Level Design Top Down

Hey All,

I'm working on game called Lazer Maze, it's an NES style throw back and homage to everything 80's. I have all the assets and music done (maybe some stuff will get modified but it's all there). Before I start trolling the internet for programmers who want to be part of commercially released home brew I figured I should have the levels designed.

One programmer suggested having the computer generate maps automatically, I don't program so I'm not sure how to go about this. My instinct was to get graph paper and draw out the level designs (mazes) with multiple paths to the necessary item; however, I was afraid this would be a huge turn off when a programmer came on board.

Do you think I should learn how to generate mazes using software? If so what should I use? Or should I go with what I know which is drawing and planning things in real life and digitizing them.

Mock up below.

 

Generating mazes automatically is trivial. If you're going to have programmers for your game, all you have to do is say "generate random mazes, make 'em look kind of like this" and show a few examples.

Or, you can just draw a bunch of mazes on graph paper or whatever, and have those baked in as fixed levels. Either is fine.

 

One option would be to use Tiled to create your level designs. Because it exports to json, it would be possible for coder to write an importer that would generate levels based on the maps.

There are also various Tiled importer solutions in the asset store, some of which might even be able to pull this off without the need for any coding.

 

Unity also has a built-in tile editor. If you use that then you don't have to import anything.

Why do you want to? Do you think this will make your game better somehow?

 

True. All gameplay logic would still need be injected into the levels afterwards, so some kind of rebuilding process would still need to be developed by a coder. But more Unity coders are likely comfortable working with Unity's internal systems than Tiled's json output, so using it could be a good move.

 

I would recommend having your coder simply build an editor, it's really not that hard. Usually if you can load a level, it's fairly trivial to also save it. Pointing and clicking to assign tiles is also a trivial task for a competent programmer. I wouldn't worry about any approach turning off a programmer, programmers really only care about money. If you pay me to do something, I don't really care what it is or how you intend on using it.

 

That's pretty morbid, man...

 

I think whatever you decide, the most important thing to do is to rename your game to "Mazer"