What’s the Element Maker?
The Element Maker allows Players to create their own Elements using template behaviours. You can access this feature by selecting the new “Elements” Mode in the “Create” Modes selection screen.
The available behaviours are:
- Heroes Skins: create your own skis! Use them in any level from the gallery!
- Avatar
- Caveman
- Fujin (ninja)
- Deco: just a picture with no animations to use as decoration. Make buildings, trees or whatever you want!
- Talking entity: similar to decorations, but a text bubble will appear when a hero gets close to it. You can make signs or talking NPCs.
- Flying critters: make birds or drones. Critters won't hurt the player, but can be killed.
- Enemies: now you have 5 different behaviours to make your own enemies!
- Flying: Like the flying critter but it does attack the player.
- Swimming: Make anything that moves on water.
- Walking: it just does it’s thing, but if you touch it you will get hurt.
- Shooting: it doesn’t move, but it will shoot at you if you come near. You can also choose from 3 different kinds of bullets: Steel, Lava and Acid.
- Melee: this enemy attacks at close range, so you better stay out of it’s way. Use this template for enemies that bite, punch, slice, electroshock or sting the player.
- Hazard: it’s just a picture like deco, but it hurts you if you touch it.
- Fireproof deco: for those times when you want your decorations to last forever.
- NPC: standard standing creatures that walk around. They are harmless but can be killed.
- Pet: similar to NPC. This template has an horizontal shape, so it’s best to make animals that walk in four legs. Also, these creatures will follow the player.
How do I use the Element Maker? What can I do in it?
After choosing one of these behaviours, you will go to the Element Maker itself. It’s similar to the Level Editor but allows you to create Elements for the game by drawing each frame of their animations. Let’s see what happens when you select one:
By default we’ll see the “Idle” animation. It has 8 frames and all of them can be edited individually. You can draw and erase anything on the frame as if you were in the Art Create Mode. You can change frames by tapping on each frame on the Timeline below, and change Colors using the new Element Maker Mini-Palette on the side. You can also set 5 levels of transparency.
Just like in the Level Editor, you’ll have a few more tools to create and paint the frames faster: the Bucket, the Replace and the Brush Size Tools. They work the same way as they do in the Editor.
Bucket Tool
Replace Tool
Brush Size
By tapping on the small left and right arrows in the Timeline you can also toggle between the animations that the element has.
For example, the “Attack” animation in the Melee Enemy template has 8 frames. The Green button can be used to see how the animation will play.
The Mini-Palette and the frames Timeline can both be hidden to see more of the Canvas.
You just need to press the small arrows that point towards the border. Or you can use the Color and Film buttons on the TopBar. See that green rectangle behind your drawing? That is the Collision Box of the entity. Use it as reference to see how big or small you can make your entity.
When you tap on a frame in the Timeline you have 3 options to make animation editing and creation easier:
- The first button switches to Bullet Settings, only visible in the Shooting Enemy template (you need to open this menu from the last frame, where the bang icon marks the shot).
- The second button Resets the frame to the template picture.
- The third one Copies the current frame to the clipboard.
- The fourth one will Paste the current clipboard frame to the current frame.
In Bullet Settings mode, you can define where the bullet will come out from, by dragging the small bang icon. You can also choose the type of bullet for this enemy.
The Onion Skin button in the TopBar can show 3 different things overlayed in colors for you to use as a guide.
- The Blue Onion Skin show the previous frame.
- The Red Onion Skin shows the next frame.
- The Green Onion Skin shows the Default Element’s current frame.
The Selection tool can be used to move entire groups of pixels within a frame, which is very useful when making animations. By selecting it in the Top Bar and dragging in the drawing you will be able to define a rectangular area. You’ll then be able to drag all the pixels in it together.
You can Save an Element just like you would save a World, but these get stored in a separate Element Gallery.
You’ll be able to share your elements to the element Market after choosing a Price to them. You will receive a fraction of the sales of these elements in the Market in Mana. Make Entities that other players really like to earn lots of Mana!