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#1 Before February 2015

Nou
Member
Joined: 2015-02-24
Posts: 2,762

Guide: Designing Challenges

This guide is a collaborative effort by members of EX Crew. I've decided to post it on the forum as well (it has been on the wiki for a while) because it will reach more people here.

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Platforming challenges have become an integral part of the Everybody Edits experience. With the various bricks and tools available, a designer is able to create a wide range of experiences for a player, limited only by the designer's imagination. While some designers may only re-create tricks they have seen in other maps, more devoted ones will attempt to create original challenges using primarily their game knowledge and experience.
Below are some guidelines for designing and developing your own challenge.

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Press ctrl+F and search for the number of the section to skip to that part.

Contents

1. Concept
2. Setup
3. Evaluate
4. Complete
5. Test

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1. Concept

Develop a unique concept for the room before you place a single block.

Brainstorming is a critical step often neglected by many creators. It is essential to have an idea of what you want to accomplish before you just start placing blocks all over the map. Have a concept in mind that sounds at least semi-original and also fun.

There is no right or wrong way to brainstorm; the key is to open your mind to new possibilities that you have not seen in any other map. Try to think about the basic path you want the player to follow, what sorts of actions you might want the room to require, and what kind of restrictions you wish to place on the player.
Some viable ways to start from scratch include:

? Building a shape out of bricks, to be turned into a challenge with arrows and obstacle bricks
? Laying down a pattern or line of arrows that the player will have to use in passing obstacle bricks
? Setting up a trick that you thought of or saw on another map, to be expanded into new forms or size to fit the space

The example is drawn from room 15 in the EX Crew map Are You A God?. In this first step, the basic concept was to design a room that required a player to keep moving in order to make the next jump (stopping would mean the player could no longer make the jump) but to also prevent a player from simply going full speed. This meant that a platform first had to be designed that required some velocity but not the maximum speed possible. In the picture, a low ceiling sits three spaces above a single block. It was tested using the yellow bricks to confirm that a player has to be moving fairly fast to clear the ceiling to successfully make the jump.

1.1a.PNG
The example is inspired by room 15 in the EX Crew map Are You A God. The first step is to develop an original and fun basic concept, so the idea was to require a player to keep moving in order to pass a series of jumps (stopping would mean the player has to start over) but to also prevent a player from simply going full speed (also known as speed control). In other words, a player would have to complete a series of jumps nonstop while also controlling their speed.

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2. Setup

Begin to build the basic setup to achieve your concept.

Now that you have an idea in mind, begin to toy with some ideas to watch your concept come to life. Do not design the entire room just yet, focus on making the basic idea work before adding additional tricks at the beginning or end of the room. This way you will not waste time on room elements that are not essential to its basic operation. Make sure to consider your target level of difficulty as you proceed to build an alpha version of your concept, since room ideas have many different ways of being built and some arrangements will be harder than others.

Feel free to widely experiment during this phase with setups that are unique and interesting. Do not fall in love with the first way you begin making the room, or else you may overlook additions and/or corrections that could have significantly improved your room. Also always keep in mind this simple question during the entire building phase: is this room fun? If you find yourself answering no, you may need to take a different approach or perhaps scrap the concept all together. It is important to know when to admit defeat, so do not be afraid to toss your idea aside and think of a new and better concept.

1.1b.PNG

The second step was to implement this basic concept. As shown in the first image, the basic component of the concept was a low ceiling three bricks wide that sits three spaces above a single brick. The yellow bricks were used for testing purposes to confirm that this jump would require momentum in order to not hit the ceiling, meaning stopping and jumping from the single brick would be impossible.

This was then expanded to include a second jump as shown in the second image. The second jump was made exactly the same as the first, but placed higher and to the right of the first. It was then tested to ensure that standing on the first brick and trying to jump to the second one would be impossible. A player has to have momentum in order to make the jump from the first to second brick.

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3. Evaluate

Evaluate your original concept and decide to either: start over, modify it, or finish the room.

Successfully translating your concept into a working room is not the end of the creation process. You must now make an honest evaluation of how the challenge has turned out before adding the finishing touches and moving on to the next room. This can be a very difficult task, since many room designers tend to fall in love with their work and are resistant to admitting it is not good enough to keep. If you know you tend to overvalue your creations, make sure to bring in at least one impartial party who can properly evaluate and critique the working room concept.

Assuming you are able to make a truthful assessment, you need to ask yourself a few questions at this point:

? Is there a better way to implement this concept?
? Should I make some changes to the basic concept itself to improve it?
? Is this truly fun and worthy of keeping?

