Now that we have sprite sheets for the hero and the bad guys, it's time to create a virtual world for them to live in. In Canvas Hero, our virtual world will be a single level that moves left and right as the player moves through it, which will contain walls, a ceiling, a floor, platforms, and holes. In this recipe, we'll go over the steps for making a level image as well as a boundary map image that graphically contains information about the bounds of the level and also identifies special zones with different colors.
To create the level image for Canvas Hero, we can use some prebuilt graphics downloaded from http://www.spriters-resource.com and add in new platforms, holes, and levitators using Photoshop, Gimp, or some other image editor of your choice. To keep the level somewhat small in size, we can create a foreground level image that's 6944 x 600 px. The canvas, which is 900 x 600 px, will act as a viewing window to the level. Here...