The levels (as outlined somewhere, probably the level sets page) are from these sources. As there were about 30000 levels it was a tough job to find good ones and then change them accordingly.

If you press F11 it will provide the "level author", which for level 64 of fruity is

Quote:

mod P5L3 : emc no one 13. 17

This means it's from "Emerald Mines Club, No One Inc 13" Level 17. It also indicates that there have been 5 parameter modifications (probably score) and three level changes (probably mostly cosmetic in this case, or adding keys to make it possible in teamwork, or something).

I imported the levels by converting them from both Rocks and Diamonds and from the original games. Since the rocks and diamonds levels had already been imported they had lost data!! For example rocks and diamonds levels had the wrong blue wall time, slime speeds, etc in some places (basically due to overflows and precision on different fields). Also some level objects were different, changed or imcompatible.

Some of the "Amiga" imports also had coding modifications (eg "Emerald Mines 106, fresh from some dude in Alaska with a fruity name" may have changed walls to behave slightly differently or hacked out some minor changes). As with the Amiga scene it was pretty popular to hack code and make changes to games, etc.

The original Amiga levels were imported (to begin with) into my levels database using some tools. The games are avaialble in the public domain through some Amiga web site. They are ".adf" which isbasically a disk dump containing raw sectors. I used some public domain utility (under Debian Linux) to essentially extract the file structure, ie take an adf file and create a directory with the disks contents. From this the levels were typically files in a directory with one of three naming conventions. Starting with some number of hundred disks (adf files) I extracted them all (shell script) and ran scripts to isolate the level files. The disks which did not conform to one of the "standards" I looked at manually and either worked it out of decided it wasn't worth it. I then used custom tools (part of the bd4-core and server) to import them into Level objects which were inserted into my level database. I already had the rocks and diamonds.

My level database has "29940" levels in it. The ones from ID 4500 to 14000ish are from rocks and diamonds, the ones above 20000 are from Amiga disks. The ones under 4500 are from the published level sets and created using scripts from the other levels. The process of creating the level sets began with a "scan" of these levels which took much of ... 2002 or 2003 or there abouts. I wrote notes about each level of interest. You'd probably know about how poor the quality of the levels is (which is why I didn't just put thousands are semi-possible levels online).

Luckily I backed up this database ... so it was not lost when my hard drive died

Ok, the level scan file has a level ID and some "random coded characters" to indicate if it's good, what type of level it is. Occasionally it indicates that it's a definate level for a particulat set. For example:

Quote:

38097opc //32725 {C} Changed my mind - harder to complete! {or} {F, 70s} Pretty much as is. Okay.... could be either {C} or {F}. Good for both. Not really good for {E} since too much luck involved in getting many many gems (or good technique?). //32699 {F}

I've changed the square quotes to curly ones here. The first example means level ID 38097 is okay, a puzzle level and has the general aim of completing the level. It has not beed used. I've only shown three examples which are not in order (the file goes from highest to lowest IDs).

The second entry has a double tick meaning it's a definate level. I originally chose it for forest (C) but changed my mind and made it what is not level 73 of fruity. I outline it's not really good for jungle (E) because I know that if I put it there it would have to be really hard, rely on luck and be painful rather than very challenging.

The third is level 64 of fruity. I'm not sure if it should have been in general chaos since it's more of a puzzle level. Too late now.

Okay, still there.... now I went though the scan and did some sorting and stuffing around to get some short lists. From there I created 6 skeleton level sets. For each some I reshuffled, rearranged, tested and got them in a more or less "easy to difficult" order.... or an appropriate order for the type of level set. I also spent much time making sure I had good teamwork and single player levels.

To cut a very long story slightly shorter... I then wrote a sort of scripting language and some methods on my Level class and formed scripts to produce each level set. The snippet for level 64 of fruit is as follows

Quote:

#L 32699 #A mod P5L3 : emc no one 13. 17 #N Two tatty. ; probably/really belongs in {B}. ; As in "wow" as in a "w" tatooed onto each buttocks :) Double meaning. ; //32699 {F} ; 243 keys, 34 nuts, 29(+34) greens, 27 blues, 2 aliens, 34 grenades. #e c 239 222 #e r 132 39 22 42 22 #e r 222 44 22 44 22 #s 1 5 #s 3 10 #s T 0 #s X 26 #p N 40 #R 1 700 #R 2 700 #C 20031007 1650 #S 12 64 s

The script basically loads level 32699, sets the author and level name, has some comments, changes some level objects, sets the scoring, sets a recommended score for single player and teamwork, sets the committed data and saves it. And the end of the level script there's a line to export a level set to a file. There are also some bits to do with generating the level thumbnail image.

So, there you go, it's all pretty much an automatic process once I have written the level script file... but writing that file is a very time consuming process. Also, before I release a level set I make sure I beleive each level is possible (both single player and teamwork). Based on past experience I now play and complete each level in both modes to ensure it's possible. I found that about 10 levels in forest were impossible for teamwork players!! After doing this I realised that unless you have a recording as proff you can't be sure that a level is possible. Alas, I've lost the recordings with my last hard drive but know they are all possible (except levels 78, 79 and 80 in forest teamwork which were too hard for me).

And finally... reef and mountains.... wow.... it would appear I have allocated and defined all 102 levels for each set. I now have to set the scores, make sure they are competitive possible, well balanced and appropriately difficult. Then test to ensure they are all possible, then released. This will take a long time (as I found out last year when asarkila was being very patient for me to release the sets there now) but at least the level earching is more or less done (no doubt I'll change a few). The hardest bit will be "mountains" which are puzzle levels, some of which I think are possible but hard completed or necessarily worked out!!

Okay... this messga emay seem long to read. It was longer to write. And spare a thought for the actual things I've done! I think the hobby though and still love to play bd4!