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Tutorial for the Last Legacy Designer
Hello everybody, this shall be the thing I've missed all the time when I've refused to get into LL's designer because it appeared to be way too complicated and tricky for me. Yes, it is tricky, and though it's possible to explore it on your own, this tutorial is supposed to make many things easier and give an overview about the possibilities of LL. It's especially directed to those who already have experience with SM63 designing.
Also, with RC3's Release, it's possible to view every level of the main game, so in order to look after certain trigger mechanisms, colour combinations etc., you might want to take a look at them, as well as other people's levels of course.
Table of contents
1. Main advantages compared to SM63's Designer
2. General overview
3. Tiling
4. Itemization
5. Triggers
1. Main advantages compared to SM63's Designer
2. General overview
3. Tiling
4. Itemization
5. Triggers
1. Main advantages compared to SM63's Designer
LL comes with many advantages that makes the designing process both more advanced, meaning that there are many more features to make levels more exciting. Many stuff we complain about not having in the SM63 designer is actually provided in LL. The main differences are:
- Tiling will hardly support any cutoff, because tiles can morph themselves in interaction with neighboring tiles, forming slopes and walls automatically. See the “Tiling” section for more detail.
- There are both foreground tiles and background tiles, meaning that it’s possible to overlap them without problems.
- Items can be placed within four layerings – Front, Mid Front, Mid Back and Back. These layer groups also define if foreground / background tiles will overlap the item or not. It makes the layering process much easier; the order of placement is only important within the same layering group.
- Many items can be customized extremely well, such as giving them a different colour or resizing them, etc. Tiles can also be differently coloured with Colour Boxes.
- Blocks and planets can be formed from all groups of tiles possible, by selecting tiles and clicking “create block” or “create planet”.
- It’s possible to change background within horizontal transitions, as well as there are vertical transitions. Music can be changed “anytime” with a trigger function.
- Signs and dialogs with NPC’s can be split into multiple text fields to be shown one after each other after a left click.
- If you make a mistake, don’t worry, there’s an Undo / Redo function. You can also copy items so if you place multiple items with the same non-default settings, you don’t have to change the default settings every time.
- The designer supports a very advanced trigger system; making it possible to let various stuff happen after certain events such as killing an enemy or hitting a switch; especially there can be cutscenes.
2. General overview
When opening the designer for the first time, you’ll see the screen you get when starting a new level, else you’ll be automatically directed to the last safe of the level you’ve worked on the last time, or to the last level you’ve played. There’s a bunch of menus and buttons at the top.
The camera is moved with both the arrow keys and A, S, D, W. To make the camera move fast, press Shift and use the keys that are assigned to character movement - in default, these are A, S, D, W. With this, the camera moves about as fast as SM63’s camera with maximal speed. In case if you already have a rather large level full of tiles, items and stuff, the camera might move slower than usual. Zooming works as usual with + and –, however, it’s not continous; there are discrete stages of zooming which go from 50% to 400%.
File menu: These menu’s items are saving, loading and resetting a level, as well as viewing course properties and exiting the designer. Saving works similar to SM63; press “Copy to Clipboard” and paste the code into Editor or Notepad etc. The second function, “Save to Text File”, is not recommended to be used. Loading and resetting works exactly as in SM63; note that unsaved data will be lost. The item below “New” will open the Course Property window. There are also quick push buttons for these functions right to the “Play Level” button.
Course Properties: This window shows the basic data of your level. It is split into three tabs. Tabs in general are always on the right of a window and not on top.
The first tab contains stuff that are familiar from the Course Info window of SM63, such as Name, Dimensions and Background, as well as Author (which doesn’t appear in SM63). However, the background consits of two parts, which can be switched with the respective arrow buttons, and the offset of the front background part is customizable (measured in pixel coordinates).
