Working with Layers
 

Has anybody done any work with layers on their servers at all? I know Dusty made a few levels using layers and we are starting to use them on Maloria.

Anyone had any experience using Gonstruct to make levels with layers, whether for fun/testing or on an actual server?

I wanna know what everyone thinks of them.

Personally, in the few levels I've made since I came back a few days ago and started making levels on Maloria, they're the most amazing thing I've ever worked with on Graal. Even though I've worked with them on things like Eclipse, it still surprised me how well they work with Graal-style tilesets.

Discuss.

I tried Gonstruct out but couldn't figure out how to get the tileset to properly show up...Dusty sent me the transparent tileset but I didn't know how to get different layers and whatnot to show up. :I

I didn't know they'd be compatible with Graal...not sure how Maloria is doing it.

Why do we need levels with layers? I don't fully understand it o.O

One of the main reasons is that you can use any corner tile on different floors/tiles without needing dozens of different tiles. For example, you could place a house from the pics1 tileset inside without changing the tiles to remove the grass.

I imagine you could also create some really cool effects with semi-transparent tiles.

And, ideally, support for placing the player on another layer would be implement, and it could be used to make things like bridges where players can walk over top of them, while still being able to walk under (depending on their layer).

gives you 10x more options for level making.

I might have to write up a tutorial for this. General gist is to grab a tileset with transparency(http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134256126) and use that as a tileset. Gonstruct has some bugs with tilesets though, and it doesn't handle priorities too well, so you might have to disable the default tiledef(pics1). Careful though, as this can cause bugs when you open a new level sometimes that causes Gonstruct to crash.

Anyways. I love layers. They open a whole new dimension to level making, and can simplify tilesets a bunch... however, they can also be annoyingly complicated to work with. Objects like houses can usually take up more than one layer of tiles, causing you to navigate between all the layers to do something as simple as moving it over one tile. They're definitely more hassle to work with, even if they do make some things easier. Also, it's easy to get caught up in layers and take things to the extreme(as my levels show), just because it's so awesome to play with. However, Gonstruct itself is pretty simple overall compared to the default editor, even if it has made some advancements the default hasn't. It doesn't support gmaps, no playtest(which I use a lot), for example. The gmap thing is probably the biggest thing it's lacking. But before Gonstruct we didn't have ANYTHING that let us edit layers, forcing us to make separate layers in levels and copy/paste the data into text format and edit it all manually. It wasn't very fun. So even with Gonstruct's problems, I can now use layers on a semi-simplistic basis when I find the need to, without being burdened by the idea of doing it all manually.

And Vima, this thread should help you understand what layers are capable of: http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134256104
With future additions to layers, we may be able to draw them over players, making the need for probably 90percent of NPC's useless.

In fact, if I sat down one day with pics1, I could probably come up with a lot of creative methods to save tilespace using layers. For example, the castle floor tiles uses various colored tilesets with different decorations. You have the plain color[1 tile], the diamond[4 tiles], the spotted[1 tile], the small diamond[1 tile]. That's 7 tiles for one color variation, so 14 when you add in blue, then 21 tiles when you add a yellow variation. However, with layers you can make a solid color single tile, and use a decoration tile with transparency to overlay the colors instead, like so:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2uqku37.png
All you'd have to do is add a single color tile to get all the variations you need at minimal tilespace cost. So instead of the 21 tiles for 3 colors, you'd only be taking up 9 tiles with layers. This is actually similar to what I did with shadows in my transparent pics1 tileset, and it actually reproduced nearly all the original shadow colors near-perfect to the naked eye over all the various terrains.

We've set up an entire town (2x2) with the use of layers on Maloria. I've attached a small screenshot showing some of it, but you can check it out yourself by doing the first "Kill 10 blobs" quest on the server and afterwards travel to the town by opening the map and clicking on it. Won't appear until the quest is handed in though.

Unlike Dusty's tileset that uses Alpha Blending (won't work online in v5, but only way to make it work in v6), ours simply use normal transparency (won't work in v6, but works in v5...).

who made those trees? they're awesome.

protip: when trying to show server content turn off the start bar

p.s you guys seem like you could use a new lat ziro :(

Then come help us.
I'm rusty so I probably suck amirite?

ps. I did that town.

