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(+1)

Only trying out the level builder[lie]. I feel skeptical of adding a level editor when the game isn't out, given it's a lot of work, is hard to get people engage with, and from what I've seen doesn't increase sales for most games. That said, you have the unique position of having a fairly large puzzle game audience already, so maybe it'll be fine. Plus, having one is darn cool.

-IMPORTANT DO THIS ASAP: add undo/redo support! Otherwise you will waste thousands or more hours of human life spent manually re-editing the level as they shape it. I recently did this for an editor, and one thing to ensure is that it doesn't cause an undo/redo step when doing a non action, like erasing a tile with nothing, or painting a painted floor.

-Why is the window fixed size? It's not the worst on 1080p, but a guy with 4k will think it's an editor for ants. Maybe Toads.

-One or two more zoom out levels would be nice, for crazy people making large multi part puzzles or whatever. Also, I'm not sure why it's notched instead of granular.

-Bug: If you lose focus, then click back into the window, the click action will occur both where the visual cursor was prior to clicking, as well as where you clicked. Basically it does two actions at once which will cause confusion.

-"Shrink cursor to one sub tile" button could be better I think. The current icon is very ambiguous, while I think an icon like the following would work better: a tile square with the sub tile lines, and the small cursor which is only on the top left sub tile. 

-May want to label that the color palates can be swapped with 1-4.

-Color picker is good, but it should also allow picking a decoration when in that mode.

-Having decorations being in a scrollable box is bad(so many to sift through). I would prefer the palate disappear since you can't place any floor down while in the decoration mode, so that the options can be expanded along the bottom. Further, unless you plan to add more modes to the terrain submenus (paint vs decorations) I think it should be a one click toggle to swap between modes. [later, Oh I now see that the selected terrain changes the texture of the decoration. Fair enough, in that case please make the decor be laid out vertically on the right side of the screen perhaps.]

-I didn't expect the pinch button to do texture scrolling. I wish you could pinch the decorations too, ie instead of having to scroll to a texture to then place it a tile the left and delete the previous, you pinch it then continue with whatever. Though this would be less useful when you don't have to do all that scrolling for decor, or could color pick it.

-Object menu is okay I guess? It feels a little awkward, but there's a lot of stuff so it's hard. I wish the visibility toggle on this menu was available in the terrain too. Either for accidentally changing menus and forgetting to retoggle, or you're placing land and realize you need to see behind a character. Also, consider adding decorations as something to be hidden, I could imagine a situation where all the decor makes it hard to see the base layout of the floor.

-Can't figure how to change the landing location of launchpads. Also this UI for having to scroll numbers to change toad range and likely the launchpads is quite annoying. I'd like to have some visual editor handles when you're focused on the unit, like you click drag to easily change the launchpad target, click drag the radius of the frogs, etc.

-Not sure if the black and white rect is the camera view or the level bounds. Probably cam I guess. Not sure if the camera would move around in a super large level. Also there ought to be a handle to drag the rect instead of shimmying with the sizing.

-Hiding grid toggle in pause menu is meh. Two issues I notice with it: when zoomed out at max, half the time the lines of the grid disappear(both normal and sub tiles), due to subpixel positioning or whatever; and the sub tile lines being white is terrible to my eyes. Make them a darker gray so you can still distinguish the main tile lines. (PS why is 'x/y offset' even a thing? Does nothing basically)

-Try make hotkeys more obvious by labeling buttons, and add some more? ie H for hiding the UI.

-Now looking at the help menu, intentionally ignoring to see how intuitive things are. So a couple good things like toggling grid and etc. Apparently holding right click can change the facing and move the launchpad target, etc. I was just using it to select objects before. Could perhaps make more obvious by drawing a line from the object to your cursor to show what you're wrangling beyond the green highlight. Now that I know this a decent amount of pain points are addressed.

-Seems to be no way to select which fairy is the first one you control in game.

-Being unable to save then play the level from the editor is quite annoying. I hope it's included into the main game for faster iteration time, though perhaps you want to allow non game owners to make maps for their favorite frogtuber or what have you. But, letting you make a map you can't play to completion is disaster in the making.

