Make your own levels
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How levels work
All levels in Move or Die are basically closed rectangles.
Assuming you played the game already (or at least saw some gameplay footage), you should be pretty familiar with the elements that make up a level, such as ground tiles, jump tiles, death tiles etc...
Path
The levels are stored in the "Levels" folder where the game is installed:
Move or Die / Levels /
Therefore, your mod folder structure should be:
Move or Die / Mods / [ModName] / Levels / [YourLevel].level
Each level is an individual .level file named in the form of GameMode-LevelName.level
Important: Do not place any user-made levels in the game's "Levels" folder.
This is considered cheating and will result in you getting banned from online play.
Level Editor
Luckily for you, making levels is pretty easy and fun thanks to the user friendly level editor.
You can access it by selecting "Move or Die Editor" when you launch the game through Steam
or alternatively, go where the game is installed and open Editor.exe
All you have to do is build the level in the level editor, and it will automatically take care of things like proper naming, generating nav meshes and even storing custom assets inside the file.
The level editor
Intro
This is the first thing that you see when you open the level editor.
From here you could either start working on a new level, or load an existing one.
Note: The editor can only load levels from the "EditorLevels" folder that can be found at:
Move or Die / Levels / EditorLevels
It's pretty much empty by default unless you manually copy levels there.
Assuming you started a new level, the first thing that you have to do is pick the game mode that you want to create a level for.
You do this by clicking this button in the bottom left
Interface
In the top left you have your standard "New" "Load" "Save" and "Test" buttons.
In top right you have a grid toggle button, settings, report bug and a handy little qustion mark
that gives you more tips about the interface.
And finally, in the bottom left, you have the core of the editor
All the tools needed to create a level.
Now it's time to actually build the level!
The editor's tools are separated into 3 diferent steps:
- Main - Where you build the shape and structure of your level.
- Action - Where you make tiles interact with each other and set your camera.
- Polish - Where you place background tiles and make your level look good.
Let's start with the first one!
Main Step
In this step you get to build the shape/structure of the level and also place special tiles like buttons, doors, jump tiles and what not.
Spawn Points
The 4 colored player outlines you see on the screen are the spawn points
Feel free to move them around, but make sure they are placed in such a way that everybody has an equal chance of winning.
For example: Placing a player right over another player in a Stomp map wouldn't be too fair.
Or giving one player a head start in a Speed Run game.
Tile Placement
In order to build your level, select a tile from the pop-up towers in the bottom left, and click in order to place that tile.
You place a tile with left mouse button, and you delete it by clicking the scroll wheel (or alternatively, selecting it and pressing the "Delete" key).
Note: Make sure you keep your level a closed shape so the engine knows where to put the background.
Each tile has a little tooltip when you hover your mouse over it that explains what it does.
There are 4 types of tiles you can place from the Main step:
- Ground - These are simple tiles that don't do anything special.
- Active - These are tiles that can interact with each other (see Action Step).
- Passive - These are tiles that do something special constantly.
- Entities - These are custom entities used for specific game modes.
Make sure you use them in creative ways to craft interesting levels!
Context Menu
Some tiles like Doors and the Toggle Tile have propreties that can be changed if you right click on them.
Action Step
In this step, you can make all the Active Tiles interact with each other.
Wire Tool
With the help of the "Wire tool", you can click and drag a wire from a tile to another to hook them up and make them interact.
For example, a button to a door, or a teleporter to another teleporter.
Keep in mind that you can only wire blue tiles to orange tiles, or green tiles between them.
You can delete a wire just like you delete a tile, by pressing the scroll wheel while hovering over the wire.
Camera Placement
Another thing you can do in the Action Step, is to set the camera for your level
While you create your level, you can move your camera anywhere you what, however, when people play your level in-game, the camera has to be properly framed.
Click on the blue "Camera" button on the bottom left and the editor will go in camera placing mode
In here, you move the camera the same way you do in the other steps. Hold the scroll wheel down and move your mouse to move the camera around, and use the scroll to zoom in and out
Note: The red overlay shows you where the timer and health bars will be in-game.
Important: Make sure the red overlay doesn't cover any important part of your level.
Click the green "Ok" button in the bottom right corner when you are happy with the camera placement.
Polish Step
The Polish Step is all about making things look good.
In here you can place and manipulate background assets (which are simply cosmetic elements that make the level look better) and also drop in some props (also cosmetic elements that get kicked around by the player).
Background Assets
- How they work
As mentioned above, background assets are simple images that serve as cosmetic elements for the background in order to make the level more interesting.
You select them just like regular tiles from the pop-up tower, and you click to place them in the level.
After you do so, you can hover your cursor over an asset which will reveal a transformation gizmo. You can use it to move the asset around, rotate it and even scale it.
- Custom Assets
With the addition of the level editor and the new .level file system, we also implemented the ability to have custom assets in levels.
Custom bg assets should be .png images placed in this folder:
Move or Die / Lib / Assets / Environment / BgAssets / [YourAsset].png
After you place your asset in that folder, it should show up in the level editor for you to use.
Note: A custom asset could be either a simple .png or an animated object with a Sheet and .Json files.
All custom assets will automatically save in the .level file once you save the level
Props
Just like bg assets, props are simple cosmetic objects that the player can kick around while running.
They give depth to the level and are even helpful in some modes like Ghost Scare.
Note: Make sure you don't place too many props in a level otherwise the framerate will drop.
Usually the sweet spot is between 9-14 prop entities.
Tips n' tricks
Hotkeys
Here are some hotkeys to make your workflow faster:
- Left Mouse Button - Place, select or manipulate elements such as tiles, wires etc.
- Right Mouse Button - Context menu for certain tiles such as Doors, tottle tiles etc.
- Mouse Scroll - Scroll to zoom camera in/our and hold+drag to move the camera around.
- Click Mouse Scroll - Delete the element under your cursor.
- Shift - Hold to place the same element more than once.
- Delete - Delete selected element (also works with clicking the scroll wheel).
- Tab - Rotate selected element.
- F - Flip the selected element horizontally.
- T - Test level.
- G - Toggle the helping grid on/off.
- 1,2,3 - Swap between the "Main", "Action" and "Polish" steps.
- Ctrl + O/S/N - O: Load level | S: Quick save (overwrite) | N: New level.
Selection Box
Click and drag mouse 1 button to create a selection box. You can now move, delete or even change the propreties of all the selected elements at once.
Batch Wiring
Using the same method above, you can select multiple active tiles during the Action step and wire them all together at the same time.
Drag Joe
Need to reach a specific place in your level to test something but you are too lazy to navigate Joe there? No problem, simply click and drag him there!
Testing your mod
That's it!
At this point you should have a working level mod.
Note: Make sure you copy your level from the "Editor Levels" folder, to your mod folder.
Important: Do not place any user-made levels in the game's "Levels" folder.
This is considered cheating and will result in you getting banned from online play.
Problems?
If your level doesn't come up while playing the selected mode over and over again, make sure the level is placed in the correct path inside the mod folder. Also, keep in mind that levels are selected randomly, so it might also be bad luck, keep trying!
If your level background is dark grey (empty), make sure that the level is a closed shape, and slightly move the spawn points. The background starts from the spawn points and sometimes the editor glitches out on that.
If your mod doesn't show up in the Mod Manager, it means the game doesn't see the mod, make sure your mod folder is in the game's "Mods" folder and the modinfo.txt is in place with the correct info inside.
You are done!
Congrats!
Gift yourself something awesome, it's time to publish your mod.