:p
they're WIP's though

Holy **** Ziro, you have insanely attractive images and tilesets.
You just need a LAT that knows what he's doing, that looks horrible when it could look so much better.

PROPS TO THE MALORIA TEAM

I rather like the levels and it seems inappropriate to disrespect someone's hard work like that without offering any sort of constructive criticism.

An opinion is not going to change my ways of understanding.
And then again you're assuming that it's "hard work", pretty quick to stand up for someone.

I can't really just sit here and tell the guy what he's doing wrong, I just know that they are mostly sloppy, and not enough detail.
There are attractive tree's so take advantage of them, the path looks a little to much chunky and wide, and the grass detail is just fail.

I can assure you it's a lot harder than sitting on the forums telling everyone you can do better when you have nothing to show for it.

I guarentee I could do better, but then again I never said I could do better or any way was trying to act condescending. So stop arguing Tig, and stop picking out stupid stuff thats totally off-topic.

I have to agree with Imperialistic. seems really out of place to start arguing.

Now Imperialistic's comments seem pretty right on. Im no LAT but I still have an eye for levels. I've also seen Imperialistic's leveling. Its pretty good so I can trust his opinion.

*just to add it in*

Definetly respect Crono's opinions, he has taught me alot. I think it might be the cliffs that Crono doesn't like, he's anal about his cliffs xd.

So are you saying you want a level so full of trees you can't move, a tiny little path that would be almost too small to walk on and a level so full of grass detail that it looks crowded?

You're not being very specific, either be more specific and tell me what's "fail" about the grass detailing (and apparently the rest of the level) or stop posting. Crono told me what he does not like about the level personally and it was good constructive criticism. I will be taking it into account. What you're doing is more on the level of full out bashing, so please rethink your replies.

I know I'm rusty, I know I haven't done any levels in about a year, but I'm not going to get my style just right like it was before if people are only telling me "lul ur gras detaliz fael."

P.S. If you can't just sit there and tell people what they're doing wrong, you need to rethink being a LAT in the first place. It's really not hard. I did it the other day, in great detail and helped the person who PMed me quite a bit. I've seen Crono do it countless times as well as other people.

Thanks bro.

/rant

lol I screwed up one of my levels that used layers the other day by opening it up in editor and changing a script and saving it. Completely forgot! Luckily the layers weren't heavily used, only moved everything onto layer 1... but Stefan, can you please make just a minor edit to the editor to not poop on layers? That way people don't have to worry about random people making edits to layered levels and messing them up!

That's one of our big worries at the moment with Maloria. Hopefully, if not adding in full layer support, Stefan can at least add some protection against people using Graal Editor.

I suggested this to Stefan today, who wondered if he could still compile it or not :)

He said he'd keep it in mind, but won't be prioritized. I also worked with him to fix some tile layer errors that's now resolved in his version of v6.

Your sarcasm is retarded.

Do you want me to baby you?
Okay let's give it a shot.

Dear Relic,

Your level doesn't seem appealing to me and other people, no pun intended.
I think it might be because it's organized in a sloppy way. I feel as though if you need to put more of a creative touch and really try to expand your ways of imagination into your levels. Your level isn't so bad, I just see so much potential, keep practicing, and keep up the good work.

Love Always,
Imperialistic

Giving constructive criticism isn't babysitting. You should have just posted the the body of your faux letter in the first place without being such a complete arse :P

I don't think you understand the concept of constructive criticism very well. You don't seem to be very good at typing out what you find wrong specifically, when you're trying to help people improve. Until you can do so without the idiotic attitude I suggest you forget about it and I will review the levels myself (as i remember you used to kiss my *** over my levels when I was at my prime in developing) and find other, more experienced LATs than yourself, who can give a review of a level without the bull**** you seem to be unable to avoid when you post.

