Hello there.
It’s chunky. Today’s topic will be teaching you a few things everyone should understand when making a gimkit creative game. It’s about the way of building things, and how to be more efficient while building.
Why is this important?
Let’s first understand the first section we’re discussing about: over-working. If you’re doing more than you need to in GKC, it’s easy to mess up, waste time, and spend a lot of energy being frustrated.
Let’s start with an example.
Part 1
Remember that time when you were designing a mechanic in your first game? I do. You were trying to make a mining system. Here’s how it works: you destroy a prop, and that prop gives you resources, let’s say cash.
When you were building a prototype of the original system, you used a hay prop.
And because your game needed a lot of resources to mine, you decided that more is better. You copied that hay prop many times.
But wait a second, you want the players to be able to destroy the props, right? So you decided, I’m just going to change the settings for each prop.
And so you changed the settings for each of the four props. Then, you realized that you forgot to make an item granter. So you made one, and wired all four props to it.
Oh wait! 100 health for each prop is a bit too much. Let’s decrease it.
But now, you’ve already got four props hooked up to an item granter. The only option is to change each of the four props.
That’s better. But did you notice that the wires are sending orange dots? That means there’s nothing configured in them. So you change each of the four wires.
Wait a second, the hay stacks are too small.
Uhh, I don’t like the color too much.
hmmm, I don’t want the props to be visible at the start of the game though.
Wait! Then how will players see it? I’ll just get a lifecycle.
Oops! Forgot to change the wires!
Then you decide that you don’t want to use wires anymore, they’re too annoying, they make your stuff look messy, and you hate them.
So, should you delete the wires and give a channel to each of the four props?
No. You now decide that you want to stop wasting time. So you delete the wires and grab just one prop. And put the settings in. . .
And just copy it four times!
Here, you learned a valuable lesson.
You learned to build your map in a smart way. You learned that to make a good map, you need to have a good way of making the map. In this case, instead of changing the settings for each of the four props, you changed the settings for one prop only, then copied that prop a few times. Let’s see how this helps in a table.
| Change | # of setting changes for one prop and copy | # of setting changes for each prop |
|---|---|---|
| Make all props larger | 1 | 4 |
| Make all props red | 2 | 8 |
| Make a channel to each prop | 4 | 13 |
| Make each prop able to be damaged | 5 | 17 |
| Decrease prop health | 6 | 21 |
| Make sure each prop is the same size | 6 | 25 |
| Check that each prop is the same color | 6 | 29 |
Wow! In the end, using just one prop and copying that prop saved us 23 setting changes, which is around five times the efficiency.
Now, it becomes obvious why we should ask ourselves, “Is what we’re building and the way we’re building it efficient? Is it really necessary?”
I know what you’re thinking. This can’t be applied in all scenarios, right? Well, this is really just an example. There are other things you should really think about when making your games.
Part 2
2: Wire vs. Channels: Sentry Battle Area
It's also important to think about the way of communication between devices. Wires are faster to make for many builds, while channels are the clear winners in others.Many people here are just used to channels and love them. They have developed a habit for using channels. One of those people is me, but channels do have disadvantages, especially because of how slow and hard it is to change them. Let's say you made a sentry battle arena. Here's how it works: you press a button, and the button activates a sentry. There will be, let's say, nine buttons, for a total of nine sentries.
Using what we learned from the previous example, let's configure the settings for the first button and copy it a few times. We need to make the buttons say "display sentry", be not visible in game, be a bit larger, and only available for team 2.
Now we need to copy the button nine times.
Now we will add a sentry for every button. Don’t worry, you configured their settings before copying them.
Now we need to make the buttons activate the sentries.
We could do this easily: let’s make the button send on channel “activate sentry 1” and the sentry receive on that.
So you change the first button to do this, and go to the sentry.
You click on the sentry and scroll…
Then you click on “channels”.
And put in the channel.
But you realize: that was a lot of work. A lot more work than you should have done, at least. Is there a better way?
Yes. Using the "z" key, a shortcut designed by gimkit to add wires faster, you attach a wire to the button, drag your mouse to the sentry, and click two buttons. Much easier than going into each button one by one and manually changing the channels.
| # of buttons and sentries | Using Channels | Using Wires |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9 clicks | 5 clicks |
| 3 | 27 clicks | 15 clicks |
| 10 | 90 clicks | 50 clicks |
Using wires helped by saving you 36 clicks - and most likely more, because of all the typing involved with channels. There are many other ways wires help in this scenario, such as not having to go into the prop settings.
| Using Channels: Clicks | Using wires: Clicks |
|---|---|
| Clicking the button | Clicking the button |
| Clicking the text box | Clicking the sentry |
| Clicking the channel | Clicking the button pressed option in the wires |
| Clicking out of the button settings | Clicking the sentry activates option in the wires |
| Clicking the sentry | Clicking out of the wires |
| Clicking the channels option in the settings | |
| Clicking the text box | |
| Clicking the channel | |
| Clicking out of the sentry settings |
There are many ways channels are better, however. Let’s say you’re making a mining area with a lot of rocks, and when each rock is destroyed, it gives you two dynamic stone. You have three types of rocks, and configured all of their settings already. Then you copy those three rocks four times.
