How to make fun and visually appealing parkour!

There is another guide on this topic: How to Make Good Parkour
But it doesn’t really have all that much info… :slightly_frowning_face:
So I suppose you could say I’m adding on to that!
Discovery has some… Not very good parkour maps, and as a parkour enthusiast, I want to see more fun and actually good obstacle courses!
So here’s my guide on how to make fun parkour maps!

i’ve been told theres also another guide on parkour that i missed uhhh here it is 8️⃣ Common mistakes that can make your platformer map less enjoyable. (And how to fix them)
i’ll try to make this one less of a dupe


The Gameplay Part!

This section is about making the parkour fun and interesting, instead of making it boring and infuriating.

Try to avoid repeating jumps!

Don’t use the same exact jumps over and over again! It is very boring and hopefully, people like me don’t enjoy it at all.
This one here is a :cross_mark_button:,

and this one over here is a :white_check_mark:.


This one changes up the jumps every time. It might be kind of tough to constantly be thinking up different jumps, but just know that just changing the distance you have to jump, or the direction you have to jump works!

Keep the difficulty consistent!

Try and keep the whole entire parkour course at around the same difficulty.
If you’re making a difficulty chart, then try and make the difficulty rise at the same rate throughout the whole course.

It can be frustrating when you make it really far into an game with jumps like this,


feeling proud of how much you’ve conquered,

when you have to stop because you suddenly find something like this. :[

You can use jumps that are a bit harder then the rest.
That should be fine. I think.
Just don’t go from effortless to catastrophic.
Its like making a baby run a marathon after they learn to walk.

Don’t make it too hard OR too easy!

Using easy jumps throughout the majority of your game makes your parkour course boring. Its even worse if you somehow make it so you cant skip any of the jumps.

If its all difficult jumps, then it becomes infuriating. In that case, please at least add checkpoints often!.. :folded_hands:

Don’t put jumps offscreen!

Take a look at this picture.


Where do you think you’re supposed to go?
I’ll give you 5 seconds.

5!
4!
3!
2!
1!
The Answer!

That’s right! (maybe)
You were supposed to jump to the right.


Did you think that was unfair? Exactly!
These kind of jumps are not difficult, but unfair and should be avoided!

Don’t make luck based jumps!

Luck based jumps are very annoying in my opinion, ESPECIALLY when you’ll have to redo an whole section because of it.
Like the jumps showed earlier, luck based jumps are unfair and not difficult.

when i say “luck based jump” i mean something like having three teleporters and having only
one of them bring you to the next part while having the others put you right about a couple of lasars
actually i love gambling please add more luck based jump (this is a joke don’t)

Try out using barriers and props!

Barriers let you make more precise jumps then with terrain because the terrain is always locked into the 64x64 grid. The only limit with barriers is that there’s a size limit.


But, you can substitute it with a prop!

please don’t make things so small that you cant see them
if you do that please at least circle it using text


The Visual Part!

This section is about making the parkour look polished and not like something whipped out in a hurry.

Choose a color scheme! (or just choose the right colors)

Why do I tell you to do this? Well, sometimes I see people that use colors in their obstacle course that look weird compared to the rest of their props and barriers.


If you want to photoshop in Hawaii in that background, go for it, I suppose?
And also, while I’m at it,
make barriers fully visible if you’re using them as the color of the sky. Unless your barrier is the color of the sky.

(basically any shade of blue)

Then that should be fine because the blue of the sky shouldn’t conflict with the color of the barrier!

Avoid splashes of terrain!

Terrain splashes themself just makes it look like there wasn’t any effort put into the parkour.
Maybe its just me, but they remind me of the random obstacle courses I find on Gimkit creative which go against nearly everything I’ve put in this guide so far.


Another way of saying this might be to just avoid making incomprehensible bunches of various things.

like my brain

Try and make things smooth!

Here’s something I see often.


