Originally my plan for user levels in my HATPC remake was to just add support for the user levels already uploaded on Neopets, which I'm sure you guys know can be accessed at URLs like this one: http://www.neopets.com/games/cavemaker/pirate_level_load.php?username=droidfreak36

Cross-domain security issues aside (and I do think I've found a solution to those), a couple other limitations of this approach are that there can only be one level per Neopets account and that we're stuck using the glitchy Neopets uploader.

So it might be better to also add support for a level database other than the Neopets one, and seeing as there already is a level database here, it seems like a natural choice.

However, there are a couple of changes that might need to be made to the Interguild site to make this support possible (or at least easier):

(1) I'd need some way to access the level files directly by URL like the ones on Neopets. That is, a page which contains nothing but the text of the level file should exist for each level. I haven't seen any pages like that here from looking around, the levels seem to only appear embedded in larger pages.
(2) It should be possible to generate the URLs of these pages from the username of their creator and the name of the level. So they should be identical to each other except for those two parameters.
(3) These pages should contain PHP code sending the header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *", allowing them to be accessed by web pages on other sites, so I don't have to deal with more cross-domain security issues.

Is someone who has access to the site's internal workings around to look into implementing pages like that?

My cavemaker already has loading directly from the interguild functionality.

Levels are stored here: http://www.interguild.org/levels/levels/
Compared to the levels at pirate_level_load.php, the interguild levels feature additional backslashes which have to be removed. (EDIT: If somebody was weird enough to use backslashes as their fake crates, you'll have to account for that and not remove both if there's a double-backslash, which I think I remembered to account for but honestly reading my own code all these years later it's a little hard to tell lol).
You load the levels by a level ID, which you can find up in the URL when viewing the site. If you want a better means than that well... good luck tracking Livio down.

Well, I could probably take care of the extra backslashes, although it'd be a pain, but the way that you need the numerical level ID to find the level is definitely not ideal. I suppose it works, but it's not very user-friendly to make the player have to look up a numerical ID to be able to load a level.

To be honest, I feel like the best and most flexible thing would be a way to paste the code text directly into the game, kind of like HatIC secretly does (I think?). Among a few other reasons, if someone was making a cave, you wouldn't want them to have to upload a Work in Progress level to the site and edit it as they test

One of the projects I always wanted to work on for HATPC was a web app that combined the game, the cavemaker and the level database into one. No code pasting required. All that I would need is a way to easily embed this remake and have an API for putting level codes into it (so the user doesn't have to).

I've learned a lot about full stack web development in my work the last couple of years, so this is definitely something I could do and would really like to do too. A levelmaking workflow with minimal friction and better community interaction would be great. I also have $100,000 of AWS credits that I'd like to use that could come in really handy for hosting the level database and serving them up to users.

Droid, is the Gamemaker generated code human-readable and is it easy to edit?

Yeah, I think that'll be one of the options as well. What I'm thinking is maybe after you click on "Load User Level" you have multiple options: Load the level from Neopets like in vanilla HATPC, load a level from the new level database (whether it be on Interguild or whatever jebby cooks up, maybe both), and paste in a level directly.


That would be pretty great. I was thinking of implementing a cavemaker into the game myself, but seeing as there already are standalone cavemaker apps, I figured I didn't need to.


Damn, how'd you get 100 grand in AWS credit? You could probably host the game a level database for decades on that.


Not at all, unfortunately. Any changes need to be done within the game would have to be done before it's compiled, but that should be easy enough.

I already have a web-based cavemaker that could be combined with your project. I've learned a lot since then, so could do something more polished/sophisticated now.

I can't seem to place terrain in your cavemaker, or maybe it's just not rendering...

Oh, never mind, it starts off as all terrain. [facepalm]

That could probably be better explained, or the terrain could be rendered better than grey squares

EDIT: Another thing - I feel like you shouldn't require the cave to be over a certain size, because even in the original game you can create tiny caves if you pad the extra characters with lines of different length.