Platformer level making work flow.

Hi everyone. I just started using unity 2 days ago and i finally have a Character controller and set of animations that work well for me and i'm ready to start on level design. After a few hours of attempting to mash together some usable level estate to do some testing and i have found that i have NO IDEA how people assemble platformer levels.

My question is. If you were to set out to make a 2d platformer like Cave Story or MegaMan X or even Limbo. What work flow would you fallow for making the levels? is it easiest the make tilesets? or is it easier to assemble levels in Gimp and import them as a single sprite? Whats the smartest way to set up collisions on the surface and is there a way to do it without adding 10,000,000 box colliders per screen?

I know this is an extremely broad question but i have searched around a bit and i can't seem find and good information on the subject.

thanks.

 

Depends what style of graphics you want, how much repetition, re-use of assets, performance, etc.

`Most` 2D games tend to work with tiles of one size or another. Bigger tiles are generally a bit more luxurious ie more variegated looking, but restrict the combinations somewhat. Smaller times may be tuffer on performance due to overheads, and look more repetitive, but offer more fine-grained control. Doing an entire scene as custom textures will use lots of ram, but it's an option depending on your needs.

Using nothing other than Unity and no third party tools you'd have to basically set up your sprites, then place them manually in the scene and add colliders, or let Unity generate the colliders etc. I guess setting up prefabs would help.

 

As @imaginaryhuman eluded to, you could save yourself a headache and just buy a level builder from the asset store...
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/search/2d

 

Vertex snapping will also help if you don't want to splurge on a level builder.

http://imakeinternet.com/unity-2d-tips-vertex-snapping-level-building/

 

Well, I ran into unpleasant issue when creating tiled level with box colliders. If you put box collider on every single tile, the main character sometimes gets stuck on the edge of tiles. There is probably a solution in creating prefabs where you put more tiles together and create one bigger collider for them.

 

Thanks everyone this was really helpful

Unitylover that tutorial was really good. i'm going to use that to death.