Do not be afraid to admit the concept has flaws that could be fixed; some of the best rooms created in EE are the ones that came out of modified concepts which were not quite good enough in their original form, but were exceptional once the designer made some tough but necessary changes.

If you honestly feel your room is worthy of keeping, then you may proceed to the finishing touches. If instead you cannot quite make the concept work well enough even after multiple attempts to fix and/or modify it, then you may need to start the room creation process all over with a completely new and different idea.

For my example room, everything was working fine so I continued with the original idea. In many others rooms I made that was not the case, and so I modified my concept as I went along until I had a concept that actually worked.

1.1c.PNG
In this image, the spacing between the first and second jumps was adjusted to make sure a player cannot go full speed or else they will overshoot the second brick but still fall short of the third brick. The concept was now ready for step 3, which was to evaluate if the implementation was successful and fun. Numerous tests confirmed that a player has to go at a medium speed to successfully clear all the jumps. Stopping meant the player would hit the ceiling as designed, while going full speed meant the player would overshoot the next brick and fall, and the challenge was fun.

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4. Complete

Finish the entire room.

If you are satisfied with how the concept evolved into a challenge, you should now expand it to meet the start and finish of the room or area in which you are building it. It could be the case that while you have an excellent challenge, you now realize that it is too small or big to fit into the space you have available. If it is too big and you are unable to make more space available, save the challenge in your head or in a screenshot for another area or another map. If it is too small, then you could consider expanding it into less complex or more complex 'forms'.

Taking a small challenge and expanding it to meet the size of a specific section or area can be done in one of three ways. In order of their creativity:

? Making a tunnel or platform that extends from the beginning of the room to the challenge, or from the challenge to the end of the room. This is no different than just shrinking the room, except that it wastes space as well.
? Adding extra tricks or a new challenge that fits before or after your original challenge concept. This is essentially dividing the area into two separate sections with two challenges.
? Most concepts for challenges can be broken down and made simpler / easier, or expanded upon to be made more complex / difficult. You can have the player go through a 'time-lapse' evolution of a challenge, learning from a simple version then tackling more complex forms of the same basic concept. If you are able to creatively simplify or expand upon a concept using different challenges, the player will learn as he goes and will have an easier time taking on the tougher challenges.

1.1d.png
Since the concept passed the evaluation step, it was worthy of moving on to step 4 which was to finish the room by adding the fail arrows and by connecting it to the neighboring rooms. Since this concept was fairly difficult by itself, there was no need to add extra tricks at the beginning or at the end of the room as is usually done.

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5. Test

Play test, edit, play test, edit, over and over again!

When you finish your room it is not really done, you now need to play test it to make sure it is not only beatable, but that there are no ways to "exploit" the room. Exploiting the room means there is another way to get to the finish that was not intended, and you need to play test a room many many times to make sure that there is only the path you intended, and that your path is fair and not excessively cheap. This takes time, so please take your time to properly test and edit a room until it is balanced and perfect.

If you made a fairly difficult room, it's important to determine if your room is the "good" kind of hard, or the "bad" kind of hard. Many rooms in EE can be made difficult by adding unfair or cheap tricks, such as a lack of checkpoint for a long room, numerous hook jumps in a row, one by one hook jumps, multiple edge jumps, etc. This is considered the "bad" type of hard, since these rooms are generally not learnable and will force a player to repeat fairly tedious challenges. The number one rule to remember with creating difficult rooms is to make sure they are learnable, and after you practice the room you should be able to beat it in a reasonable amount of tries.

1.1e.PNG
During step 5 a problem was discovered after rigorous additional testing of the finished room. A player could stop on the single brick, and jump backwards to gain enough momentum to land back on the brick and clear the ceiling (known as a backjump). Since this went against the basic concept of the room, this exploit had to be closed by adding additional arrows as seen in the fourth and final image. Now the player could not jump backwards or move to the back edge of the brick, which meant only a series of nonstop jumps at a controlled speed would work.

The room was now finished, with no exploits, and with the original concept successfully turned into reality. This room could never have been made without the extensive experimentation and testing that took place at every step, so it is important to spend as much time as needed to complete a room properly and to make sure it is clear of exploits.


No u.

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#2 Before February 2015

Kaosslasher
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Nice guide //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/smile this is pretty much EXACTLY what i do //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/big_smile

#3 Before February 2015

tokebot
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

tl;dr
jk, good guide for new aspiring challengemakers.

