Making Games in Liblol: Part 4: The Help System

Back before I switched Splash, Level, Chooser, Help, and Store to the unified "ScreenManager" (a.k.a., physics level) interface, the help scenes of a LibLOL game had to call special functions.  Those days are gone.  A help scene in LibLOL is just a playable level.

So why am I making a blog post about it?  Well, two reasons.  The first is that my Help demos show something interesting: you don't have to use "win" and "lose" to get from one level to the next.  This is pretty nice, because the default behavior is to print a message ("Good Job") when a level is won.  By having a callback control that covers the whole screen, you can go directly from one help scene to the next.  For reference, here's the code:

            // set up a control to go to the next level on screen press
            Control.addCallbackControl(0, 0, 960, 640, "", new LolCallback() {
                public void onEvent() {
                    Lol.doHelp(2);
                }
            });

You can even do this in your levels, just like you can do it in your help scenes.

The other reason I wanted to mention the help scenes is that a lot of games don't have separate help, but the help facility is still useful.  You could stitch your levels and help scenes together, so that winning a level took you to a help scene for the next set of levels, and after the help scene you would go to the next level.  You could also use help scenes as a way of presenting credits, to show who designed your game.  Another use is hiding secret features in the help scenes.  For example, you could have an invisible button on the help screen, and if the player touches it, 50 coins get added to the wallet, for use in the store.

Oh, and don't forget that you are not required to chain all of your help scenes together with "next" buttons.  You could use scenes 1-10 to provide standalone help, scene 11 to list best scores, and then make help scene 12 be a secret level that gets unlocked through some in-game accomplishment.

If you have any creative uses of the help scenes, be sure to leave a comment!