Editor tricks

Cool tips for building or otherwise in the Geometry Dash editor that may be helpful, and how to fix some quirks in the game.

Player speeds

The player can move at 5 different speeds. ordered from slowest to fastest they are:

• < 8.4 blocks a second
  
• > 10.4 blocks a second (this is the default speed)
  
• >> 13 blocks a second
  
• >>> 15.6 blocks a second
  
• >>>> 19.2 blocks a second

to find these numbers I moved a block exactly 1000 blocks away from the start and looked at the level time in the pause menu.

Creating custom objects with exact measurements without hacks

In the game there are several tools that can help rotate, stretch, and shear objects to the shape you want. However, if you have ever tried to line objects up perfectly you will notice this is no way to snap to exact numbers.

The Solution

If you have used triggers before you know that there is a move, rotate, and now the scale trigger. If you use these triggers the object will move, rotate, and scale to whatever numbers you type into them. With the scale and rotate trigger you can even choose a center object to do this around. If you move the object to the position you want, you can actually hit play on the left side of the editor, let the trigger play out, and hit pause on the left side. You will notice that the object has stayed where the trigger moved, rotated, and scaled it to.










Here I used the rotate trigger to rotate a box around a center point by 72 degrees and scaled the boxes with the scale tool in the edit tab from the toolbar to scale each box about their own x axis to fill in the last little bit. The result is a nice pentagon. Don't forget to remove your trigger and the groups you used on the objects.

Hard or Impossible Without It

There are even cases where using it can create objects with scales on weird axes like in this example where I scale a block that has been rotated 45 degrees












As you can see I can create this spike ball looking thing from just 4 boxes that have been scaled only on their diagonal. This would be hard with the other tools, only being possible with smart and imprecise skewing with the transform tool.

New Solution to Slope Glow

If you have ever tried to make glow to go on your slopes you will probably know that the process is tedious.

A Solution

If you use the new Transform tool from the edit tab on the toolbar there is the option to 'shear' objects if you shear it as far as you can in one direction you will shear it exactly 45 degrees, but you can actually shear it even more. If you deselect the object and re-select it you can shear it again and it will now be sheared 60 degrees. what is actually happening is it gets sheared by one block every time you do it, and as seen this can be used for creating slope glow.

The Issue With This Method

There is a problem with this method though. You might notice that the glow seems to get 'thinner' the more you shear it. The other drawback is that this glow does not go around 90 degree turns. I think the greatest strength of this is wave sections with slope glow.

Alignment to an object

There are times when you want to align an object to another's center. The solution is in the align x and align y button in the editor pause menu. These buttons can align objects left and right evenly for align x and up and down for align y, but if you only select 3 objects the 'middle' object gets perfectly centered between the other two.










Here there is a line of blocks that are messily arranged, but after selecting them all and hitting align x in the pause menu they are evenly spaced. There also is a jump ring above the block that isn't on the grid with a fireball that I want to align onto the center of it.

The Trick

The trick is to hit the copy+paste button and move a jump ring down to the left by 1 block and a jump ring up and to the right by 1 block. select the object and the two new jump rings and hit both align x and align y and the object will be perfectly centered on the jump ring.

Temporary fix for advanced follow trigger not following center

In the 2.2 update the advanced follow trigger was added. Many people have wanted to use this trigger to created backgrounds that are perfectly centered. There are many solutions with varying level of accuracy, but here is my take.

The Trick

The trick involves the static camera trigger and a move trigger that is set to lock to camera x and camera y. They should be in a setup that looks something like this:









The setup moves the camera to center on the object, locks the object to the camera using the move trigger, then unlocks the camera from the object by exiting static. This leaves the object centered and following the camera.

Small Quirkyness

Note that this exact setup is unpolished and leaves a small gap where the camera will snap in a jerky way. You may want to make a better transition where the camera focuses on your object over a small period then goes back to gameplay.

Alternative ways to move smaller increments (PC)

In the editor there are several buttons, but they are not the only way to move. You may have noticed there are several objects that use smaller grids. Here lies the secret. If you first select the object you want to move you can actually change the object you are placing to one with a smaller grid and move the object using the smaller grid. In the recent 2.2 update there were even pixel blocks in the pixel blocks tab with many different grid sizes that you can use.

Anchor Points

If you have ever used an art program you may know what these are, but essentially they are points that determine how things are rotated and scaled. In Geometry Dash there are only two forms of anchor points (though there technically is a third if you look at using triggers). The first is the center of the selected objects. The second is in the transform tool.







Here I have several objects that I scaled by selecting them together and scaling horizontally, vertically , or both. As you can see by selecting them all at the same time I can effectively keep one of the edges snapped to the grid creating a nice half slab or mini block.

The Transform Tool

The transform tool (as of now) does not have an anchor point that can snap to the grid. So the work around is to make an object that creates a symmetry like in the picture above so that the center of the objects is where you want to scale from.

Hidden Key Binding and Button Combinations (PC)

On PC the button bindings are not that clear so here are a few I've found:

• 1. holding alt and dragging and dropping creates a copy instead of moving the object
  
• 2. while holding an object you can press control+D to create a copy of the object effectively making a stamp tool

Of course don't forget that RobTop has documented a few in the editor pause menu.

More to come

Over time I may add more to this guide.