What's new?

- "Save Level" & "Load Level" options work
- bugs fixes
- entities' "insert#" are displayed for each selected entity (it's the yellow number inside a selected area)
- the list of the level's items is now sortable on each column (for example, in the screenshot, I displayed all the "Eraser" items first, therefore you can spot these items in the level, refering to the now-displayed "insert#" info)
- selecting one or multiple row(s) in this list selects the relevant item(s) in the level
- a vertical red line marks the middle of the level

the designer can make custom preview messages or notes on each level and hints that can be accessed while playing in the level (see Cheapo).

- done for the message part (see the bottom part of the screenshot). I will handle hints later.

PS: in the screenshot, I snapped items on X, hence the display of the vertical gray lines (these grid lines only appear when snapping, of course! / no snap, no line)

don't worry about the bounding boxes because:
- it's not a "Snap to Object" option but a "Snap to Grid" option
- you can freely set the snap offsets for the grid, on X and Y. For example, in the following screenshot, I snapped items of different sizes (I typed offset values that actually matched the graphics, ignoring empty spaces in the bounding boxes). Everything is well aligned depending on the items' sizes.
- I will create new tilesets for my game, and the tiles will have correct bounding boxes (Lemmings' tilesets are only used for demo purpose)

I have to fix the "Enable Collisions" feature first, but a "Snap (to Grid)" option is something I would like to add, yes.
edit: since it was a quick and easy task, I've just added the "Snap to Grid(X/Y)" feature


About the "Undo" button: good news, it's already there (CTRL-Z actually). But, atm, you can only revert the very last action (I'll see this issue later, but, obviously, it would be handy to be able to revert some more actions).

By the way, I share your game-design thoughts

Thank you for your comments and ideas. There are some options which would be pretty easy to add, and some others that may need more work. I want to finish the editor soon, and go back coding the main game

And to clarify the following point:

-if there's any way to adjust the way terrain is highlighted in the editor that would be nice. What I mean is notice how a the steel pieces in your picture; the yellow square extends too far to the right. This is especially an issue in Lemmix when using the 'Align' function.

Actually, yellow squares match exactly the size of the sprites: if they (seem to) extend too much, it's because the steel pieces are surrounded by a transparent color which is an actual part of the image (this is a choice from Lemmings' original graphic designers). So you won't be able to resize the yellow border in the editor, but it's not really annoying because using the "Clone" tool on X and/or Y makes perfect alignements really easy (the user freely sets the distance between 2 items => please see the very 1st screenshot of this topic: steel pieces couldn't be more well aligned, and it was done in no time).

Thank you very much for your comments: it's much appreciated!
By the way, expectations for the game appear to be pretty high: good. It fuels my motivation, and I'll try to do my best. I'll keep you informed when I have news about the game. Please remember it's a project I code during my spare time and I'm a hobbyist, so dev will take some time. For the moment, I'm focused on making a cool level editor, and it is a crucial thing if I want to have a good game.

Back to the priority under the cursor, I'm not sure to fully understand how you want it to be. Could someone give me a clear view of the rules/hierarchy to have during the game, please? (climbers vs walkers vs diggers vs ...). Thank you.

Another thing, and no idea if this is possible//// but you might want to look at Cheapo Lemmings. The guy who made that managed to make it possible to literally draw on your level like in MS paint and add custom graphics.

I had a "Load Background Image" option available in the early days of the level-editor, but I removed it because I want:
- level files to be small for easily sharing levels (including extra images makes bigger level files)
- levels share common graphic items (depending on the tileset of course) for the game's visual identity.
By the way, I wasn't aware of Cheapo Lemmings, I'll take a look at it!

Last thing: today, I added a "Lazy/Shuffle" option which takes a range of entities as input and generates X of these entities, and randomly place them around the center of the level (quantity "X" is specified by the user) . It's a fun option to spark the inspiration when starting a new level (and the "Clear & Lazy" option fully clears the level before randomly generating entities => just restart this process again and again until you find something interesting to work with).
For example, the level below was ignited using the "Lazy" option triggered twice (it's not the best level ever for sure, but you got the idea, and I could create this scene very quickly using the "Lazy" and "Clone" options).

Thank you for your feedback!
My goal is not to re-code Lemmings but a game like Lemmings with extra features I have in mind.

- "Will it load Lemmini level files?":
probably not (but I still have to see what Lemmini level files look like...)

- "Everything should be freely mappable to user-definable hotkeys":
I didn't think about that, but that would be handy, yes

- "You will probably implement your own custom file format":
yes

- "An exporting function to the widely used .LVL format would be nice.":
sorry, but I do not target Lemmings/Lemmini as compatible games with the level editor (things may change, but atm I'm only focused on making the level-editor compatible with my Lemmings-like game)

Today, I added the "Symmetry/Mirror" option which allows to make a 1-click mirror of entities (see screenshot below).


PS1: for convenience, I flag here this interesting topic: http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=695.0
PS2: you can play online my previous puzzle-game here: http://www.lesjeuxlesplusmieux.com/powablox.html . Hope you'll like it. (the best score is very, very, very hard to beat!)

*** jLevelBuilder has been released on October, 5th, 2013 ***
*** direct download link: here ***

*** for help, please refer to this post ***


Hi,

I've started to code a Lemmings clone in Java: dev is far from being finished (I code the game in my spare time), but things are going well.
But, in order to have a nice game, I quickly realized that I needed a tool to easily create levels: so I'm now focused on coding the level-editor (Java) : things are going well, too.
The level-editor will be a free app, so people who like the game will be able to create and share levels.

Here's a screenshot of the level-editor (WIP):
(selected items have a yellow border)


- screenshot of upcoming jLevelBuilder 1.79 (WIP@april 2016) :


(*** old forum's topic ***)