JohnB - Levels

Download: HK

These are my levels for use with Ambrosia's game Avara. Many of them are experimental in nature, as they explore different ways to exploit the third dimension in level design and incorporate symmetry into levels. Some are also influenced by my own circumstance: as I'm 10,000km away from most players most of my games are laggy, even with only a couple of players, and very complex levels can be unplayable.

Despite this they are all designed to be playable, and hopefully among them you'll find something you like. I welcome feedback on any or all of the levels, especially constructive criticism which gives me ideas which can be incorporated into new levels.

Net Levels

The Wall

A level designed for two teams of yellow and green, ideally either two or four players (I think it would be very claustrophobic with six).

This is the third release of this map. The first one had red and green teams, but for some reason I've still not worked out yellow and green teams work better. In this release I've slightly lightened some of the walls so they can be more easily seen, and have added a teleport to teleport out the winning team.

Walls

Walls is an adaption of 'The Wall', designed to overcome it's main limitation, that it only works well for teams. As well as letting you choose any colour, not just yellow and green, I've further divided up the playing area, added more blocks in the process, and made it easier and harder to get goodies - easier as there are now five goodies, each one both a grenade and missile goody, harder as you need to jump on blocks to get to any of them. Again it's probably best suited to four or less players because of the small playing area.

There was a problem with the initial release of this level, in release 1.7 of these levels: you could be any colour you liked as long as it was green. This is fixed in release 1.8.

Pit Ball Terror

Another net level, this time for individual players or teams.

Small Desert Town

A larger than usual net level, best for larger groups of players. This and 'The Tomb' are meant to be plausible representations of a desert environment, with white-washed medditeranian style houses.

Arena

A large open arena, simpler than most net levels. Perhaps best played by large groups of players.

Arena II

The first version of Arena didn't play very well, at least not in any of the games I played, so I used it as a basis for another, more interesting, level. This level has more obstacles/features, including ramps, blocks and walls, and more goodies which regenerate faster.

It also has eight pills. Shoot a pill a few times to subdue it, then quickly pick it up (before it recovers) and after a few seconds it changes colour and is on your side, and will shoot other players/teams but not you/your team. The pills start in locations where they can't see very much, you can move them elsewhere once you've subdued them, though you move a lot more slowly while carrying a pill.

Dance Floor

Net level, part inspired by those tacky disco dance floors made of raised coloured blocks which flash in time with the music, part an another experiment in how to generate a 3D environment.. Good for quick games between few players.

Platforms

An experimental three dimensional net level, where the main direction of travel is down. Note the guards at ground level are indestructible and are there to deter you from loitering at ground level. Also note the platforms are deliberately too widely spaced to jump: the only way up is by transporter.

Lava Pit

A pit filled with lava. Fall in it and you'll lose battery charge, and so be unable to recharge your plasma cannon, and points. You'll also find it difficult to get out. I know it doesn't look much like lava, but Avara has no way of simulating liquids.

Valley of the WHAT ?!

Small, fast level.

Solo Missions

Maze No. 1

A solo mission. The objective is to reach yellow teleporter and exit. If you look up and a bit to the left from your starting position you can see the teleporter. There are no switches, elevators or trampolines. The only thing that moves in the level is you, and the entire maze is visible.

Maze No. 2

Another solo mission. The objective is to reach yellow teleporter and exit, which this time is directly above your starting position, about 30 metres up. There are no switches, elevators or trampolines. The only thing that moves in the level is you, and the entire maze is visible.

The above two levels are graphically fairly complex. I've noticed a slight slow down on my PPC 604/132 Mac, at 832 x 624, when standing where I can see most or all of the platforms, and you may fare worse on a slower machine. One tip for these maze levels: use a light HECTOR without any ammo, as you'll then be lighter and will find the jumps easier.

Maze No. 3

A more traditional maze, easier than the first two mazes. Again find the teleporter (which this time is adjacent to the entrance, behind a wall) and exit. It may see a very trivial maze but it has a particular construction which made it interesting, at least for me.

Maze No. 4

A different approach to 3D mazes. The maze is organized as a compact 5 x 5 x 5 cube, the exit is on the roof.

The Tomb

Belligerent squatters have occupied an ancient, sacred tomb. Your task is to evict them. You have to kill all UFOs, guards and parasites before you will be teleported out. The original plot was something like "For 10,000 years people have wondered how a primitive race carved the Tomb of Av'ra, using only bronze tools to carve 100 ton stone blocks and position them exactly in place. Now they wonder no more, as the builders have returned, to use the tomb as their base", but I thought that overlong for a level description.

It's a more traditional solo level, hopefully not too easy. It started as a Pyramid, but after doing just one level it was obvious that Avara wasn't going to cope with what I had in mind, so I stopped there. Even so it's geometrically fairly intricate, and taxes Avara's rendering capabilities. I've added some optimisations to the interior of the tomb to speed rendering, and switching to 'Short Range View' also helps a lot when you're outside. As I've only tested it on my 640/132 PPC I'm not sure how well it will work on slower Macs. I suspect it will not run very well on '040 Macs.

Low Gravity

The set 'JohnB 2.0 LowG' contains no new levels. Instead it contains all the net levels in the main set, but with the gravity set to 1/6 of normal gravity (the same as on the moon). Note that all of my levels were designed to be played in normal gravity, and play very differently (much worse, IMHO) with a lower gravity. But it was easy to do and doesn't add much to the download size, so why not ? I've not created low gravity versions of the solo levels as it makes most of them trivial.

To create them all I did was use ResEdit to add the line

gravity = 0.166

to the TEXT resource with ID 1000 in a copy of the level set. This is easy to do and will work on any level set, including the bundled net levels, so in theory you could vary the gravity (or any level parameter - see the Level Design Manual for details) of other levels. But because of the way Avara looks for levels you can only play net games against other players if their copies of the levels are exactly identical to yours, even down to the file modification dates. This means that unless level authors release low g versions of levels you'll only be able to play such modified levels if one player does the modifications and distributes the modified files to others.

Releases
1.0 - first release of 'The Wall'.
1.1 - Added 'Maze No. 1', improvements to 'The Wall'.
1.2 - Added 'Maze No. 2', more improvements to 'The Wall'.
1.3 - Added 'Pit Ball Terror'.
1.4 - Added 'A Small Desert Town'.
1.5 - Added 'The Tomb', changed resource IDs of PICTs to conform with Ambrosia's docs.
1.6 - Added 'Maze No. 3', 'Arena' and 'Dance Floor'.
1.7 - Added 'Maze No. 4', 'Walls', 'Arena II' and 'Platforms'; re-arranged the levels so net levels come first and related levels are grouped together (previously they had been organized in order of creation); added recenter teleporters to most net levels (as most were missing them).
1.8 - Fixed problem with 'Walls'.
1.9 - Fixed a minor problem with 'Maze 3' & a very serious problem with 'Maze 4' (which meant you would see Maze 3 instead, unless you hacked the 'LEDI' resource in 1.8); added 'Lava Pit' and low gravity set. Also 1.9 is the first version where the version number is part of the level set name, which should make it easier to identify and to keep multiple releases to hand. 2.0 Added 'Valley of the WHAT ?!'.

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