-If possible have option to increase FPS, polling rate is low enough that if you move the mouse too quickly it will skip tiles in its path when holding an action. Just a guess though, perhaps it won't help.

-Save dialog is zoomed in and blurry, so you don't get much room for the file path text and etc. I assume you can't do a native file dialog due to godot 3.x or something.

-Saving doesn't automatically name the file as what you called it in the previous 'name and author' dialog. Not great UX. Also, after a file is saved, when you go back to the save/load dialog, the file(s) you just created won't appear in the file viewer until after you reload the directory.

-I somehow managed to make it so the save button in the dialog was grayed out. Eventually it came back, I think by loading a level file.


Bonus bug when briefly playing main game to see if I could load a level: Main Menu -> Options -> Control & Misc Tab, the back button at the bottom of screen can't be clicked. Can be used with Enter though. Oddly enough, this seems to only be broken in main menu, the pause menu in game is fine. PS, the 'Setup controls' button doesn't have a blue outline on focus unlike all the other buttons.

-Just noticed that you can't click onto the levels in the world map. Not a big deal, but it could be nice if someone is still in clicking mode after entering from the main menu.

-Game seems to not save??? I complete a couple levels, exit to menu and there's no save in the slots. I try several times, reboot, etc it doesn't work. Only thing I can think of is if my previous game saves made it explode or something. But, ignoring old save files is ez and likely already done so idk(and with a quick check the game is a special demo version so it isn't even using the same folder for data). I hope not intentional, it's confusing and the demo has enough content to need saves.

Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to release.

(+2)

Well, the save file one happened to me too.

Thanks for reporting it, I have fixed it for 0.28b

(+1)

Wow thanks for such an extensive feedback! Really appreciate it! I will answer point to point

>level editor while the game wasnt out
I needed some fresh air in deving and felt I was too quiet, so my goal was to give something to people so they would could have some fun while I worked on the rest of the game. It didn't take that long, almost 2 weeks, so it wasn't a very big commitment of time.

>undos
Yeah I should. This is the demo level editor, the full one should have undos. I didn't apply them because I wanted to work fast and I have no experience doing them.

>fixed size
It is the size of the game, but it should have variable size for the real thing. Or at least add a "fullscreen" button for the demo

>zoom levels
From my experience it is better if levels are small, but I know that people would appreciate a far zoom so I put it in. Making an even more extreme zoom wouldn't be too helpful I believe. About granularity, maybe. I do like to have the default zoom be easily accesible since it gives the designer a good idea how it would look like on the final game.

>bug
Thanks, I will give it a look later.

>cursor icon
Nice idea! I will try it out.

>label pallete hotkeys
eah. communicating hotkeys is something I have to put some thought into, it would be more convenient than having them hidden on a help menu.

>decoration
I'm unsatisfied with how decoration is used currently, but also because Im disatisfied with how it works in the game. It is something I will have to revisit later on. 

>object menu
Yeah, it is usuable but awkward. I have seen a lot of people not understand how to use it or turn things around. It will need a complete redesign.

>visibility menu
I need to figure outa better way to do it.

>hiding decoration
Sounds good, I can add it.

>landing location of launchpads
Right click drag or when you place it, hold left and choose the position. I should add a dedicated button to it though. Toad range is a bit more difficult since the dragging change their facing direction already.

>moving the game area around
It is something that I wanted to add but ran out of time. The whole "changing level size" option is something I have to revisit.

>grid
I have an idea how to make the subtiles more visible that I will try out next time. For a darker grid, there is a toggle inside the menu. The X/Y offset move the grid one subtile up or the left. Designing a level based on full tiles is something very useful for me and something I mess with regularly, so I felt it was something nice to add in case anyone else needed it.

>line from the object to your cursor
Thats a nice idea.

>unable to save then play
The editor is a different application because I didn't want to mess with putting more spaghetti in an already spaghetti-ed game. I will add it once Im happy enough with it.

>which fairy is the first
Yeah, it is something I left out since it requires coding an entire system that I didn't had time for. Is on my todo which includes the order that fairies ar

>not being able to test them
Aggggh I forgot to make the button visible! I updated the demo, it should be visible. It is in the EXTRA option in the demo's main menu.

