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.