How will we grant items when the prop is destroyed? Maybe let’s use wires and an item granter.
But that looks like a lot of work! More work than we need to do. And if we run out of wire space for the item granter, we need to make another one.
For the next set of rocks, you give the item granter a channel, use the “q” key to delete the extra three rocks, and give the remaining rock a channel.
Now you copy it three times, and you’re done.
Let’s see the results in a table:
| Action | Wires Clicks | Channels Clicks |
|---|---|---|
| Complete the set. | 20 | 11 |
| Attach wires | 8 | |
| Configure wires | 8 | |
| Click out of wires | 4 | |
| Make item granter channel | 1 | |
| Delete extra 3 | 3 | |
| Click on prop/click out | 2 | |
| Click on damage | 1 | |
| Make channel | 1 | |
| Copy three times | 3 |
Using channels here was twice as efficient as wires, and saved you 9 clicks.
What if there were many more rocks? Channels would be much, much better. Hopefully this demonstrates another way to save time, by teaching you how to decide: channels or wires.Part 3
3: Multiple uses: dash system
In this example, let’s say you were making a dash system. Here’s how it works, you have an overlay button, which resets a counter. The counter counts up every second, when it gets to 15 seconds, it will send on a channel, “x”. When the player presses the overlay button, another overlay of “cooldown” will appear, and disappear after receiving on channel x. Here, the counter updates a property, and the cooldown tracks the property by updating every second.
There are also speed modifiers and checkers, but we won’t go into that much detail now.
In this system, there are three repeaters, (or triggers for those never use repeater fans).
| Repeater 1 | Repeater 2 | Repeater 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Repeatedly sends on a wire to the counter to count up. | Repeatedly wire pulse blocks the overlay so it can update. | Repeatedly checks for if the counter property is above 3, so it knows when to stop the speed boost. |
Hmm… This is a bit repetitive (sorry I had to XD) if there are three repeaters, doing the same job by repeating every second, the game would be quite laggy.
This is a lesson to have just one device do a job for all of the devices. For example, in this case, there should be just one repeater sending on channel EverySecond, to do the work of the three. Using just one repeater would not only save time but also a lot of memory and lag.
It’s not just the repeaters here, though.
In this system, there are also three lifecycles, all for game start.
| Lifecycle 1 | Lifecycle 2 | Lifecycle 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Triggers a repeating trigger(never use repeater people) with a wire | Shows a beginning popup | Sets player speed to 2. |
This could also be combined to just one channel, removing the wires but one, for the trigger. This hopefully shows you that in a lifecycle, using one simple channel and multi-purpose-ing it to also have a wire, will improve how you build your gimkit games.
Other examples for number 1: because people who skim guides and criticize them go brrr
Sentry Battle Area
In the sentry battle area, there are 9 buttons and 9 sentries.
| Action | One, then copy, or delete and copy | Change one at a time |
|---|---|---|
| Make buttons that say “display sentry” | 1 | 9 |
| Make buttons not active on game start | 2 | 18 |
| Make sentries Raveena | 1 | 9 |
| Change sentries to have less health | 9 | 9 |
| Change buttons to be larger | 9 | 9 |
Clicks:
| Action | One, then copy, or delete and copy | Change one at a time |
|---|---|---|
| Make buttons that say “display sentry” | 4 | 36 |
| Make buttons not active on game start | 8 | 72 |
| Make sentries Raveena | 4 | 36 |
| Change sentries to have less health | 68 | 45 |
| Change buttons to be larger | 59 | 54, possibly more if you want them to be same size |
First reason why number 1 may not be great: With wires, you’ll have to reconstruct the system.
Mining Area
In the mining area, there are three groups of four rocks.
| Action | One, then copy, or delete and copy | Change one at a time |
|---|---|---|
| Make rocks have damage | 3 | 12 |
| Change rocks’ health | 3 | 12 |
Clicks
| Action | One, then copy, or delete and copy | Change one at a time |
|---|---|---|
| Make rocks have damage | 28 | 48 |
| Change rocks’ health | 27 | 60 |
Second reason why number 1 may not be great: You may not get the layout of the props you got before.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this PSA. Hopefully this taught you and reminded to think about the way you build games, since it is very common to over-work ourselves and not think about what we're building and how we're building it. I know not all gimkitters have bad habits, but I certainly do, and many beginners will as well.- This PSA was very bad, I hate it, it is useless, why does this even exist, flag it now.
- Meh.
- Nice guide!