Child-proofing:

I’m glad to say that I only had to cut one feature from the game: Check-points. While I originally planned to include check-points into the game, I realized this wouldn’t be possible if I was to allow for multiple-rocket levels. It would have been easy enough to only put check-points into levels with just one Rocket, but you can’t explain that kind of thing to kids who are using the program.

Creating the Level Code:

As hard as I worked to include as many features as possible, the framework of the game was still limited by one major factor; the alphabetical saving system. This meant that I could only have up to 26 types of Objects, and only 300 Objects within a level (for a size of 640x480). One of the ways I saved space in the code was to have Geysers snap to the nearest surface. This way I only needed 3 different Objects instead of 12!
Considering that Mars Lander’s code uses 24 letters to create a code that is 300 characters long, I’ve wondered how many unique levels could be made. Obviously a large percentage of those levels would be unplayable for various reasons, but I think it’s safe to say that you can make thousands of unique levels with the program before you start running into trouble. It might even be more than that… if anyone would like to do the math, I’d be happy to hear how many levels Mars Lander Builder can create!

Since not much was happening this week besides the release of the newest Level Pack for Mars Lander Runner, I thought I'd go into a bit of detail on how I got about creating levels. But that quickly became a two page long, complete "behind-the-scenes" write-up on the creation of the program itself. As a result, I decided to split the article up into key components and I'll release a part of it along with each week's Level Pack News Post. So without further ado, here is the first part of the behind the scenes look at Mars Lander Builder and Runner:

Working with a Theme:

First of all, I don't use any type of specialized editor which only I, the creator of the program, can use. I've been using Mars Lander Builder to make levels, just like anyone else with the program could. That is to say, I don't make the levels with GameMaker, I design, build and test them within the same program.