Rayman Level Competition Submissions

Hello! How's it going all? I am a new member here, as you can probably see from my post count.
*waves*

I curently have a purchased Rayman Forever installation on my Window's Vista; it's usage is being aided by "opaquit's" vista/ patch for Designer and Gold. Aside from the missing music and un-synched sound, the progam is working fine. However, my current problem is mapper: I can use the darn thing but my maps won't load into the game! The instructions say that an automatic saving of the map would put it in the game, specifically under "Other Maps" of it's specific world's level list. Does the the fact that the game is under DOSBox emulation in Vista have anything to do with this? Is there a known way to fix this? Or is it hopeless as of now?

I would love to submit my file for this competition (even if I know my mediocre map won't win anything :fou2: :fou2: :fou2: ) but I can't do this if the file won't even upload into my own game.

Thanks for any help I receive. I greatly appreciate it. :mrgreen:

When you say it can't load any maps, what exactly do you mean? Does an error message pop up, do the maps appear completely blank, does the window just not open?

Hey, thanks for your reply, RayFan! (Are you the same RayFan from Betilla's Gardens? [https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tehrunescape455/])

Here's what would happen. I would save a map. And then open Designer; aided by the patch. I would go to the list of levels for the specific wold of my map. (Which is Picture City). When I select "Other maps", it would prompt the selection highlight to go back to the first level on the list ("the Five Doors").

In short, I can select "Other Maps", I just can't access it. :?:

~~~15ARC~~~ said:

Hey, thanks for your reply, RayFan! (Are you the same RayFan from Betilla's Gardens? [https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tehrunescape455/])

Click to expand...

That's me. I've actually been there more than a year and a half longer than I've been here.

~~~15ARC~~~ said:

Here's what would happen. I would save a map. And then open Designer; aided by the patch. I would go to the list of levels for the specific wold of my map. (Which is Picture City). When I select "Other maps", it would prompt the selection highlight to go back to the first level on the list ("the Five Doors").

In short, I can select "Other Maps", I just can't access it. :?:

Click to expand...

That's a strange glitch. Sorry for being really specific, but do you mean when you're scrolling down, instead of the highlight going to the Other Maps option at the bottom it would just return to the first as if you had no custom maps?

If that's the case, go into your Rayman Designer directory, into the appropriate world, and find your map number (it should look like MAP** and not map_**. Open the ini file inside the folder and check to make sure all your settings are correct.

Also, which EXE are you using to run the game? RaymanDesigner_.exe, or DosBox.exe? I would personally avoid the actual RaymanDesigner_.exe and instead customise your settings in the DosBox.cfg with notepad in the same folder. Make sure all your directories are set correctly at the bottom (and while you're at it, set Frameskip to 0 for 60 FPS) and launch it using DosBox.exe. Don't worry, it works the same as using the other EXE, except it won't revert your settings made in DosBox.cfg.

I'm just acting like a Windows error diagnostic, I don't know if this will actually fix your problem since I don't know if I've heard of the problem before.

Thanks again, RayFan.

Actually, I do use DOSBox; at least from the best of my knowledge I am. I mean, the patch by opaquit was using D-Box, rite?

And no, actually, it would highlight "Other Maps". It's just that when I select it, the highlight goes back to "The Five Doors" (First level listed in Picture City of Designer).

