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Level structure

A Chaos Engine level consists of several types of objects working together to produce the gameplay. The following paragraphs will briefly explain these objects.

Tiles

These make up what you see of a level, and are used for collision detection by assigning appropriate heights to them. Flags can be applied to tiles to give them a special meaning.

Triggers

When a player walks over a trigger, the trigger's Link will be executed. This means that all objects that have the same Link set, will be activated, or deactivated based on the object's settings.

Pickups

Pickups are special tiles that serve as an item that the player can pick up, like coins, player saves and powerups. During the game these become an actual part of the level map.

Actors

Any sprite visible in a level is an Actor. It will have a specific behavior and appearance determined by both the Actor's properties as well as the assigned Base Actor's properties.

Base actors

A Base Actor defines what sprite and default properties an Actor has. This information is also used by Script Blocks when spawning a new actor. Actors use a base actor to determine which sprite to display.

Covers

Think of these as areas of a level that are (temporarily) replaced by a Template. A Template is placed on the level map, altering the appearance and collision properties of the affected area. Covers are generally used to block or open access to other parts of a level, or to reveal hidden pickups. They can also be used to warp the player to another level or location on the same level by using a Destination.

Templates

Templates are 3x3 tile items that are defined separately from all other objects. They are used by Covers and Script Blocks to place on the map. Note that these are not intended to be used as a clipboard for often used tile configurations when editing a level's map; there there are a lot of hardcoded template indices used by scripts.

Script Blocks

When activated, Script Blocks execute a simple script which can place a Template on the level, as well as spawn new Actors or activate another Link. They are used to animate tiles, set up traps and create shootable blocks of tiles.

Spawn Spots

These identify a location in the level where players can spawn when they travel through a portal.

Destinations

A Destination defines a place where players will end up after being warped by a Cover. It can point to any Spawn Spot in any previous, current or next level.

Music

The dynamic music transitions are handled by a map of music subsongs. When a player enters a tile in this map, the current subsong will keep playing until it can transition into the new subsong.

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