Knight's Dungeon Level Editor Guide

Get started making custom puzzles for Knight's Dungeon mode! This guide explains the use of the built-in level editor, outlines level design best practices and walks through how to share your custom stages with the Steam community.

Welcome to Knight's Dungeon Puzzle Creation!

Whether you have a great idea for a puzzle or just want to play around and see what's possible, the Knight's Dungeon level editor provides everything you need to design, test and share your custom stages.

Let's get started!

How To Use The Knight's Dungeon Level Editor

To begin using the Knight's Dungeon Level Editor, simply click the 'Level Editor' button from the Knight's Dungeon level selector.



We're immediately presented with an empty Knight's Dungeon stage where a single Knight sits at the top left square!



There are 4 unique object types available to use in designing your custom Knight's Dungeon stages.

Wall

Walls can be built on any open squares around the board.

Knight

Up to 2 Knights can be placed on any open squares around the board.

Rook Shapeshift

Up to 2 Rook Shapeshift tiles can be placed on any open squares around the board.

Bishop Shapeshift

Up to 2 Bishop Shapeshift tiles can be placed on any open squares around the board.




To select the object type you'd like to place on the board, click the arrows to either side of the object icon on the editor panel. Alternately, clicking on an object placed in the stage instantly switches the type over to that object if it isn't already selected.



With an object type selected, simply click on an open square of the board to begin building your stage! A natural place to start would be to place some walls to begin carving an interesting dungeon layout into the board as seen in the image below. With its type selected, clicking on an object after it's been placed will remove it from the board (although this doesn't apply to Knight 1 which can't be clicked away).



From there, switching our object type over to Knight 1 allows us to change its starting location by clicking any open square.



With a more refined shape and a couple Shapeshift tiles added, this stage is looking pretty alright!



When you're ready to test out the stage and see if it's solvable, we just need to click the mode button on the editor panel to switch over from Edit mode to Test mode. This sets the stage playable and lets us attempt to solve the custom stage using all the same time travel help as in a standard Knight's Dungeon stage, such as step back, step forward & full undo.



Switching back to Edit mode will revert all objects in the stage to their starting locations, allowing you to make any desired tweaks and then easily test the stage again.

In the case of our sample stage here, we've proven that it's solvable and thus we can set the stage's Par and SP On Bogey values with confidence. Switch between Par and Bogey On SP by clicking the button above the counter and then set their values by clicking the arrows to either side of the counter. A maximum of 4 SP can be awarded on Bogey.



In the Gigachess base game, solo Knight stages always have their Par values made to be equal to the number of open squares in the stage. In the case of our sample stage here, that would mean setting par to 16.

For double Knight stages in the base game, the Par values are always set to be exactly half that of the number of open squares since a pair of Knights are able to touch a total of two squares per turn. As well, double Knight stages in the base game always feature an even number of open squares meaning each Knight should be making a move every turn to achieve a Par solution.

If you decide to set the Par value to be less than the total number of open squares in the stage, it means whatever you've set as SP On Bogey will be awarded before all open squares are able to be touched. While this isn't how any of the Knight's Dungeon stages in the base game are configured, there's nothing stopping you from setting it up this way if you'd like the player to get access to some Blockades to fill up untouched squares early!

Having designed a cool stage and taken it for a test, now would be a great time to save your work! Taking the place of the usual step forward / step back / full undo buttons present when playing a Knight's Dungeon stage, the 4 buttons at the bottom right of the Level Editor screen allow us to Save, Load, clear the board with New and generate a randomized layout of walls with Random. We'll obviously want to click Save which opens up a file selector where we can enter a name and choose the location of the custom stage to be saved. All Knight's Dungeon files are assigned the .DGT file extension which the game needs to recognize the custom stage and be able to load it into memory.

Want to play this sample stage? Subscribe to it on the Workshop! :)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1118571460

How To Use The Gigachess Workshop Uploader Tool

Once your custom stage is saved, it's time to upload it to the Steam Workshop so everyone can play it! Clicking the Launch Uploader button at the top right of the Level Editor screen opens the Gigachess Workshop Uploader Tool, as demonstrated below. While the Uploader Tool is open, Gigachess will remain frozen so be sure to close the tool when you're done.



The Stage Name entered here will be used to identify the custom stage on the Steam Workshop as well as be what appears in-game once the stage is downloaded by the player.

The Preview Image is optional but ought to show something of the Knight's Dungeon stage. A quick screencap of your custom stage would be a great fit here! Click the 'Browse' button to open up a file selector where you can point the Uploader Tool to your preview image.

The File Path is the actual location of your custom stage as saved on your computer. Click the 'Browse' button to open a file selector where you can point the Uploader Tool to your saved custom stage.

The Description is optional but gives you an opportunity to provide some sort of helpful or informative text for anyone considering playing your custom stage.

The Tags are also optional but these allow users of the Steam Workshop to easily sort through uploaded stages for the ones they want. The official standard being used by the Workshop Dungeon stages is very simple, with the tag of 'solo' being used for stages with only 1 Knight, the tag of 'duet' being used for stages with 2 Knights and the tag 'shapeshift' being tacked on if the stage involves one or more Shapeshift tiles.

Updating a previously-uploaded Knight's Dungeon stage is almost an identical process to uploading a brand new one, the main difference being that instead of entering a Stage Name we're going to instead be entering the stage's ContentID to retrieve that stage's details for us to edit. The ContentID can be easily found at the end of the uploaded stage's URL on the Steam Workshop.



From there, it's just a question of making whatever changes you'd like to the stage's Workshop details and selecting the updated .DGT file you'd like to update the Workshop item with.

PRO TIP: the actual name of the Workshop item (AKA the Stage Name) can only be modified through the Steam Workshop page itself for your custom stage.



If you receive an error of 'statusErrorFailedToShareCloudFile' when trying to update your custom Knight's Dungeon stage, the most likely cause is the .DGT file you've selected to replace the preexisting one with is identical. The Workshop will reject any attempt to update an item with a file that's the same as what's stored in the Steam Cloud currently.

Wrap-up

Thanks for checking out the Knight's Dungeon Level Editor Guide! If you have any questions about the level editing process or if you run into any trouble, please don't hesitate to leave a comment here on the guide or on the Gigachess community forums :)

http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions/

Best of luck creating some brainteasing custom puzzles! Be sure to share whatever awesome Knight's Dungeon stage you make by uploading it to the Steam Workshop! :D