Creating Custom Levels for Toblo

The Channels

Creating a level in Toblo is a difficult thing to do. The main difficulty of the process comes from the fact that the outside world was never supposed to create levels for us. The bright side for you is that with a couple of tools and some hard work it is possible to make your very own Toblo level.

The easiest first step in creating a level would be to overwrite one of the existing levels. This will allow you to make sure that you have the basics of level creation down before you advance to a higher level of customization. To do this, just make sure your bitmap file is located in the Levels folder and has the same file name as one of the levels currently residing in that folder. An example would be to make sure your level has the name "toblotowers.bmp".

Let's get right down to it. The main tool that you are going to need is a good image editor. Levels for Toblo are loaded in using a bitmap so anything would work (including mspaint) but let's go for something a little easier to work with. When making the levels I used Adobe Photoshop. Another good editor would be the free program Paint.NET. The main benefit in using these programs is the layering.

The basics to keep in mind while creating these levels is that the three different color channels (red, green, blue) do very separate actions. You will be using the three channels in harmony to create your level. Following is a run down of the channels and what they do to create the level.

Blue Channel

Used for height.
Example: a blue channel of 15 would give you a segment of blocks that is 15 units high.
Make sure to keep everything under 100 unit blocks high

Green Channel

Used for color palettes.
The three palettes in the game are
- 1 = Cloud Kids palette
- 2 = Demon palette
- 3 = Grass

Red Channel

Used for objects and special cues.
The list of objects is as follows:
- 1 = Tree
- 2 = Boulder
- 50 = Cloud Kids goal
- 51 = Demons goal
- 200 = Arch
Special Cues:
- 151 = Cloud Kids Team Spawn Point
- 152 = Demon Team Spawn Point
- 153 = Demon Flag (goes in Cloud Kids team base) - make sure to place 3 of each
- 154 = Cloud Kids Flag (goes in Demon team base) - make sure to place 3 of each
- 157 - 160 = Bomb spawn points
- 161 = Cloud Kids Guard Points
- 162 = Demon Guard Points

Now that you have the basic idea down I will try to make it all a little simpler by laying it out for exactly what you will need to create a base.

Example: Create a Cloud Kids Base

To create a base for the Cloud Kids you will need these following numbers in the channels.

Blue Channel

Make walls at whatever height you want -- again making sure to keep under 100 units high.

Green Channel

Any walls you create for the base should have a green channel value of 1. This will make sure the base for the Cloud Kids is shades of blue.

Red Channel

To make sure you have a spot for the Cloud Kids to score after grabbing a flag you will need to have a capture point in the base. Use a red channel of (50) to place a capture point.
The Cloud Kids are also going to need to spawn somewhere when the level first starts and also after they get knocked out. To do this make sure to use the red channel of (151) to add a spawn point.
The Cloud Kids also start off with all three of the Fire Friends flags. This means you need to add three points of (153) in the red channel to all placement of the flags.
Finally, to make your Cloud Kid teammates properly guard the base they will need to know the points of interest. Place as many red channels of (161) to give them the proper spots to guard!

The Fire Friends base will need just the same layout with their own specific number codes specified above.

Reference Files

A typical Cloud Kids base part 1 of 3
A typical Cloud Kids base part 2 of 3
A typical Cloud Kids base part 3 of 3
"Hokey Hideout" Sample Photoshop File (featured in above pictures)

Adding your level to Toblo

There are a couple more ways to further customize your levels. The first would be to change the weights of the blocks found in the level. This will make an abundance of large or small blocks depending on your preference. If you have overwritten the file discussed above you would change the numbers found under [Toblo Towers] in the levels.ini file. The attributes you will be playing with are the hWeight, wWeight, zWeight, capHeigh, capWidth, and capZ. Just play with these values to see what is visually appealing in your level.

Another advanced option to change would be the color palettes. The palettes for Toblo Towers can be found in the 2castlespalette.ini file. You will also need to locate the file gfxGameAssets.ini found in the Config\Graphic folder. This will allow you to create more colors for your level. An example of this is the Angel Castle colors. If you can see in the castlespalette.ini file the Angel Castle colors are the numbers 6 through 10. These correlate to the names AngelCastle1 through AngelCaste5 in the gfxGameAssets.ini file. By changing the numbers found within the brackets you too can create custom colored blocks!

Finally, the last customization is to add your level. The last step would be to Name your level in the levels.ini file found in the Levels folder. Try changing

[level0]
loadLevel=Toblo Towers

[level0]
loadLevel=Your Level Name

Now, instead of having [Toblo Towers] in the file you can have [Your Level Name]. This will allow you to save all of your preferences and share them with the rest of the world. The very last step would be to take your own screenshot of your level and add that to the file gfxGameAssets.ini under the Textures header. Just add to the bottom of the list and make sure your numbers correspond to each other.

As was previously stated, this is not an easy process. I will be glad to answer any questions that come up. If you need help please e-mail toblolevels@googlegroups.com. You can also visit the forum.

Be sure to e-mail any levels you make to toblolevels@googlegroups.com.