Baba Was Good...
Since you're probably the only one who'd know, Kaynato:
Have you found any way to quickly playtest levels in the editor short of going to the title screen with F2 and picking Custom Levels? Probably won't make any levels for now, but I have to imagine this game wasn't actually made without an easy playtest button... right???
Also, you may have noticed this yourself, but I was surprised to learn that the Meta-15 solution is actually modeled and works with any case, rather than just being hardcoded. Apparently the level borders are considered "Level" objects, so I imagine the way it's implemented is that when you enter a level, the objects on all sides of that level are spawned on the outside edges. Still kind of wild.
Also I don't know if it's a worthy bug report that "HOT" is not considered a valid word when made of letters (it can be made in Gallery). The likely reason is that it only looks for nouns (which have their exact names internally), whereas the property WIN ("TEXT_WIN" internallly) is simply hardcoded to work. I'm sure it'll probably get addressed by the time the level editor goes public, since people will want to make all the words with letters.
(https://kaynato.github.io/hosting/dailies/s2019_03_20_01.jpg)
March 20
the muddiness and fog of
staying up to 5 AM every day in a row for so long
meeting someone again you thought lost
finding that, in a dream, you had the memory
and in waking had forgotten again
Hmmmm... quickly playtesting isn't in there yet, so it's pretty annoying, at least if I can't find it.
And have you tried the editor yet? It's pretty wild.
I actually ended up using text editors to edit my level descriptions for some Special Stuff I wanted... but there are some limitations of other stuff it turns out.
I got extremely stuck on Booby Trap too - it was one of the most troublesome levels for me. Even once I knew what ultimately needed to be done and all the things you could do to manipulate the objects, I kept overlooking the specific way of doing it. So it's also hard to give good hints without knowing which elements you've figured out. But if you want a hint on what the basic goal is:
You can't make LEVEL IS BABA without making LAVA IS MORE AND DEFEAT in the process. And try as you might, "barely outrunning the lava" isn't going to work. So what can you do about it?
And to Kaynato:
I figured out most of the basics of how the editor works. I still can't really understand why you'd design a system with the potential for the same object to "accidentally" be slightly different per level, or have defined properties for objects that need to be copied from level to level instead of existing in some central place. I get that some things like letters only exist in a single level, but like...
I imagine the official editor will rework this so you can use every object everywhere (or at least select defined objects for your "object pallet" rather than providing a sprite, name, type...), and only alter minor things like color and depth. The ability to have custom nouns might stay in there, but I feel like letting people "mismatch" sprites and meanings for existing objects could be a problem.
And yes, the level metadata just seems like it has to be edited manually to do some stuff like change music, or use the "special" objects to display text. I guess that's the kind of thing that's easy enough to edit as a developer that it's not worth making a menu. What specifically have you found is a limitation? Because heck, you could probably even code new properties with the code as open as it is.
baffled by baba....
i figured out how to get overlapping text and send it rightwards, which seems to be the only way to block the right lava. but i cannot block the left lava without also blocking my route to the right half. this morning i was trying to rig up something with flag is shift to push a text block in the way of the lava after i leave, or something, but i could not seem to get it working....
You're on the right track, but you can be more efficient with your resources. You should end up with exactly enough to block the lava.
(This was more or less the part I couldn't put together for a while, but it's not particularly complicated - I'd say it's at least a little simpler than what you're doing now.)
you need 5 text blocks to block the lava, right? i dont see how to do it with fewer, even by shifting the lava around, and the flag does not seem to work even with flag is shift on
my current strat only gives 3 text blocks that can be used to stop the lava.... im messing around with the belt now?? idk
Yes, you need five solid things to block the left lava, and one to block the right lava. Thus, make sure you aren't wasting any solid objects. Also, think about how to get as much as you can from the bottom area.
ok maybe i do want hints....
i just dont have enough resources to do anything..... i can unlock the door leading to level 9 but i have nothing to get past the water with.... or i can make the levels pushable but that uses both flags and then i cant unlock the door leading to level 9..... getting to any other levels seems impossible as well.....
You do want LEVEL IS PUSH to deal with the water. You also want a flag to open the door leading to the water. So, is there a way you could get to the LEVEL IS LEVEL section using only one flag?
Extra hint: [sp]The way you likely have the map configured currently, no, there isn't.[/sp]
when you say "the way i have the map configured", are you just talking about which levels i have turned into which objects, or is there some other mechanic for reconfiguring the map i am missing?
There's a pretty simple solution for [sp]Mutual Feelings[/sp] that I used which is much simpler than the top result walkthrough:
Make three LOVE teleporters. (This is the tricky part - I believe I used another set of TELEs to get the word I used to make LOVE back from the left side of the screen.) Then push BABA and FLAG into the teleporters. Since 3+ teleporters work randomly, eventually BABA and FLAG will pick the same destination and become overlapped, and even teleport together from then on.
finished that baba.....
i never went to meta-12 though.... i think i know how to get there
(https://kaynato.github.io/hosting/dailies/s2019_03_21_01.jpg)
march 21
i.............
i did something really stupid today..... was considering a way to make some certain special algorithms in baba is you... instead of doing my actual work
but, i did go see the doctor! so that's something done. and watered the plants.
living alone.... completely alone....
but i'll also have to move forward by myself too....
(just stop sleeping so late)
yeah.... delicate star was a level that had me really confused... i ended up beating it "on accident"
Yeah, Getting Together is basically a collection of my biggest weaknesses. If you haven't already beaten it, the basic approach is...
Collect the non-solid stuff in a convenient place. Get the two solid things to overlap. Then push the solid stuff into the non-solid stuff (including [sp]BABA ON BABA[/sp]).
I believe the only ways solid things can overlap are a) they both move into the same space at the same time (i.e. they're a space apart and move toward each other simultaneously), or b) an object changes from non-solid to solid (either with a change in properties or a transformation).
Kaynato's level pack:
Not really fixable for you, but I kept getting errors on 1-1 due to the combination of LEVEL IS YOU and LEVEL IS SHIFT. It seemed to happen if I made LEVEL IS YOU, then went over to form LEVEL IS SHIFT, then hit the wait button right after forming it.
For 1-2, SAD is a pretty awkward indicator that makes it even harder to know what you're doing in the level - changing it to RED or BLUE might be better. (It's still a bit awkward since it takes an extra step to update, though.)
Splash is cool but I'm bad at it. And I'm not really sure what I'm doing in 2-1 yet.
1-1/1-3: Yeah.... those were annoying bugs. But you don't need to wait at all to solve those levels, so it should be fine.
1-2: I was thinking of using FLOAT but FLOAT can't really touch things... BLUE might make more sense. You're right - using SAD makes it a bit of artificial difficulty. But RED and BLUE look so weird... Not sure about what to do it with. Did you solve the level?
Splash is weird... I made the tile board 5x5 instead of 7x7 because it started to get annoying to solve it.
Then there should be three more secret levels in world 1....
World 2 was tricky for me to start work on bc of the complicated mechanics... It's like making a Zachtronics game in Baba is You.
Maybe I should move up the stages and have a first stage be like, an introduction to the Paradigm used there?
I updated the levelpack...
Lots of changes to 1-2... including that I use RED. The solutions are also a bit more strict than before since it's easier to tell some stuff now.
I also added 2-0 to introduce the paradigm in world 2... Hopefully it does a good job of introducing the thing, so you can "look at a lot of rules at once."
http://kaynato.github.com/hosting/baba%20hell/game%20is%20loop.zip