Level design for casual games with 1000s of levels, help.

Hi, this post is to ask how to approach level design on Hyper Casual games with 1000s of levels.

I'm taking Helix Jump as an example

To this day I'm not sure on how to approach something like that.

My take on this is the following:

I would have pre-made platforms.

A helix

Different color palettes.

I was thinking on having a pattern of Platform Types each N levels and the length of the Helix would be based on a function.

Base Len * Lvl * (constant) or something like that having a min and max length, I came up with something useful but don't remember right now.

As per the distribution of types of platforms per level I was thinking on having a data structure having a list of platform types per level range like

from 1-10 Platforms[1,2,3]

Then something more advanced on that, having some variable that regulates how many of the type will be spawned vs the other types for the lvl.

So that's where I get stuck and can't come up with better ways to improve the level design.

About the original game, I was thinking that maybe there are no golden rules and they started with some harcoded or crappy random generation and then improved on the run when the game started making money, ex: code monkeys to make levels by hand? Improve the level generation function/algorithm as they go with trial and error (patching), etc...

So, the question is if there is anybody out there with some insight and experience on what would be the best way to approach a game level generation like this one.

Thanks!

Is it random gen or is each level the same? Your approach seems fine. You can use an array with a bunch of random data and make that data mean something in terms of obstacle type or number spawned. Then when you create the level you run through the array.

You can find my tutorials on random level generation here:

youtu.be/AzcBG4OYZU0

and a bouncing ball game here

youtu.be/ZBJSSRZrILY

you can get the templates at the scirra store too if you want.

Also, you can check out some other video's with random gen too, like this one on how to randomly generate pieces of road :

youtu.be/_VOi_WWdpko

hope that helps

cheers!