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First, for those who don’t know, what is Pingus?
Pingus is a side-scrolling puzzle game where the player has to guide a group of penguins from the entrance of a level to the exit; in between the path is blocked by numerous obstacles and dangers that the player has to overcome by assigning actions to the penguins. (A Lemmings clone, if you are old enough).
How to get Pingus?
sudo apt install pingus
What is a level editor? Level editors represent a game’s potential, giving your imagination free reign to create. We do not always want to be constrained by the developer’s world, or would like to extend the game beyond what it is. Launch Pingus and let’s get started.
You will see the editor in the menu. If you click this, another window will open. This new window is quite confusing. It gives you only a magenta, grey and black block. Though it looks like drek, you get used to it quite quickly.
The question is where to start? Even how to start? Here at FCM, we will guide you in making a level. I am not promising it will be a good level, as YOU are going to make it, I will simply be your guide. If you have kids, now is a good time to impress them with your ‘1337 skillz’.
Tip: See - https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/ksu_pingus_activity1
Let me start by explaining what you are seeing. The magenta block is the level, the grey block is the object selection, and the black block is your minimap. The yellow block on the minimap is your viewport. The size of your screen, and whether you are in windowed or full screen mode, will affect this, so yours may be completely yellow. (I made it smaller to get a legible screenshot).
To start, click on the image of a rock in the top-right, and the grey area will fill in with objects. Click and drag one of the objects into the magenta area. You will notice a block pop up in the bottom-left. This block controls the object you just placed down. It is not intuitive, so you need to take it for a test run.
The vertical bar changes the facing of the object on the horizontal plane. Think of it as flipping around a vertical axis in the centre of the object. The double-dash next to it does the opposite, flipping your object around the horizontal axis. The shortcut key is “F” for flip. The next two buttons, “←” and “→”, rotate the object clockwise or counter-clockwise around the anchor point in the top-left of the object – not the centre, like the previous two buttons. The shortcut key is “R” for rotate.
There is a “help” button on the menu bar, but it does not cover everything; use it as a reference. The first unlisted button you need to know is “D” for duplicate. I suppose you can keep dragging floor pieces from the menu, but duplicating them in the correct angle is a lot quicker. You can also select multiple objects with a click and drag, and, once selected (Border will change from white to red), you can mass duplicate that. You can make this as simple or intricate as you like. One basically needs three things for a level, an Entrance, a floor, and an exit. We placed a floor, now drag in an Entrance and Exit, and place them where you would like. The green triangle in the menu is the play button, this will let you test your level.
Once you know the level is working, it is time to decorate your level. What you are looking for is the grass-looking icon. Hovering over it, the tool-tip should say “groundpiece (transparent)”. These are decorators your penguins will not interact with whilst walking. These decorators will still be acted upon by things like explosions or digging through them, so you don’t have to worry about stray grass hanging in the air once your digger starts to dig. The pieces that do interact with your penguins have “(solid)” in parenthesis when you hover your mouse pointer over them. The main point I am trying to make is that you should try everything to see how your penguins react to them.
You can simply drag out a background tile to anywhere on the magenta block. The game engine will take care of the tiling for you. I will include screenshots of this below. Keep the size of your penguins in mind, there are big blocks, meant to be borders or for them to dig through, and simple floors for them to walk on. As you can see, I used fat blocks so that they have a way to fall before reaching the lava. Right, you have the bare bones down. Now the difficult part starts, you need to make puzzles. Puzzles do not have to be terrain-based only, you can get creative and limit the types of penguins that are spawned. You do this by clicking on the penguin icon in the menu bar. The tool-tip says “configure actions”. You have ten types of penguins, and, by default, you get twenty of each. For early levels the defaults are fine, but working on your puzzle, you will need to ramp up the difficulty by limiting the types as the game progresses, or the player will lose interest. It is a good idea to save often. I have killed my level four times during this how-to, by accident.
If you are stumped at level design or puzzle design, steal with your eyes. Look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tQHKbCxnGQ
The last thing I want to cover is something you may have seen in the beginning, but I did not mention it. That is the z-axis; you can think of this as layers; foreground, middle ground, and background. This gives depth to your level. The reason I left it until last was because, on the first glance, it does nothing. If you selected that first object and tried to raise or lower it, nothing would have happened. To understand how it works, I need you to place one type of ground, then place a “groundpiece” (solid) overlapping the ground. Now play with the four icons after the bin icon to see what happens. Now also look at the box in the lower-left that gives you the object properties. The z-axis stays at 0, even if you lower the object. However, even at the lowest setting, the object does not go lower than the background. You can use this to your advantage by having liquid above the ground on the Z-axis, and pretend it is floating on lava or water.
As always, questions and comments to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org