Introduction

To make the creation of levels easier, we provide a simple level creation tool with Brain Invaders. The tool is written in Microsoft XNA and lacks some features such as speed adjustments of the levels or loading and editing old levels. Related page: Level XML Specification

Installation

The Level Builder can be installed both by source and binary installation.

Source Installation

To install the levelbuilder, make sure the XNA-SDK is installed (see http://create.msdn.com). This will also install Visual Studio and .Net runtimes required to run the level builder.

Next, simply open the BrainInvadersLevelBuilder?-source project and simply compile the project.

Binary Installation

Make sure you have the following runtimes installed on your PC:

Microsoft .Net 4.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17718) Microsoft XNA Framework 4.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20914)

Once installed, simple run BrainInvadersLevelBuilder?.exe from the LevelBuilder folder.

Execution

The Level Builder features some very basic controls and editing possibilities. When starting the editor, a grid of nine by six squares is shown. These squares correspond to positions for aliens in the game. By clicking on the square, an alien is placed in that square. By clicking multiple times it is possible to cycle through multiple types of aliens.

Once aliens are placed, it is possible to create Alien Blocks, which are groups of aliens that move as a group. Simply drag the mouse over one or multiple squares to create a block. Please note that blocks have to be rectangular and an alien can only belong to a single block.

For created blocks, paths can be created by selecting the block with the right mouse and selecting a position where the block has to move to. A path selection can be undone by pressing the middle mouse button (this can also be used to delete the block selection as a whole).

For creating paths, keep the following things in mind:

• A block moves to a point in the path until one of the Aliens reaches said point. This means that when moving to the right, the rightmost Alien will be considered the end point, and when moving to the left the left most alien.
• A block can not move diagonally so to prevent glitches, move only left, right, up or down at a time to ensure there will be no out of bounds problems. When the level is done click on the blue bottom of the screen. This will save the level and close the editor. The level can be found in My Documents\SavedGames?\BrainInvadersLevelBuilder?\StorageDemo?\Player1\, saved as level.xml.