Worlds and Levels

Worlds and Levels makes one game, Hollowmere, seen from the side. A pilgrim crosses a vale about ten screens wide, from his hut to a chapel door: rolling hills, a mere of still water under the cliff of a fallen tower, a meadow, a market of carts and stalls, signposts, and a ravine that a lever lays a drawbridge over, under a sky fading from night to dawn with a town and clouds drifting behind. Below the chapel is the crypt, painted in tiles: a stair down, flooded halls whose water moves, spikes, ledges to jump up through, and torches that light it. East of the halls it runs on in the dark: a gallery of murals that only his lantern shows, a cracked wall he strikes down, two gates each opened by its own lever, a rockfall, two far rooms built only as he nears them, and a tower door with a keyhole, beyond which a bell hangs. Ringing it ends the game.

You start from a starter in which the pilgrim has nothing to stand on: the first time you run the game, he falls. Chapter 1 blocks the whole vale out in grey boxes he can walk from end to end, and the chapters after it replace them with the real thing one by one, so the game can be walked at every step: the hut and the chapel in tiles, the hills as Sprite Shapes, the mere and the cliff as Polygons, the sky and the banners as Meshes, the meadow as one MultiMesh, the carts in Sorting Groups, and the signposts’ words in World Text. The crypt is painted, made to do things, lit, wired and streamed, and the finished game is exported and runs on its own. A last chapter builds seven small cases in four scenes of their own: an isometric room, a staggered map, two boards of hexes, a dungeon cut from a sheet with gutters, a damage counter, a far ridge and a spyglass, each a recipe to take into your own game.

The tutorial is for learning every world tool to the end. Every field of the twelve components a world is built from (the TileMap, the Sprite Shape, the Polygon, the Mesh, the MultiMesh, the Sprite Mask, the Sorting Group, the Shape, the World Text, the Signal, the Spawner and the Placeholder), and a Sprite’s Mask, Channel and Inside, is defined with what it does, its unit and the value Hollowmere gives it. Every editor tool for building a world, every option of the Grid, Kind, Align, Effect Mode and Fit dropdowns, every builtin a script calls to read and write tiles, build, spawn, signal and set words, and every setting a map’s file holds is in the tables of tools below, linked to the chapter that defines it or the script that calls it.

• Rengy, installed, on Windows or Linux. Getting started installs it and shows you round the editor.
• The starter, worlds-and-levels.zip: the vale and the crypt, each with the pilgrim and his camera and nothing to stand on; the chapel door and its script, which takes him down into the crypt; and the pictures: the pilgrim’s, and every one drawn for the tutorial, which the chapters use as they come to them. Unzip it somewhere outside your other projects; in the editor’s launcher, choose Open project… and pick the worlds-and-levels folder.
• The three downloads below, as the chapters ask for them: from Gothicvania, the Old Dark Castle’s sheet in chapter 2, Gothic Horror’s tiles in chapter 6 and its town and clouds in chapter 7; from Kenney Fonts, the signposts’ face in chapter 10; and from Tiny Dungeon, its sheet in chapter 14. Each chapter that needs files lists them and where each is in its download.
• Nothing else. Most chapters are clicks. The scripts, from chapter 4 on, are Rengy Script, which the editor runs as it is, with nothing to install.

The three downloads are in the public domain (CC0). The pilgrim is the Gothicvania collection’s Gothic hero, made once in the editor: his idle, run, jump and jump-climb sheets are packed into the one sheet the starter holds, with his clips and his graph, and are not copied. The crypt’s stone, the torch, the hills’ turf and earth, the mere’s water, the banners, the cart, its wheel and the stall, the murals, the lantern’s light, the keyhole, the bell, the lever, the gates’ bars, the cracked block, the rock, the gallery’s tiles and the spyglass’s shade were drawn for these tutorials, and the slab on the ravine’s lips was cut from Gothic Horror’s sheet; all of them are in the starter.