The second tab contains the music field. It’s possible to change the start of the soundtrack. To the right you can define the amount of delta power that can be used through the entire level, and if you enable the "start w/ delta powers" box, the character can use Delta in the entire level (except near negative delta orbs / shadow creatures). You can also alter gravity properties, though it’s recommended to use gravity zones and planets for gravity puzzles. In the third tab you can define the starting equipment of the character; look at the Complete ID list to make this easier.
Edit menu, View menu: The Edit Menu basically contains functions as Copy, Paste, Delete, Undo, Redo. It’s recommended to use shortcuts for this. When clicking “Controls”, the “Load Level” window will pop up for some reason. Within the View menu you can reset the camera back to the start position as well as changing the zoom, and there are also these functions:
- Show Non-morphed Tiles: Will display each tile in its real form instead of their interconnection (see Part 3: Tiling). Enabling this will usually make the level look very ugly, so it’s at most recommended to check out which tiles you have used to create a certain landscape.
- Display Grid: Displays the tile grid you also know from SM63. Disabling this is maybe recommended when you’re at widest zoom.
- Display Ground: Dunno what this is worthful when being disabled, so always keep this enabled.
- Display Transparent Boxes: If disabled, the rectangular scopes of Invisible Hitboxes or Colour Boxes won't be displayed. If you have a “gaudy” level full of colour boxes, you might want to disable this.
- Display Coloured Tiles: If disabled, all tiles will appear in their default colour not regarding colour boxes (but they’re still working of course), as well as background tiles will have the same colour as foreground tiles.
- Snap Items to 8x8-Grid: Automatically enables the feature of snapping items on this grid, without pressing Ctrl.
The help menu redirects you to Runouw.com itself (lol), and with the large, shiny “Play level” button you can test your level. Note that this is different from playing a level via “Extras --> Level Designer --> Play Level”. In this playtesting mode, pressing Backspace will let you return to the designer, and also enemies you kill won’t drop any coins or equippables. The “Test with Controllable Character” button will let you put a character you can use to e.g. test jumps across platforms, spikes or lava or such. However, this character won’t interact with enemies, as well as he doesn’t have a health bar nor delta powers. By clicking the “Test with…” button again, you remove him.
Your most important menu is the Layer menu, from which gives you access to all tiles and items, and allows you to switch between tiles / items and their different layering groups.
3. Tiling
As said, there are both foreground and background tiles. Both work the same way, and both are splitted between Ground Tiles and Building Tiles. Of course, foreground tiles will always appear in front of background tiles.
Ground tiles contain four tiles of each type of ground, and for Grass and Snow there are also four tiles without coverage – full tile, half tile and two slope tiles. This looks like almost nothing to form landscapes, but as noted above, tiles can change in interaction with other tiles.
- Flat slopes can be made by putting full tiles and middle tiles along the imaginary line of the slope.
- By putting the fitting slope tile on a vertical wall of full tiles, you get those “handles” the character can hold onto.
- By putting the fitting slope tile, or half tiles, beneath full tiles, you can create ceiling slopes.
If you feel like forming interesting landscapes would be rather demanding, it often works with placing Half Tiles or Slope Tiles all randomly around:
For building tiles, the auto-morphing process doesn't work for all tiles; it only works for the first seven tiles called “Castle Brick” and the "rough stone" group #244 - #261, while any other building tile will appear in the shown form, just as in SM63. Also pay attention to the fact that a few of the building tiles can also be passed through even as Front tiles.
Background tiles are shown a bit darker from foreground tiles to distinguish them from each other (unless you disable “Display Coloured Tiles” via the View Menu). Their auto-morphing happens independently from any foreground tiles. Pay attention not to leave a thin empty stripe at the border between Back tiles and Front tiles.
The Select button allows you to select a rectangle of tiles. When clicking “Create block” or “Create planet”, the selected group of tiles will be converted into a block or a planet. Front tiles will appear in Mid Front layer and Back tiles will appear in Mid Back layer at first. If you convert background tiles, the colour will be same as if you convert the respective Front tiles, and the effect of a colour box is lost. The colour combination to "undo" this effect is something in the lines of "Brightness -7.5, Contrast -30 and Saturation -5". If you want to restore the colour you had from a colour box, simply adding these values will usually not work.
