So I've been making Soundodger levels for some time now (and currently working on a level pack, which I barely worked on for the past few monthes) but I've noticed is that there isn't a lot of Soundodger levels. So maybe making a guide will help increase that number.

Before you make a level, you have to pick a song for that level. I'd recommend a song where the notes are easy to hear, or a peaceful song. Or you can just make a level that you don't fire bullets to the music, but instead a level to test out your originallity with attacks (which will help a LOT.)

Before we get into making levels, theres different things that are needed to be explained. I'll be explaining the main things.

When you begin making a level, click the gear in the top left corner to change settings, from song author, level author, level name, song name (I think.), number of enemies and the level's colors. The colors are decided with html codes, which are codes that feature letters A-F and numbers 0-9.

In a level there are 3 main elements. Bullets, Spin Cycle, and Time Warp.

Bullets are self-explainatory, you dodge them or collect them depending if their heart bullets or regular bullets.
To fire bullets you use a marker to select when they'll fire.
Spin Cycle makes the enemies spin faster or slower with markers that also decide how long they spin.
Time Warp multiplies the speed of the Spin Cycle and Bullets. It uses markers just like the Spin Cycle however it's still very different.

The only element I really need to explain is Bullets so yeah.
Theres 4 types of different bullets, 4 main modifications and 4 patterns to shoot them in Soundodger.
Also every bullet has at least 1 color modification.
The normal bullet has 2 variations for 2 different colors, and the normal bullet is a plain ordinary bullet, nothing special (besides 2 colors).
The homing bullet is also self-explainatory, it homes in on the player and flies in a straight direction when it runs out of power.
The bubble bullet is a "special bullet." Its a giant ball. That's all....
The final bullet is the heart bullet, a bullet you can collect without penalty. Heart bullets appear in regular levels to unlock extra levels in the campaign. They also give the player a shield in regular mode when you collect them so you can get hit by a bullet without getting "hurt." However they can only be made in player-made levels with a ctrl+[letter here (h or f)] command when selecting a bullet marker.

Now for the bullet modifications.
Theres 4 main modifications: Number, Speed, Cone Size, and Offset.
Number and speed (tip: bullets need to be at least speed 4 to definitely get into the arena.) are obvious.
Cone Size is how big the bullets will spread. Yes, I said bullets . You need more than one bullet for Cone Size to work.
Offset is basically the angle that the bullets will fire at. It ranges from -90 to 90.
Oh, I'm missing something. You can also pick which enemy the bullets fire from.

Now the patterns, where things get really original.

Theres 4 patterns, just like I mentioned. Normal, Wave, Stream, and Burst.
Normal is self-explainatory however the others aren't.
Wave and Stream have 2 counters for the modifications which has a top counter and a bottom counter. The top counter happens first and the bottom happens last, just to explain it easily.
Wave is the pattern where creators can get the most creative. It basically is normal bullets but happening all at once.
Stream sets up a stream of bullets that fires from an enemy that progress into something else or stays the same, you can also change how long the stream lasts for.
Burst also has 2 counters for the cone size and speed modifications, however for one reason. To make an explosion like effect.
Burst basically uses rng to decide where the bullets will end up and which one will have what speed. It also has the bullet number max set to 50 in-game.
However, just because Wave, Stream, and Burst are unique patterns and all. There are still perks when you use the Normal pattern.

Now with this knowledge, you can make your first level. However, there is still one thing I can tell you.
There is a way to modify the player-made level files using Notepad or a typing program like that on your computer.
With it you can basically go past the limits set for each element, with it you can make 0 bullet bullet-markers or make the time warp go extremely high.

Thats basically all.
Have fun!