You can stop after any of them: each leaves you a vale and a crypt that work. The chapters below are listed by part.

• Basic, chapters 1 to 5: a vale you can walk and a crypt that works. The whole vale blocked out in grey; the hut, the chapel and the crypt’s first hall painted in tiles from a sheet; the crypt’s halls painted in minutes with a terrain, a fill that varies and a pattern; tiles that move, hurt, hold him up only from above, light the crypt and cast its shadows; and rolling hills whose outline is their art and their collision at once.
• Simple, chapters 6 to 10: the vale dressed. The cliff and the mere as Polygons; a sky coloured point by point and banners cut from one sheet, as Meshes, with a town and clouds drifting behind; a meadow of more than a hundred blades in one draw; carts a Sorting Group keeps whole; and signposts, a name tag and a “+1” in World Text.
• Pro, chapters 11 to 14: a crypt that reacts and builds itself. Murals only the lantern shows and a keyhole to the bell, through Sprite Masks; levers whose Signals lay a drawbridge, raise two gates and take the tower door away, and a cracked wall struck down; rocks a Spawner drops, far rooms Placeholders build as he nears them, a bell that ends the game, and the game exported; and last, a gallery of seven small cases.

• Every control is defined. A list of terms in each chapter says what a field or a tool does, its unit where it has one, and the value Hollowmere gives it.
• Grey first. Chapter 1 blocks the vale out in grey, as a level designer does, and each chapter after it says which grey stand-in it replaces, if any, so the game can be walked from end to end at every step.
• Which tool for which job. Tiles, the Sprite Shape, the Polygon, the Mesh and the MultiMesh overlap, so each of their chapters opens with when to reach for its tool rather than the others. The table below sets the five side by side.
• What collides, what draws, what sorts. Everything that draws is asked the same three questions where it is introduced, because the answers differ: a Shape draws but collides with nothing, a Sprite Shape does both with a Collider on its node, and a tile layer by its flags. Where the Problems tab catches a mix-up, the chapter shows its row.
• Motion is watched. Where a chapter says something about motion, such as the water playing its frames or the drawbridge laid plank by plank, it plays a recording of the game with a line under it saying what to watch, and the same in words for a reader who cannot see it.
• Before and after. Where a setting’s effect is not obvious, a picture with it and one without show what it changes. Where a result surprises, the chapter says why, and where a cost bites, on a phone above all, it says what it costs.
• Each thing you build ends in a table of its values, so you can build it again in your own game.
• Every picture is a capture of the editor or the game, and every animation a recording of the exported game, never a mock-up.

Five tools draw the shape of a world, and they overlap: any of them could make a floor or a hill. Each chapter of the five opens with when to reach for its tool rather than the others, and asks of it what collides, what draws and what sorts. Side by side:

The rest are asked the same where they come in. A Shape alone collides with nothing, and a Block is a Shape with a Collider of its size. A Sorting Group draws nothing of its own and sorts what is under it as one. World Text draws its words and collides with nothing. A Sprite Mask draws nothing of its own, and shows the sprites that read it only inside its shape, or only outside it.

Besides the components, the editor, the scripts and a map’s own file have tools of their own for building a world. Each is taught where it is first needed, and each is a row in one of the four tables below, so the one you are looking for is a link away.

In the editor

The options

Every option of the five dropdowns a world’s components have, written as the Inspector prints it:

In a script

The builtins a script calls to read and write a map’s tiles, to build and spawn, to signal and to set words, each linked to a chapter whose script calls it:

In a map’s file

Besides its painted cells, a map’s .tilemap holds how its sheet is cut, each layer’s flags and order, each tile’s own settings, and its terrains and patterns:

The fourteen chapters take about 15 hours at the keyboard: chapters 1 to 11 take between half an hour and an hour and a quarter each, and chapters 12 to 14 about an hour and a half, the gallery a case at a sitting. Every chapter ends at a place you can stop, with a Check it works box that says what you should see.