Act 2

Training Tutorial Zone Map > Act 1 > Act 2 > Act 3 > Act 4

Now back to the "Level editing screen"...

"whats the difference"? well, quite a lot

A Backdrop is a object that can't be animated or programed, it is there to be there, for an example most of the titles (the green blocks) on the level are backdrops with Obstacle set in its proprieties

An active, well is... quite a lot, From the player, to tiles, badniks, gimmicks and pretty much everything that has to be programmed, have values and animation.

"But why use backdrops if actives are a lot better"?

because they use a lot of your memory, the more backdrops you use and the more you avoid using actives, the better

oh, you can still put a lot of actives but remember, Rings are also actives and you will put a lot of them.

2.1 - Collision

"So, i've added a backdrop and it's not colliding with the player, what do i do?"

take a look on its proprieties (it's a window usually on the side of the screen and if it's not there, just go to View > Toolbars)

you dont have to know the name of all of those, just click on them and explore what they do.

And to add collision, just go to the 4th icon and set the Obstacle type to Obstacle... and... done!

"well, now, how do I do the same but with actives?"

The properties of an active are different from a Backdrop

2.2 - Qualifiers

As you can see there is a lot more in an active than in the backdrop

but that also means it will be even more complicated...

anyway, lets look at this window first, and as you can see, there is a 0 on the Qualifier(s) line, wich means that this Active has a solid collision with the player and if there isn't anything, the Active has no interaction with the player unless you program something in the events editor.

ok, now click the 0 and the add in the window that pops up, you will see a lot of qualifiers. Let me explain what some of those things do:

0: Solid Collision

1: A platform, you can only collide with it from the top

Also, all the objects in the Level_Platforms Folder have this qualifier

2: "No rotation", if this is applied, sonic will not change its angle when walking on it

3 and 4: Those actives are used to make Loops and some few more things...

dont even try doing such a big loop

It's actually very simple to work with it

See those red things with an 0? if Sonic touches them, he will not collide with the blue tile and will collide with the red one and when he touches the

one at the top, he will switch from RED TO BLUE and for the blue things with a 1 the same as the red ones but you collide with the blue tile instead of the red one.

but where the 3 and 4 get in?

the red tile, which is an active has the 3 qualifier and the blue has the 4 qualifier... and that is pretty much it.

for an example, this is a platform that moves in circles

Thankfully the guy who made the code for this object, Damizean, did in a way that you can program what you want the moving plataform to do by just changing those values.

if you are very very good with math, you will understand this very quickly, unlike me, who just puts some values at random to see what happens.

Anyway, DW in the SFGHQ forums explained those. hope you understand it

InitialAngle: What angle is used for the sin/cos value to start with. Just refer to your unit circle. The important thing to be aware of is that if you shift this by 180 degrees, you'll have a platform moving at the opposite clip of what it would be if you used 0. That way you can make it so that platforms move in a way that they will sync up with one another.

AngleStepX/Y: Value added to the trig angle each frame for X/Y. Increasing this makes the platform complete it's path faster in a given direction. Decreasing it makes the path complete slower.

DistanceX/Y: Kinda obvious, but the amount of distance covered by the platform.

Cos/Sin: Whether the motion uses sin or cos to determine current position. This is only important because the 0 angle for sin starts in the center while for cos it starts high.

knowing what those things do is pretty usefull when trying to create new gimmicks. alright, lets cover all of those guys:

1: Rings, monitors, springs, spikes, lava and air bubbles: they are pretty easy to handle and you probably know what they do already

2: Enemies: i'll cover this when we get to program a badnik from nothing

3: Speed Pads: they make you go really fast... just dont abuse it or else people will call your game DIMPS-ish even if the level design is actually really good.

4: Breakable Stuff: ya know, those walls that break and all of things like that, the code in this is very usefull if you want to make any object fly off.

just explore it a bit, it's worth it.

4: Switches: you press them, something happens. like the one above, exploring it it's very nice thing to do

see those things in red? those are the ones you need to replace.

you can do it in 2 different ways:

1: Here:

but if you do so, you will just replace the "Foliage Furnace - Act 1" track and not actually add anything

2: This is how we are going to do it, first Double Click the Foliage Furnace - Act 1

them, this window should appear

Click in the thing highlighted in red, select the music track and yup, there you go

BUT MMF2 doesnt support MP3! "now, what do i do batman"?

you have to find a way to convert you music files to a .ogg or .wav

though .ogg is very close to an .mp3 in file size and quality

see those things in red? memorise them...

and now click OK to everything you see until you arrive back at the frame window

4: your image seems a bit wierd now isnt it? "Batman, help me!"

hey, did you memorised those numbers? now go to the object's proprieties

and set its wide and height to those values.

5: now, let's make it a actual PARALLAX

first, go to the events editor, scroll down the page and click the new condition.

Double Click the first object in this list and click on always.

then, below the always, you will see the "insert new action here"

click it and try to find the parallax object in the middle of all this mess... yes, try to find it, i'm not kidding.

After you have find it, Double click it and go to Alterable values and click on Set.

Yes, we are going to change some of its values

the values we are going to change are the D and E

D being the X scroll and E being the Y scroll. but for now, lets just change the D value

now, let me explain something, the higher the value, the further away it is from sonic, but the highest value you can use is 1.

-1 ..... (Sonic) 0............................................1 (far away in the BG)

yes, the values you are going to set are between 1 and 0, like 0.5, 0.3.

but for now, set the D to 0.9

now, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V the "set D value to 0.9" but this time set the E value to 0.9 but be aware, if you test the frame and lose sight of the object dont get afraid, it's just in a place you cant see it.

in the end, it should look like this

ok, this is it for now!

see ya later