Nifflas' Support Forum
Released Games => Knytt Stories => Topic started by: wolis on March 29, 2009, 10:54:21
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Hi guys,
Im sure the answer will be no, but Im hoping some third-party tool might have been written to show all the places (cells|areas|sections|room?) on one screen?
I cant imagine how one could make a new level without such a tool.
Thanks
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Its impossible to have this in Knytt Stories, due to the functionality called shifts and warps. It teleports you somewhere else. Now you'd say, thats not so much of a problem, right? But shifts are used to teleport you to an identically looking screen. Having a map that would show that you teleported kind of screws with this.
Alternativelly, the creator could build in a map system. This has been done before. Other than that, its not so much of an option.
I assume you're not talking about level editing, since you didn't posted your question in the level editing forum.
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(Presuming you mean something like this (almost maybe spoilery) map from WaDF (http://niffpage.greywool.com/files/Maps/WithinADeepForest/CrystalLine%20(Info).png).)
I cant imagine how one could make a new level without such a tool.
The way all levels so far have been made. The nearest was this thing posted on the old forum that put a BMP file of each screen of a level in one folder.
While something like this would be really neat, I don't know how practical it would be. The really big levels can have more than 1,000 screens, and any view of it would either be so zoomed-out it would be useless, or incredibly memory-intensive in its sheer size and detail.
Also, many levels are not entirely linear: there are shifts and warps linking disparate locations. A map of a boss battle, for example, would be useless, as it'd just show a long line of near-identical screens.
I'm pretty sure that most of the maps in the archive (like the one linked to above) were made using the source of the game. Before very recently, KS was closed-source, so this sort of thing couldn't be done. Even now, it might be unworkable because none of the levels or tilesets or gradients are actually built in to KS.
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Thanks for the replies.
Looks like Ill have to resort to physical pen and paper to map some of these levels.
I think my desire for a map comes from me not playing often enough to embed the whole area in my head .. it sort of dribbles out the sides and I forget which way Im going when I load up a level.
Maybe I resort to PaintShopPro and the old Alt + Print-Screen button and I build it as I go.
Thanks again.
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You could also use excel for this.
Just use a grid and map out where you've been by giving it a color. That way you can see in which screen you are, and where you've been. A next time you can then find out where to go. The advantage here is that its much quicker to do this than making screens.
In my example, the blue is where you've been already, and the green is the current location.
If your current screen has an exit up, left and down, you can now see that you need to go down.
You could even add a color orange for exits that are there but that you haven't visited.
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You could also use excel for this.
Just use a grid and map out where you've been by giving it a color. That way you can see in which screen you are, and where you've been. A next time you can then find out where to go. The advantage here is that its much quicker to do this than making screens.
This technique vaguely reminds me of The Legend of Zelda for some reason.
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You could also use excel for this.
Just use a grid and map out where you've been by giving it a color. That way you can see in which screen you are, and where you've been. A next time you can then find out where to go. The advantage here is that its much quicker to do this than making screens.
This technique vaguely reminds me of The Legend of Zelda for some reason.
Because it's exactly how Zelda games (and probably many other games) map? :P
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You could also use excel for this.
Just use a grid and map out where you've been by giving it a color. That way you can see in which screen you are, and where you've been. A next time you can then find out where to go. The advantage here is that its much quicker to do this than making screens.
This technique vaguely reminds me of The Legend of Zelda for some reason.
I was gonna say Metroid. X)
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More like castlevania, i would think..
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What if you dont have excel?
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What if you dont have excel?
Then I guess you're stuck. :crazy:
Nah, I'm sure there's plenty of free spreadsheet software you can do something similar with if you do a search on the Google.
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Or you could take a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. Considerably cheaper than Excel.
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Or you could take a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. Considerably cheaper than Excel.
Graph paper works even better if you're going to do this!
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Or you could go my way and do it all pixel-by-pixel in MSPaint :D
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Considerably cheaper than Excel.
That would be the openoffice.org spreadsheet program (I forget the name)
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Open Office Calc. I use that too :)
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Open Office Calc. I use that too :)
so do i. that's what i'm using to make the map of my new level (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=771.0)