Back in the Start scene for our Mars Secret Level, let's drag in all of the images (because it's an image sequence) from the Projects/RamblinRover/Pickups/Coins/Normal/Comp 1 folder, as an Action.
Actions (compared to Objects) are how we create unique pickups and...well, actions. These might include temporary invincibility, killing all enemies, rewards, and healing damage.
Select your new coin pickup from the Actions section of the Asset Library, and we'll work with the properties a bit. Let's take a quick look at these properties one by one (starting with Action Type because you should have a firm handle on Collision Shape and Default Animation by now):
- Action Type: This is kind of a preset option. Here, you can set it for the various types of pickup that Buildbox has to offer. Let's set this to
Coin. - Action Animation: This is mostly useful if we're going to do
Invincibility, orKill All Enemiesfor our Action Type. With this, we could project a wave across the whole screen, or change our character to a glowing version. Of course, we could use it for coins to show the amount, but we want to stay resource light, so we'll leave this blank. - Animation Placement: You can place the ActionAnimation on the Character, on the pickup, or across the whole screen with these options. As we're not using the ActionAnimation right now, leave this alone.
- Animation Behavior: This setting dictates whether our Action Animation is overlaid on our Animation Placement (for instance, on top of the Character), or completely replaces it. It's irrelevant here.
- Animation Repeat: A setting to make the ActionAnimation repeat, or play only once. Again, it's not relevant because we have no ActionAnimation.
- Idle Sound: The sound played when the pickup is just sitting on the screen. (We'll come back to sounds later.)
- Start Sound: The sound played when the pickup is picked up. (We'll come back to sounds later.)
- End Sound: The sound played at the end of the pickup duration. (We'll come back to sounds later.)
- Reward Coins: This is where we can set how many coins are attained by touching the pickup. Let's set this to
10. - Show coin reward: Here, we can set if the number of coins is displayed when the coins are picked up. Let's tick this checkbox.
- Reward Points: How many points the pickup is worth. This is a coin pickup, so leave this at 0 points.
- Duration: How long before the affect ends (mostly used for invincibility-type affects). However, we can also use this to play an End Sound after a delay, so set this to
0.1. - Appearance Chance: How likely this pickup is to show up on our game field. This is great for giving us some variety (even though our game will repeat scenes). Since this is a low-level reward, set this to
80(meaning 80%). - Camera Shake: How long (in seconds) the screen appears to shake when the pickup is touched. Set this to
0.1. - Camera Flash: How long the screen turns white in the event of pickup. Also set this to
0.1.
Now that we've set up our low-level coin pickup object, let's bring in our high-level pickup object. Drag in all of the images (image sequence again) in the Projects/RamblinRover/Pickups/Coins/Red/Comp 1 folder as an Action. For this Action, set up the settings in the same way, except for the RewardCoins and Appearance Chance; make this worth 100 coins with a 25 chance of appearance.
When we place these rewards on the game field, all we have to do is Scale them to look good. Make their scale 0.3 in both axes. Place them around our Mars maps to look like the following screenshots:
Ok, so none of the secret level's pickups are death-bait. But this level is already hard enough. Let's do the Mars Training Ground now:
You may notice that there are FAR fewer coin pickups in the standard level. Well, this is because the player should get a big reward for finding that secret level. Also, it makes a player hungrier for bonuses, so the death-bait that we've laid in this scene will be far more effective. Never underestimate the greed of a player. The death-bait includes pickups that will cause a player to exhaust their rocket-thrusters, take physics obstacles in un-passable ways, make them fall into gaps, try to fall through the loop, take alternate routes, and even skip over the bonus level. It'll be harder for them to understand that the reds are mostly used for death-bait because they only show up 25% of the time. Try it out! You'll find yourself trying for the death-bait (even though you know what it is).
Now that you're an expert at creating worlds for our motocross game, let's create two more quick worlds.