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How to make infinite level in a ios game

Discussion in 'Game Design' started by max3241, Jan 27, 2020.

  1. max3241

    max3241

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    Hello guys,
    I was wondering how the developers(Crazy Labs) from the IOS game AMAZE manage to do levels that can go up to for example 1000. I'm asking this, because i'm also making a IOS game and i wanted to do the same thing as them, by making infinite levels in my game.
     
  2. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Well, if you want infinite levels, then procedural generation is the only way to go. (Google that term to learn all about it.)
     
  3. Serinx

    Serinx

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    Computers can't support infinite amounts of data (yet).
    What do you mean by 1000? 1000 what? pixels? units? levels? candy bars?

    Maybe this will help, I dunno:

     
  4. max3241

    max3241

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    Thank you guys for all the help but I tried to search for procedural generation levels, but I can’t find any that will help me generate my levels. Could you guys please help me!
     
  5. Serinx

    Serinx

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    I don't know why you can't find anything, what search engine are you using??

     
  6. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    The title of this thread is a little odd. When you were looking for tutorials and other resources you weren't just ignoring them if they weren't related to iOS were you? Because that will massively reduce the number of usable resources you find.

    Here were a few platform-agnostic tutorials that I came across. The first two are the most up-to-date and at a glance appear to be using a fairly simple approach. The last one is a few years old at this point but appears to be using a more sophisticated approach.



     
  7. SisusCo

    SisusCo

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    I wouldn't be so sure that a simple game with 1000 levels is necessarily using procedural generation. This amount of levels is very doable by hand with a good level editor. If it takes you 5 minutes on average to create one level you could make a thousand levels in a couple of weeks. Designing the levels by hand would likely lead to a better quality game too than generating the levels with code.

    But if you are still interested in exploring the procedural generation route Ty Taylor has made a good talk about procedural puzzle generation that I would recommend.
     
  8. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Nobody is going to make a level in five minutes that's in any way production ready unless they're making Arkanoid.
     
  9. SisusCo

    SisusCo

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    I would definitely be able to build the first 25 levels to AMAZE! in 2 hours with a good level editor without breaking a sweat. Have you seen it?



    Having only around 10 minutes per level might be a bit tough when you're designing your 950th level, but the 5 minute average was just an example I pulled out of a hat to make a point. If you were to spend twice that time per level a single person could still finish 1000 levels in a month.


    The point I'm trying to make is that it would be wise to also at least consider the idea of building all the levels by hand.

    Building a level generator can be a considerable time investment in and of itself, and once finished it not guaranteed to be a magic bullet for producing an endless number of fun levels. It would have to be a pretty amazing generator to be able to could churn out a production ready game in one go with the press of a button.


    That being said, it looks like AMAZE! has at least 30 000 levels based on some videos posted on YouTube. So that game in particular is most probably utilizing procedural generation for its levels - at least after some point. Building a level generator for that game would be pretty easy too using just random walk.


    An efficient level editor for a game like AMAZE! could always let you know whether or not the level you've created is solvable and unique. The game could also analyze all the created levels and automatically sort them by difficulty based on number of moves needed to solve them. It could also detect and flag levels that are too similar to each other.

    Also mirroring of the levels could possibly be used to multiply the number of levels on offer without the player necessarily noticing it at all.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2020
  10. Pavlos_Mavris

    Pavlos_Mavris

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    Sep 17, 2018
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    This game shows 100 levels and I play it and it has more than 100+ levels after an update. Is it possible to make a level generator for a game like this one?
     
  11. SisusCo

    SisusCo

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    That looks very much like it was hand-built. It has a lot of aesthetically pleasing, well-structured and symmetrical level design, which is not something that procedural generation usually excels at.

    It does look very modular, as if a level was constructed out of several smaller hand-built chunks. Not sure if randomization was used to generate levels from multiple chunks, or if the modular appearance is just a consequence of how their level editor works (probably just the latter).

    I imagine that building all the levels fully by hand would probably be the best way to go for a level-based game like this. There probably wouldn't be much benefit to be gained from using procedural generation in terms of time saved, unless you're willing to sacrifice a lot in terms of quality of the player experience by having a lot of repetition.

    But if the game worked more like an infinite runner, where after each death the game restarted from the beginning, then I think the game would benefit from new levels being generated for each run from hundreds of small chunks. There would most likely have to be a huge number of these chunks to avoid players starting to notice the repetition though.

    The problem is that the level chunks in the game seem to be very easily recognizable, with clear patterns to them, and there don't seem to be any good methods for disguising these patterns with any overlapping systems either. So I just don't imagine that this game would lends itself very well to asset reuse - and thus procedural generation from multiple chunks. You could mirror the chunks and maybe replace cubes with spheres to disguise the repetition a little bit, but I don't think it would get you very far.