>automatic name
It's on purpose, the name you put on there is the title when loading the level. I don't want it to necesarily be the same as the file name. I plan to get away from the file dialog system on the final level editor.

>back button not clickable
Thats odd. If you move your mouse directly down, it works. But if you move it from the side it doesn't. I will need to check whats going on.

>click to choose level
It is something I want to add, it's in my todo list.

>no save
It is a bug, the file exists but the game doesn't recognize it as valid. Sorry for the problems, the last version of the demo has that fixed.

Thanks again for all this feedback, it is really helpful!

(1 edit)

Glad some of what I wrote was helpful. A couple counter points:

From my experience it is better if levels are small

Fair enough, but I think it's quite fun to support large puzzles. I suppose the biggest issue, now that I think about it, is that the puzzles have all this global switch state and multi characters, so large puzzles would actually be hard to play. Guess you win there.

I have an idea how to make the subtiles more visible that I will try out next time. For a darker grid, there is a toggle inside the menu.

I saw the dark mode, I meant that using a different color for the subtile lines would allow telling them apart from the main lines. Especially when zoomed out, all the lines blend together due to the width difference becoming smaller and smaller.

It's on purpose, the name you put on there is the title when loading the level. I don't want it to necesarily be the same as the file name.

True, but using a lot of other software I am used to having a default name(based on title) when starting the save dialogue, for when I don't care about organizing it otherwise. And if you don't want the autoname, you just overwrite it; then if you save a loaded-from-file level, it instead uses the existing file name you chose.

can't play custom levels and no save bug

Oh cool, I thought you couldn't get the level loader working in time or something. Regarding my save, it does appear to have saved one of the incursions I did, either the first or last time I pressed New Game(it has only 1 toad progress but world maps skipped). Looking at the files, both it and the common_demo.sav were modified at the same time, so it's either the first session or the last one if it was overwriting both it and the common every time I did a new game.

I already deleted the game and such so I made a level after redownloading to test it. For some reason I can't delete objects? Didn't happen before, but it's happening consistently between game restarts, reloading levels, and restarting my PC. I'm just confused at this point, since the level builder wasn't updated. I did change the install location but that shouldn't matter. Checking the logs I saw this repeated:

ERROR: Error calling method from signal 'pressed': 'Node2D(LevelCreator.cs)::DeleteSelectedObject': Method not found..
   at: emit_signal (core/object.cpp:1244) - Error calling method from signal 'pressed': 'Node2D(LevelCreator.cs)::DeleteSelectedObject': Method not found..

Just in case I also saw the following:

ERROR: Mono: Core API hash mismatch.
   at: _init_godot_api_hashes (modules/mono/mono_gd/gd_mono.cpp:515) - Mono: Core API hash mismatch.
Mono: Log file is: 'C:/Users/doxed/AppData/Roaming/Godot/app_userdata/Poke ALL Toads Level Editor/mono/mono_logs/2026-01-08_02.46.54_16240.log'

https://pastebin.com/B2YpfQQ5


Game won't remember the last location you loaded a custom level from. Very annoying.

You have the option to skip the level from inside a custom level. Should remove that.

If you place two or more flags, the game will softlock when you try to use one of them. Or so I thought, actually you only need more fairies.

Instantly killing you for walking out of level bounds I see. Slightly disappointed.

Well that was a lot more than I thought I'd write about. Let's wrap this up quick. Here's my atrocity, hope you like.


(1 edit) (+1)

>all the lines blend together
I will try making the sub-tiles one dotted so the zoom level doesn't mess with it. A different color is also an option though, I can do both.

>autoname
I should consider that. In the proper final version of the editor there shouldn't be a file dialog at all, so making it create a name based on the title would be better.

>save file
If you started a new game after closing it, yeah the file got overwritten. It is a short game so you can get back to the last place you were in 10-15 minutes but I know it's annoying.

>can't delete
Maybe you deleted by pressing "Delete", since from what I see the UI button was broken. I should post an update regarding that.

>last location you loaded a custom level from
The current way to load levels is a placeholder, I don't want a file dialog system. It is good enough for a demo level editor though.

>skip the level from inside a custom level
Thats reasonable. I should remove it, but later on I might include it again if there are custom level packs.

>atrocity
It is in the shape of a fairy's head! I like it