Yes it was. But I was just saying that there are two EXEs in the Rayman Designer folder, and the one titled "DosBox.exe" is better to use than "RaymanDesigner_.exe."

~~~15ARC~~~ said:

And no, actually, it would highlight "Other Maps". It's just that when I select it, the highlight goes back to "The Five Doors" (First level listed in Picture City of Designer).

Click to expand...

Ah, I see, that's obscure.... To my knowledge (I don't have it accessible at the moment), it just does that when you have no custom maps in the world. All I can advise is to check your map folder, and if that doesn't work, post a thread on Betilla's Gardens and see if they can help you. I know you've made a few already about different things, but no harm in trying, right?

That was actually my first thought for posting. Unfortunatelyk, I knew that not that many people go there anymore, so I thouht I post it here. :S

I did suspect that my program might be thinking that I don't have any custom maps. I just wish I knew how to get it to recognized my saved file (Which is entitled Map 99). :S


Edited - Here's a question that I think might help greatly: where exactly am I supposed to save my files to?

Well your maps should automatically go into the right folder. is there a MAP** file with the same number as yours in the IMAGE folder?

Yes there is. It's entitled "Map 99". (I don' remember if I had a space in between Map and 99; whether that's relevant, I don't know)

I don't think a space is allowed, and I'm not sure how it might have gotten there. Try removing the space and testing it out.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm almost positive I don't have a space in between there. (I'm not on my laptop right now, so I don't have access to it a the moment).

Could it just be that because the program is emulated it wouldn't be able to support files made by mapper? Because in order for my new maps to get into the game, they too would have to be mounted (if that's even possible right now), right? That's just what I'm thinking at the moment. Then again, I don't know very much, so....

:?: :? :?: :? :?: :? :?:

That can't be right, since I don't think anyone else has this problem.

When you can, PM the map to me. I'll see if I can figure out the problem for you.

Haha well, if worse comes to worse, love, I will. Until then, I would like to keep my experimental maps full of (what I hope to be) my original creative ideas a secret. Until I get the map done.

Or, perhaps I could cut you a deal. You can be the one exception. But no one else. I'll decide whether I want to do that. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Haha, don't worry, you can trust me. If you don't want me to look at the actual content of the map when trying to fix it then I won't, but I do hope you will eventually share it with us.

lolzz you will get to see them one day. I promise.
I'm hoping to one day create enough maps to gain enough experience to create one EPIC map, full of lush storyline, event and character modifications and NEW characters for the game altogether.

Eh, what the heck. I guess I'll share some ideas I have in mind for RaymanPC to read; since I actually could not resist sharing :mrgreen: :mrgreen: -

Mod Characters -
1 - a yellow life-point-deducting prickball (derived from the blue prickball) with eyes half open and that falls and bounces when punched (characteristic derived from the yin-yang sphere of Picture City).

2 - A flying ring (coded a different color; Navy blue mayhaps??) that drops after one swing.

3 - A life-point-deducting flying ring barbed with spikes

4 - Madam Trystorra - Mr. Dark's avenging cousin

5 - a Power-up Item that deducts life-points as Rayman touches it (Want me to explain this one? lol); if it is hurled like a lavaball, it desintegrates into little tings that also deduct life-points upon Rayman's physical contact.

6 - A lavaball that, quite the contrary to the previous, heals Rayman and gives back life poins upon collection. (Want me to explain this one also?)

7 - Whole note, half-note, quarter note characters for bandland (derived from the "bad notes" that deduct life-points upon RMan's physical contact)


Game mod (if these things are possible) -

1 - A code that would allow Rayman to have more than a maximum of 5 life points; and one that would allow the collection of a varient power-up item to add more life-points as he goes throughout the map.

2 - A code that would allow different background music to be played at different poins of the maps. (I would also like to learn how to upload new music for the game)

3 - A code that would create a magician's port to ting collection worlds in efforts for Rayman to gain one life (as in the original Rayman game)

4 - A code that could add pre-map and endgame cinematics to maps

Sounds great! Though unfortunately, we don't know how to do most of those things yet. The programming of Rayman Designer is still largely a mystery.

True that.
Then again, how did some of those Rayman Hackers from Betilla Gardens create the redprickball? Or, in the case of one youtube video I saw, the extended stem of the green "bad note" that served as a climbing vine for rayman?

I'm sure it could be done.


Hey, one solution is, we could contact creator Michael Ancel, and there's a chance that he could teach us.

Ancel is a graphics designer, not a programmer.

Most of those assets are either PCX edits (Mapper tiles, you can make them whatever you want within the given colour pallet) or things discovered within the EVE.MLT scripts (the part of the programming we are knowledgeable of). The red prickly balls and red antitoons were events present in the Learning games, and thus they were actually hidden in the depths of Rayman Designer. I even managed to piece together a nearly-working Moskito event (though Moskito played a static animation constantly and his death would result in the game crashing), but as far as we know, it isn't possible to create new events without decompiling the code, something we are currently unable to do.

lol maybe I'm dreaming too big.

I still would settle for creating a yellow prickley. I think that one might be manageable, ya?

If it were a sprite that already existed in the game's database somewhere, then yes, but it probably doesn't. You could also create a static yellow prickly ball if you make it part of the Mapper PCX tileset.

For what you're looking for, you might be interested in Terminapor's RayEngine - basically an enhanced remake of the Rayman engine. I'm not sure what his latest release is capable of (I don't think it's as advanced as what's been shown in recent videos), but you can read through the thread and ask him if need be.