The Name Game
Now that you have your level’s theme, give it a name. However, keep in mind that a level always has two names: one for the development team and one for the players. The level name is a file name, created to be referenced with the game’s code. Here are a few things to remember when creating file names:
- Keep the name to eight characters max because (a) a short file name is easy for team members to remember and (b) it takes up less space in the code. Traditionally this was necessary because of technical limitations in DOS filenames. That restriction is no longer relevant. Note also that short file names are not always easier to remember as names might need to be truncated in weird ways; for example, frstclea.lvl might be the Forest Clearing level or something having to do with cleaning the Frost world.
- Players don’t see the file names, so you don’t have to be witty. For example, “Castle01” succinctly lets your team members know the...