Gusanos Level making tutorial

This is a quick tutorial for creating a simple Gusanos level.

What is a Gusanos level?

A gusanos level is a folder, and a set of images. Expandable with config files, objects and effects. Images are bmp or png. The two images required are the level and the material images.

Tools to use

Use an image editing tool capable of saving 8bit images (256 colours) such as Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Gimp. You will also need a text editor. Notepad or any simple text editor will be enough, just dont use Microsoft Word or something insane like that. Its also good to have Gusanos installed for testing.

Getting started

Its up to you to create the level or the material first. But basically, the level file is what you see and the material is what the game sees. If you draw a rock in the top corner of the level file, then the material file should reflect that by using a rock material in that same place.
Although, if you want to make your level completely insane, there is no rule against drawing rock material in the middle of the sky. The level file has no effect what so ever on the game, it is only the cosmetic appearance. In this tutorial we will make a Gusanos level with png images and a config file containing spawn points.

Creating the images

Draw your images in your image editing program. It can be any size, but to keep it within reason, try to keep it bigger than 50x50 (pixels) and smaller than.. lets say 5 megabytes. When making the materials file, you might want to look at this guide for the correct materials and how to save the file. Remember that the level.png is 24 bit and the material.png is only 8 bit.

These images must be called level.png and material.png. The name of the level is decided by the folder in which we place it. This is how that works: Go to your Gusanos folder (example: C:\Games\Gusanos) and find the default folder. In the default folder there is a folder called maps. Open it. Now create a new folder with the name of your map. Lets call it MyMap. In this folder you place the level.png and material.png. Now your level is playable (provided that you have applied the correct materials).

Did it work?

If Gusanos claims the level cannot be found, check that its placed correctly, such as this:

Gusanos
   |
   |-Default
         |
         |-Maps
             |
             |-MyMap
                |
                |level.png
                |material.png

(see more at Gusanos Tree guide)

If you can enter the level, but the worm just walks through rocks and dirt as if it was air, then it would mean your material file uses the wrong colours.

Adding spawnpoints

Go to the MyMap folder you have created. Inside it, create a plain text file. Name it Config.cfg (not Config.txt). Open the Config.cfg in a text editor such as notepad. Now add a line that says "spawnpoint 5,5,0". This will make the worm spawn at 5 pixels from the top and side of the top left corner. It will spawn as part of Team 0 if teamplay is enabled in the game.

Make sure there are no extra blank lines in your Config.cfg. This might cause Gusanos to freeze or crash.
There is a more detailed guide to the Config file here

Making something special

You have the option to make a paralax background in Gusanos. That means the background will appear as further away when you move in the game. To add this you need to create a background image that is smaller than the level itself, and name it "paralax.png". Where you want it to appear, you make the "level.png" pink (RGB: 255,0,255).

Distributing your level

Now you might want to share your level with other joyful Gusanos fans. What you should do then is to compress your MyMap folder into a zip or rar. See guide here. Once this has been done you can upload, e-mail or use some file transfer system to distribute your level.

Good Luck!

Last updated by ulv, 9/10 2004