For the conundrums of how to make a good-looking planet, check out this.
4. Itemization
Just like in SM63, items are placed by drag and drop, however, selecting items works differently. You have to enable the “Select” box for this, and after clicking on an item, the panel at the left bottom will display the name and the coordinates of the selected item. Now you can make use of the small Copy / Paste / Delete buttons and especially of the triangle at the right end of this panel, which will open the item’s window. By holding Shift, you can select multiple items at once to move / copy / delete them simultaneously.
As said above, items appear in four layering groups. Their interaction with the environment is usually as follows:
- Front items appear in front of every tile.
- Mid front items and Mid back items appear in front of Back tiles, but not in front of Front tiles.
- Back items appear behind every tile.
Note that the Start Position is always at Mid Front, which means that signs and doors, and many other items as well if you can do it, should be placed at Mid Back to stay in front of Back tiles, but behind the player.
If you want to change the layering of an item you've already placed, it's pretty easy. Just cut it (with Ctrl+X), go to the correct layer and paste it again.
Scaling: Many items, especially enemies and decorations, support features of rescaling and rotating. Scaling properties are always to be found on the first tab, as “scaleX” and “scaleY”, or either just “scale”. Values always indicate the relative changement compared to the default size. In the first case, you’re able to change proportions with different values in scaleX and scaleY. However, don’t exaggerate this, and items will also be unsharp if they’re too big. In the second case, horizontal and vertical size change uniformly. Mirroring can either happen by a direction arrow (for enemies) or by putting a “–“ at scaleX.
Colour Changing: Many items do have a colour tab as well, which will let you change its colour. It is quite tricky to handle, however. With the “%” fields you change the percentage of red, green and blue, and how transparent the item is, while the “tint” fields shift percentages in a non-relative way, as well as it affects the brightness.
“Brightness” and “Contrast” are self-explanatory, “Saturation” is for making the item more-or-less monochrome and “hue” changes the colour across the visible spectrum, from red to violet. Note that small values in “Brightness” already effect a significant colour change, while for "Contrast" and "Saturation" you usually need higher values. If the item is already rather grey-shaped, "Saturation" and "Hue" will hardly change anything. If not, "Hue" is often a strong tool to completely change the colour with one simple grip, even if it may involve some Trial-and-Error.
Platforms: All kind of platforms appear in the Interactive Menu. The first type, “Basic Platform”, already features all properties a platform can have, while all other types are pre-assembled special cases of a basic platform, making work easier. There are 11 types of platforms which can be chosen in the “Type” field. For the collision type, note that once you change the type to “11” (spike), it will automatically change to “Damage” and you can’t rechange it for some glitchy reason, so be careful with that!
The second tab allows you to let the platform move horizontally and/or vertically, or on a custom path. For horizontal and vertical movement, note that, other than SM63, the distance field always indicates the total distance the platform will cover, independent from its speed (there is no multiplication). A
custom path is build by adding points and the order of the points determines which path the platform will follow; so if you e.g. forgot a point in the middle, don’t add it, instead use the “Edit point” function to preserve the given order. The platform will either follow a straight or a curved path between two points each; its speed is constant, independent from the distance between two points. If the “Start moving” box in the first tab is disabled, the platform won’t move until it is told to do so by a “Play” trigger. This can be used for “touch and go” with the following scheme:
The third tab controls properties of spinning and tipping, making it also possible to let the platform flip over. For tipping, it’s possible to alter the strength of tipping, from almost no tipping to a total flip-over instantly when touching. The fourth tab lets you convert a single platform to multiple ones circling around a center, while this carousel can still have both movement and tipping/spinning properties. The fifth tab is a colour tab and the sixth tab is a trigger tab for events happening when the platform is touched.