#4 Before February 2015

EDJ
Member
Joined: 2015-08-20
Posts: 2,157

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Good to see that you posted it here //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/smile

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#5 Before February 2015

BEE
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Joined: 2015-03-14
Posts: 1,679

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

I get stuck at step 1 //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/smile


Custom Tab: Forum Post|Trello

Thanks Xen for my Avatar and Smitty for the smiley 47BA5lq.png

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#6 Before February 2015

Lugnuts
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

This is absolutely wonderful. I love the concept fot the minigame you designed.

#7 Before February 2015

EDJ
Member
Joined: 2015-08-20
Posts: 2,157

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

A good guide
*sticked*

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#8 Before February 2015

Lugnuts
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Yay! Not even 24 hours after it was made. Also, the "ctrl+f" thing doesnt work, as there are numbers scattered all around the page, like the date or the number of pages, etc.

#9 Before February 2015

Tako
Member
From: Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Joined: 2015-08-10
Posts: 6,663
Website

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Ask anyone, I make the worst mini's.

Hopefully this'll improve my work. 1bigsmile1


Yeah, well, you know that's just like, uh, your opinion, man.

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#10 Before February 2015

Nou
Member
Joined: 2015-02-24
Posts: 2,762

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Lugnuts wrote:

Yay! Not even 24 hours after it was made. Also, the "ctrl+f" thing doesnt work, as there are numbers scattered all around the page, like the date or the number of pages, etc.

That's why you add the dot behind it //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/wink

As in:

1.

2.

etc


No u.

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#11 Before February 2015

Lugnuts
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Ah, ok.

#12 Before February 2015

Cyclopsicle
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

I suck at minis :'(

#13 Before February 2015

Chimi
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Why do you think they spent the time to make this guide?

#14 Before February 2015

Gaganvir
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Good minigame for the final minigame section, the intense minigames section

#15 Before February 2015

mrmcmo
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Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Balled eagle XD BALLED LOL

#16 Before February 2015

Different55
Forum Admin
Joined: 2015-02-07
Posts: 16,572

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

That's 2 posts and both of them have gotten you a warning for spam. I'd suggest you stop.


"Sometimes failing a leap of faith is better than inching forward"
- ShinsukeIto

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#17 Before February 2015

Nou
Member
Joined: 2015-02-24
Posts: 2,762

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

mrmcmo wrote:

Balled eagle XD BALLED LOL

Even for spam it's completely unrelated. Props for the randomness!

On topic, this guide obviously goes hand in hand with the other:

http://eeforumify.com/viewtopic.php?id=6986


No u.

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#18 Before February 2015

mrmcmo
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

ok but thats a good way to make a mini //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/big_smile

#19 Before February 2015

PurpleCheesyCat
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

i love it but i cant say any more or else i'll have spammed //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/smile     //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/cool:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::

#20 Before February 2015

AwzzomeDude
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Hello everyone, I Was wonderin if someone could help me on making minis on my world, So far i have a good landscape layed out but now its kinda pointless =P   So if you do, Here is the link : http://beta.everybodyedits.com/games/PWFLnGjE7Da0I Thanks //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/big_smile

#21 Before February 2015

Jeremifier
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

tl;dr

I only read until the second image lol...

#22 Before February 2015

Garfield2436
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

PurpleCheesyCat wrote:

i love it but i cant say any more or else i'll have spammed //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/smile     //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/cool:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::

Well, that's one way to get spamming man.
I enjoy the guide Nou. Great job.

Last edited by Garfield2436 (Aug 13 2011 8:43:03 pm)

#23 Before February 2015

Kitty12
Guest

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

lol
//forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/cool

#24 Before February 2015

EDJ
Member
Joined: 2015-08-20
Posts: 2,157

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Kitty12, don't make usless posts if you have nothing to say. Read the rules:
http://eeforumify.com/misc.php?action=rules

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#25 Before February 2015

Awesomenessgood
Member
Joined: 2015-08-06
Posts: 1,666

Re: Guide: Designing Challenges

Nou wrote:
Lugnuts wrote:

Yay! Not even 24 hours after it was made. Also, the "ctrl+f" thing doesnt work, as there are numbers scattered all around the page, like the date or the number of pages, etc.

That's why you add the dot behind it //forums.everybodyedits.com/img/smilies/wink

As in:

1.

2.

etc

LOL!!! Since you typed the 1.

                                                 and 2.
When I press ctrl+F I go to the one you wrote.
OOPS!!! I wrote it too. WevBh.png


lunchbox

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Nou1429566307497047

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