gameplay is the most important part of Geometry Dash so why does every featured level seem to screw it up just get a song from newground or the game's music library and then match the player clicks to the music to make sync right well I did that and got this this layout is just boring it's better than making the player click randomly but there's nothing interesting to watch or play so let's fix that first let's add some gameplay objects these are orbs saws portals you know stuff that makes gameplay interesting the way these work is pretty obvious and if you don't know what a gameplay object does then open the editor place it down and test it out yourself what's less obvious is how to use them you can't just place a bunch of orbs everywhere and expect your level to be anything but a mess the thing is each gameplay object has a certain function if you use those objects when you need that specific function in your gameplay and your gameplay will feel purposeful un less random a good example of this is with game modes each game mode works in a completely different way so your game mode choices have a massive effect on how your level plays out for instance these game modes use clicks while the rest use holding inputs these game modes give you control in the air and these ones can die by hitting blocks in the wrong way you'll be able to make your own game mode choices over time but I personally recommend you use Cube spider and UFO for fast Snappy High control gameplay robot ball and ship for a slightly slower gameplay that still gives High control wave for tough sections where the player needs to constantly manage their position and swing to make players suffer with basically no control over the gameplay the main thing is that your game modes need to feel distinct don't just use a m in vle exact same way as you can make each section of gameplay feel unique and refreshing by exploiting each game Mode's unique properties one property of each game mode is how they work with speed changes these help your level feel more or less intense by giving the player less time to react and making the level fly by faster that's why people typically use three to four times speed at the climax or drop of the level song 0.5 to one time speed for pre- drops and low intensity parts and two times speed for anything in between what you may not realize though is how each game mode inter RS with speed changes game modes like ship Cube and robot require less Precision at high speeds since the jumps they make get longer the faster they are however wave and spider require more Precision since they always move in fixed paths this also applies to the mini versions of these game modes which have smaller jumps in their normal counterparts the spider game mode works the same way while ships Swing Copter and wave all move much faster when they're smaller I'll start adding these objects into my gameplay from earlier now and it should look much better pretty soon now besides these objects most game play objects are pretty self-explanatory as I said earlier if you play the game you'll know how orbs portals and pads work but those aren't the only objects you can have in gamep playay thanks to breakable blocks and slopes these objects work like your normal platforms but they change the game's physics in new ways for instance breakable blocks can be destroyed by jumping through them if you're in the cube robot or wave game mode but other game modes can only break them through the side now this doesn't sound that interesting but you can be really evil with this property like this level slopes are also pretty versatile since they can can fling the player depending on the angle you place them at and they often look more interesting than just having lots of flat platforms they can be pretty inconsistent though so be careful not to make your gameplay buggy with them speaking of bugs many people ruin their gameplay by not fixing bugs in secret ways it's pretty embarrassing to release a level and have the entire comment section complaining about bugs and skips into the level this is where play testing comes in it's a crucial step if you want gameplay that's not just fair to players but actually possible in the first place however play testing by yourself isn't perfect since you built the level and know everything about it it'll be harder to find bug since you intrinsically know the correct path player to take and it'll definitely be harder to judge the difficulty since you made timings you know how to be to help out with this you should get other people to play test your levels too I usually go to the gdcs server to get play testers since there's a dedicated channel for it there and you can join the server using this invite by the way but you can also just ask your friends to spare a bit of time to play your level and point out any bugs that they find if you're you really can't find anyone to play your level you can flip it around with a mirror portal to try and make the play testing experience feel different and less biased when you're play testing you should look for three important things obviously you should fix any bugs you come across but it's also important that your gam playay is consistent if the player clicks at the right time they should keep playing the level and if they don't click at the right time they should die as simple as it sounds the way you use gam playay objects greatly affects your gameplay's consistency for example transitions from one game mode to another often violate this idea since some game mods carry momentum but others don't which is inconsistent if you can't change a transition to be consistent on its own you can use pads slopes and teleport portals to force the player into the right position another example of inconsistent gameplay comes from orb chains since the player's position never gets properly reset when they're in the air orb chains end up being really inconsistent unless they're using a game with that actually has air control the best way to fix this is to avoid using more than three or four orbs in a row without platform in between them besides these cases there are some extra objects in the editor like special blocks and some triggers which can help you manipulate your gameplay and keep it consistent however consistency doesn't matter if players can't understand what to do in your gameplay in the first place this is known as readability and levels ban from being completely site readable and easy to understand being complex and requiring lots of memorized inputs now regardless of what star Grinders will tell you a level being sight readable isn't inherently better that can even be really boring at times like super easy levels it's totally fine to make your level more complex as long as you're fair with that complexity players will need time to react to your levels gameplay so having stuff like offscreen jumps or invisible spikes isn't exactly fair to them but as long as you don't do stuff that stupid it's completely fine to have fake outs or and Port you shouldn't touch and so on it's been a good minute at this point so let's check in on that gameplay I was making before Oh that's not balanced at all it's kind of dumb for your level to go from piss easy to the next top one in difficulty especially since it's like gaslighting players if you go into a level expecting easy demon gameplay you should get easy demon gameplay to make sure you're actually making Gameplay at your intended difficulty make sure to get player Tes that are experienced with levels of that type actually making difficult gameplay can be really complex to pin down but just focus on two things for now the first is margin of error or how much time you give players to perform each click harder levels to generally have less margin of error on each click with tighter gaps and more difficult timings and besides margin of error keep in mind the click patterns you have in your gameplay it's a lot easier to click to a slow steady beat compared to a very rapid one this also means you don't need players to click to the melody all the time feel free to mix things up sometimes like what robtop does in his old levels speaking of robtops levels they have an easy way for you to learn layout creation it's pretty clear at this point that there are tons of Parts making gamep play even when you're just starting out but but when playing rock tops levels he doesn't make you learn every gameplay object at once you start by learning platforms spikes and just two game modes and over time you're taught how to play more and more complex things in the game you can use the same mindset when building gameplay start with simple Gameplay at first and add more complexity when you get used to your existing objects over time you'll learn to build more interesting and Vari levels as you build though be careful that you're building game play and not game view on YouTube there's a major culture in geometry ass around building gameplay to be seen in level showcases and videos and while it is useful for making your levels popular gameplay is ultimately meant to be played if you only judge gameplay by how interesting it looks in a video it'll be much tougher to tell how consistent or balanced your layouts are if you want feedback on other aspects of your layouts like SN or intensity it's fine to judge your gameplay using videos but anything else is best judged by playing it after all the best thing about gameplay creation is that you can get better by just playing the game if you see gameplay in a level that's interesting or really fun to play keep that idea in mind and try making something similar in your next layout you can screenshot or write down these ideas as well so you don't forget them either way inspiration is crucial for mastering all of these gameplay Concepts getting inspiration will help you decide how difficult you want your level to be type of song you want to use what game modes and gameplay objects you choose and so on you're basically getting experience of building layouts by seeing what other people have made and figuring out what works for you when you have experience playing and making different types of gameplay and you know what things to consider as you build you'll be well on your way to making interesting engaging layouts all the time just like this [Music] [Music] [Music]