I'm not taking offense to your constructive criticism, don't get me wrong, It's just I haven't seen any thus far except for "ur gras detel falz" and "itz slopi". All I've seen is crappy attitude and a bad attempt at seeming like you're superior. I'll take those two points into account (although I'm still not sure what's sloppy about it and how the grass detailing fails, again because you suck at giving constructive criticism,) but if you want to give me anymore points, I suggest you rethink your approach, once again.

"Love always",
Relic

If anyone else has any real constructive criticism to give me, feel free, but please don't emulate Imperialistic's failure, it doesn't help.

You seem to care that I give a hoot about you personally, I don't care if I'm offending if you assume it that way. On another note, you announcing that I worship(ed) you is a complete idiotic way of insulting me, and your noob translations of my speech is highly immature.

In no way am I trying to act condescending towards you I'm just flattered that you're taking the time to argue with me.

*SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE POST*

On a real note, I'm deciding to be thoughtful for once.

I don't know how you or other people usually do their grass detail, but I like to make mine look sort of unpredictable and not so boring. I've uploaded an image of an example of a piece of my detailing.

I've uploaded an image of your level.
The Red Circles highlight a few stuff as listed:
Either
-Not Enough Detail
-Too boring
-Expand with it
-I don't understand it

If my opinion matters at all, I agree with -some- of what Imp is saying. A couple of the things he circled I don't have any major problems with, unless its drastically overused (mostly talking about the grass-on-grass off-levels that he circled).

I never really liked tables on outsides. Those types of things were meant for insides and it really tends to drag away from the level.

To be honest, I "like" what's being shown, but there are things to be improved upon. The biggest issue that I have is actually the trees that everyone has been praising. They just seem a little off to me in terms of mixing with the rest of the tileset. Like they draw attention away from anything else in the level. And when you put the two of them in such close proximity without having them properly combined, it just looks, for lack of a better term, sloppy, like someone dropped a couple of NPC trees around the level.

Just my take. I've never really seen the need for layers. In my opinion the layer editor is just a cop-out for LATs that don't know how to be creative with one layer.

Well, I sort of agree with you here.

Layers can improve the levels of Graal in tremendous ways, but it can also be a cop-out for people without a good imagination and way to use it.

When I'm rich and never need to work again I'll fix Gonstruct ok, with how things look, that might just happen before the online level editor.

That's silly. It's an advancement of technology in terms of Graal. That's like saying GS2 is a copout for those who can't figure out how to be creative with GS1. What about those who ARE creative with one layer? Wouldn't more layers just mean more creativity? Also, even if it is a copout, if it achieves something above the skill level that they would achieve with only one layer, isn't that good too?

Layers don't just offer more possibility with levels, but it simplifies tiles. You no longer need to use tons of images to draw things over tiles. No need for treetop images. No more need for tons of tiles for each grass, dirt, water or whatever a corner of the house will be drawn over. And for the lazy, it means that it will just look better because players don't have to see such simple tile errors.

Also Fry, I had to work with Gonstruct earlier to edit scripts in a layered level, and I noticed a very annoying bug: Every time you opened a level in Gonstruct, it appends an empty line to each NPC's script. So after opening a level a few times, each script ends up with a ton of empty lines. The level I was working with had like 70 NPCs in it... so ya, that was a ton of empty lines to clean out and actually made me resort to editing the level via notepad instead.

This is indeed the main advantage of layers, and why we decided to use them everywhere on Maloria. Not to mention that you don't need grass-on-grass, grass-on-dirt and grass-on-lava tiles since you can just have grass-on-transparency and place them however you want. Opens up a lot of spots for new tiles.

Ya, when I make levels I tend to spend more time creating custom tiles to make cliffs tile over water and such, for example, than I do on the level itself. However many people DON'T bother to do these simple things and layers can help players tap a creativity that they don't get to experienced when limited by a pics1 they don't intend to edit with tiles.

I don't really know what everyone's complaining about, I rather like less cluttered detail. Not to mention it makes sense in terms of a village setting. Now maybe if it was a abandoned village and the grounds weren't taken care of or walked on a lot, maybe you would add in more.

Can somone make a quick video on how to use this?

This layer thingy, is supposed to be like the RPG Maker yes?