All these properties (except for carousel) also work with blocks and planets, while these also support the common rescaling features, as well as gravity.
Switches, Invisible Hitboxes, Colour Boxes: Switches have the main task of activating events, controlled by trigger functions. Electric switches will have to be hit by a sword and can be both activated and deactivated, while a lever switch only can be activated once (however, there’s a trigger function to deactive it back). An invisible hitbox is a rectangular area which will trigger events for the first time it is touched, or continously as long as it’s touched; its dimensions are measured in pixel coordinates. A colour box has the ability to change the colour of tiles with its colour tab, and its dimensions are measured by full tiles (number of tiles being covered). If the box is in Front or Mid Front layer, it affects Front tiles only, else it affects Back Tiles only.
Level Splitters: As noted, horizontal splitters (transitions) allow changing your background and also changing their range even after placing. Vertical transitions are fixed though, once placed, you can only move them around. For horizontal transitions, the default setting is not the background from the area to the left, it's the basic background you chose in Course Properties. Tiles within the rows covered by a horizontal or vertical splitter won’t block it; use an invisible hitbox together with the "Move Character" trigger function instead to prevent the player from crossing a splitter.
Signs, when read, display framed text via the “Screen text” trigger function. The frame is customizable, also between different text functions, as well as other things can happen when reading a sign. Doors, of course, bring you to another place. Their frames contain every type of both classic doors and entrances into caves, however, only classic doors can be locked and can have an archway. You can determine its destination easily by the “Pick Spot” function, or by using an item tag. If you want to have an archway only, set the frame parameter to zero. Lava appears as an item and not as a tile in SM63, with customizable length, width and colour. Water works the same as lava, and when the character is in water, he can’t swim, but he can double-jump arbitrarily many times.
5. Triggers
Triggers are the heart and soul of the LL designer, bringing the designing process to a completely new dimension. Many items support trigger tabs that contain a program which is performed after a basic action, specificially:
- killing an enemy
- hitting / flipping a switch
- reading a sign or talking to an NPC
- opening a treasure chest
- touching a platform, block or planet, or an invisible hitbox
- collecting a square, Large Square or heart.
Within the trigger panel, press the cross button at the top left to add a new trigger function from the menu. When clicking at a trigger function in the list to the left, you’ll see a panel to the right explaining its functionality, and eventually providing some further customization. Trigger functions can also be copy-pasted for easier work, as well as they can be deleted. If you insert a new trigger function, it’s placed directly after the currently marked function; if no function is marked, it’s placed at the end. Many triggers do something with other items (e.g. moving them), so to know which items are affected by a trigger, you need to give it a name, called “tag”. Almost all items contain a tag field within their first tab, where you can give it a specific name all triggers can reference to. Many items can have the same tag to let things happen simultaneously. The tag “this” always refers to the item itself which performs the trigger action.
Important features of trigger functions are:
- variables which can store information about e.g. how many enemies have been killed (this is the mechanism used in Dimension 10: Strength). Note the different types of variables.
- flow controls which enable to repeat the same process several times or branch the process under certain conditions
- cutscenes, changing music or playing short sounds (if the player respawns, the music will be changed back to default, so put a Set Music thing over a respawn point if needed)
- weather effects such as Rain, Snow, Darkness and Earthquakes
- displaying text for signs, area titles and NPC’s
- moving items (e.g. blocks and lava) and teleporting enemies (as you know from Dimensions 10 and 14), or dissolving items (like the blocks with a glow at the bottom in Dimension 1)
- activating platforms (e.g. for a touch-and-go-effect), as well as pausing and resetting them
- controlling other triggers; there are functions which can e.g. tell another trigger (by calling the tag of its performing item) not to be activated anymore, or to play it though it's initial condition isn't fulfilled, or to stop it if it's currently running.
A detailed explanation of triggers can be found in this thread. Advanced trigger creations are also listed in this subforum.
And with this, I'm out.
