screen will be deleted)

The skin of a level can be changed with no irreversible modification to the level, but keep in mind that the properties of the skin are varying.
A "Water" skin will allow the cannon to shoot the player through water wall while the "Slime" skin will stick every block touching the ground. Choosing a skin will determine how the level is designed!


To tweak that, you can use the "Floppy Disk" button on the left toolbar:

Here I'm changing the level size to "Small" and the skin to "Mechanic (orange)". The "Mechanic (xxx)" skins have all the same properties, the change is only cosmetic!
Note that "Small" sized screen may be harder to design because you cannot place too much blocks on a screen.


You can see that we have 2 buttons "Save" and "Publish". For now I will use "Save". And this is what we obtain after changing the size and/or the skin:

Iterate to design your screens by placing blocks
Use the bottom inventory bar to select a block you want to spawn in the level.

By using the Left Mouse button in a screen, you'll be able to paint with the selected block.

Here I put some stone blocks in a tetromino style shape:

If you want to quickly test a screen you are designing, you'll have to hit the "Test" button (represented by the green play icon), or use the "Tab" key shortcut on your keyboard (much faster!)

The content of your level doesn't have to be consistent when you use the "Test" button (Tab shortcut, remember). So you don't need to worry about having a start point, an ending portal and so on.

Go ahead and add/remove blocks in your screen!

To remove a block in a screen, simply use the Right Mouse button on it. If you remove all the blocks from a screen, you'll get this scary blank grid:

Don't panic! Just add some blocks again, or press the "Test" button to create a blank screen again if no screen exits in the level, else you will be teleported on the first screen encountered in the level. Because yes, a level can be made out more than one screen!
(optional) Add more screens to your level
Like I said in the previous section, a level can be made of several screens.

To create a new screen, simply navigate in the level thanks the "Arrow Keys" on your keyboard.

A mini-map will shows up for a short time. To display this mini-map all the time, you can use the toggle button here:

As a result, the minimap will always shows as an overlay of your screen:


Then if you put a block in that empty screen, background and borders will appear:

Note that the mini-map was updated, with a new green square representing our new screen. But our 2 screens are not linked yet!
We could have used a "Slime" or "Water" skin, and then disposed some cannon on each screen to link them, but since we are using a "Mechanic" so we absolutely need to use the "Pipe" block!


By selecting the Pipe block and by Left Clicking and maintaining the Left Click, we are able to draw pipes in the screen. If you approach a border of the screen, the Inventory and the left Toolbar will disappear:

This will help you make your next step and spawn a Pipe block in the playground borders!

Note that at this moment, the mini-map gets updated again. No the 2 screens are linked! (link represented by a little green square between the 2 bigger ones).

This is good! But if you want the entire pipe to be functional without asking the player to find Pipe Entrance in the game and fix the Pipes by himself, you'll have to put some Pipe Entrance blocks near the Pipes. Like this:


and this:


If you don't want the Pipes anymore, you can use the Right Mouse click and drag over the cursor over the screen. If you reach the border of the screen, the Inventory and Toolbar will vanish to let you erase the Pipes between screens.

If you want to remove an entire screen, just press the "Del" key on your keyboard! Beware, there is no coming back! (no undo for now!)
Play, publish and validate your level
Once you're satisfied with your level design, you can play the level in its entirety by pressing the "Play" button:

Then, when you are ready to publish it and share it with the world, you can hit the "Submit" button that you will find in the window opened by the "Floppy Disk" button:



The level will then check its integrity. If something is missing in the level, the editor will return to Edit Mode and display some error window:

In the image above, there are 2 errors that we absolutely need to be fixed for all the level you'll submit: the levels must have an entrance and an exit!

The other errors (the "missing a Memory Block x/3 thing") are related to the goal of the level. In the "Floppy Disk" button menu, you are able to choose the goal of the level (Reach Te Exit, Collect Memory Blocks, Collect Key and Defeat Big Mama). Those goals imply the presence of given blocks (in my case: 3 memory blocks).

Adding those blocks will fix the errors. Or I could change the goal of the level to "Reach the Exit".

Once all the issues have been fixed, you are able to play you level! During the walkthrough, you'll be able to take a screenshot of the level with the appropriate tool:

This will constitute the thumbnail of your level! It's important that you take the nicest screenshot for your Workshop item.
If you don't take a custom thumbnail, a screenshot will be triggered automatically for you (just after the level started)

Once you'll reach the ending portal, you will be able to really submit your level thanks to this window:

By hitting the "Submit button", a processing wheel will shows up:

This process can take some time, especially when you upload your level for the first time (because of the thumbnail upload!).

When the level is submitted, you'll be redirected to this window:

From here, you can edit a new level, play levels from other creators, or return to the main menu!

That's it for this step by step guide! Your level is now online and will be listed in the Workshop here . Note that it can takes several minutes to refresh the Workshop with your item. Be patient and make sure to use the "More Recent" filter!