About KS Level Submissions

originally written by Nifflas, subject to slight changes concerning "where to post your level" relatively soon

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About Level Difficulties

The Problem:

It's very easy to underestimate how hard your levels are. In too many games, levels are posted under Normal, when in fact the skilled player has trouble beating some parts. When it comes to all level designing, it's very important that you understand that your level is harder than you think, probably a lot. Even if you do not realize it, it might take 50 attempts to perform your timed jumps, and your logical puzzles may not have any logic to somebody else or require an IQ of 175 or more.

The Rules:

Compare your levels with the official Knytt Stories levels. If you're thinking about setting your level's difficulty setting to Easy or Normal, make sure it isn't as hard as An Underwater Adventure.

Level Categories

The Rules:

Before you categorize your level, read carefully how the categories are meant to be used. For example, the description of Environmental is No puzzles, no monsters, no challenge, so you can not assign the Environmental category to your level just because it features beautiful landscapes, if it does contain a lot of enemies. Friendly creatures are okey though.

You can only assign two categories to your level. If your level fits into more, pick the two which you think define your level best.

Existing level categories:

Tutorial	A tutorial that teaches you to play Knytt Stories and contains tips and tricks.
Challenge	A Challenge level - make sure your skills are sharp!
Puzzle	In a Puzzle level, you need some serious thinking.
Maze	A Maze Level - Can you find where you're going?
Environmental	An environmental level - No puzzles, no monsters, no challenge, just beautiful landscape (Of course it's okey to use any amount of friendly creatures!).
Playground	A Playground doesn't have an ending or a goal - a good place to practice.
Misc	A level that doesn't fit into any of the other categories.

What you need to do for your level before you submit it

Giving credits
If you use tilesets or music in your level that you have not made (including that what came with the game) you'll have to give credits for it. Where you do it, is not really important, as long as you give credits. Can it be in the beginning after you pressed new game, in the intro sequence or in the end sequence, thats up to you, but make sure that you credit the people.

Create a .knytt.bin file
You can do this using the level editor's compress function. It will contain everything your world folder has, including custom music, and custom tilesets.

The actual Level Submission

Where to post your level:

Playable Levels are supposed to be submitted to The Knytt Stories Level Archive, which is going to be rewritten and much extended in its functionality soon.

Mark all unfinished levels and levels that you want the community to test as Beta Level.

When you think your level is finished, and you have fixed all potential problems, it's time to categorize it as either Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard/Lunatic. If your level has more than one difficulty (that is, if you can change the difficulty level from within the level), mark it as having Selectable Difficulty.

So, where are we supposed to post our levels? Here, some other board, or is there going to be some kind of discussion feature on Knyttlevels.com?
It isn't very clear...

Knytt Levels.com is going to get an overhaul, and that is where all the level/tileset/COs will be, apparently.

Yes, that's it. It's not done yet, but LPChip hopes to finish it within the next month.
So unfortunately, you can't submit levels just now, but we didn't see a reason to keep the whole forum locked just because you'll have to wait for the Level Archive.

A delete function would be really good to have on the archive, so that you can delete old buggy betas or fix things in your levels without having to rename it.

The archive is currently BEING WORKED on. It will have pretty useful features that it doesn't have yet. You just need to be a bit patient for that.

Perhaps instead of a rating function, there could be a "favorite" function? With ratings, people can hit the 1 star on every level and bring down the ratings, possibly even throwing some new levels off the list of potential playthroughs, even if the level is perfectly fine. However, you could judge the popularity of a level by looking at how many times it has been favorited.

To prevent new levels from being voted off, there could be a "new levels" section.

Perhaps instead of a rating function, there could be a "favorite" function? With ratings, people can hit the 1 star on every level and bring down the ratings, possibly even throwing some new levels off the list of potential playthroughs, even if the level is perfectly fine. However, you could judge the popularity of a level by looking at how many times it has been favorited.

I know its being worked on, it was just a suggestion.

By the way, if you are really desperate to show us a new level of yours, which can't wait for the new site, knyttlevels.com is still up, it just doesn't have the neat new features.

We could also put accounts up, so you could delete your own beta levels or levels of your own that you think are bad. 

A short message from me explaining a little bit of the big overhaul of knyttlevels.com.

It will have a login system that will allow you to login using your forum account details. That means, in order to register there, you need an account here.

The new system will be SQL driven, meaning that I can easilly add filters/searches. I will add a voting system designed in such way that it'll work.

Bad levels will be removed from the site because that way we can regain filesize.

Additionally, you can comment on levels.

The same thing for levels will also be added fir tilesets and custom objects.

And last but not least, as Paula already mentioned, we didn't found it necessary enough to keep the forum closed just because you cannot submit your levels right now.

If you have feedback, please keep it with you until I've finished the knyttlevels.com page. There's a big chance I will implement the feature you have in mind. Alot is lacking from the current one, so a new one really is necessary.

This could be interesting. I agree that the decision to move Knytt Stories levels, discussions and other related content to an external site seems strange at first. But let's see how it works out. Until then, here is some food for thought:

You know what would benefit the most from this move? Night Game! Think about it for a second. A commercial title draws less participation than a free game, everything else being equal. A Wii-exclusive commercial title will generate even less participation from the fans here. So what else do they have? What will fill the gap that Night Game's exclusivity left behind? Geoffrey the Fly? No, Knytt Stories, the game that everyone can contribute to.

I think there will be a surge of KS activity from fans who can't participate in the new Wii-exclusive title. Coincidentally just before NG's release, all 3rd-party KS content is relocated to another site, which will ensure that KS activity won't overshadow the less popular new arrival. Whether intentional or not, it comes in quite handy.

Yeah, at least we'll have that.
Well spotted, SiamJai.

Thanks, Ponto.