There’s just something… About it… That really bothers me… :confounded_face:
This, is something I like better. :smiley:

(i made this with two fully visible barriers (outline enabled) and one fully visible barrier outline disabled)

Sure, there’s a little imperfection at the bottom, but its a step up from the previous one.

Use interesting shapes!

Using different props or making new shapes using barriers can help out with this. If we take a look at this picture from the gameplay section,


you might notice that there’s all sorts of different shapes being made with the barriers!
There’s lines, a blocky-lookin’ C, a little backward seven shaped thing, a whistle shape and some sort of baton looking thingymajigger.
All of these are used to make an interesting looking set of jumps, that look more appealing, then a bunch of 2 by 1’s.

Try layering terrain!

If you’re using different types of terrain in your parkour, you might notice that they all transition into each other, like this.


However, you might not want that. Maybe, you want the grass in the picture to still have grass on it. In that case, you can use layering!
You can remove the stone that’s on the layer the grass is on.

layer 3 / middle is the default layer

Then, you can go to a layer that’s not the layer that the grass is on, and put the stone there. Now, the grass is back, not all trampled by the stone brick on top!

Don’t use lazars at the bottom of the map!

this is your choice! if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.

Now, it could just be me, but I prefer using coordinates to respawn the player when they fall instead of lazars. Heres what I do for this part.


If you can’t read my handwriting, that’s okay. It’s horrible, as all my teachers know, when I write too fast.
Here’s what it says, slightly reworded.

  1. Set playerY to the players Y cord (pos)
    1.5. (optional) do same thing for X pos
  2. Check if the players pos is in a certain area (say y is below 3)
    if you’re checking both x and y then use two checks for x and y before step 3
  3. Respawn player if check(s) pass(es)

Make sure that everything is only updated for individual players, and not everybody playing.

unless you want to make a party game or something?


Poll (how good was this guide?)
  • Amazing!!
  • Cool guide!
  • Its okay. Could use some improvements.
  • Kinda mehhhhhh???
  • pretty mehhhhh
  • please stop making guides please my eyes hurt looking at this thing that you’ve made
    why did you make this i’ll never recover from this mess of an guide i’ll suffer forever and ever
    losing sleep at night remembering something like this exists
    losing money at day going to therapy
    losing friends in my social life that have no more interest in my husk of an personality destroyed from thinking about this and this only
    losing the beauty of nature on my vacations because of my being blinded by this hot garbage
    losing everything i’ve ever wanted
    losing everything i’ve ever loved
    losing everything
  • Isn’t this a dupe? I’m reporting this!
0 voters

Thank you for reading!
If this doesnt get flagged and deleted, please give me suggestions on what to add or change. This is my second guide, so I would love to make this better than the last one that wasnt related enough to Gimkit.


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15 Likes

I really love the guide and agree with absolutely everything on it!

lemme go through this really quick:
formatting/organization are :+1:
details/explanations are :+1:
humor is :+1:
The overall effort and everything in the guide is GREAT!
But, what happened to the intro…???


What is with the:

Really?
Maybe just keep the first part “please stop making guides please my eyes hurt”

(personally, I feel no one is going to choose that, this is a nice guide!)

In short, seriously, map makers NEED to read this.


just a teeny tiny little other thing…
Isn’t this guide a dupe…?


But, I would say to keep this guide.
It adds a bit more details then the other guides that @NotYoyo posted and will be beneficial to a lot of people!

Also, every guide except for the 1st guide has no pictures.
=O

3 Likes

Nice guide format and explanation, but it’s really similar to other preexisting platformer guides, shown below:

How to Make Good Parkour

^ ct/themathematicalcomet’s parkour guide (which you have already put in your topic)

8️⃣ Common mistakes that can make your platformer map less enjoyable. (And how to fix them)

8️⃣ more common mistakes that can make your platformer less enjoyable (And how to fix them)

^ wywy’s platforming guide (version 1 and 2)

An Actual Guide to Making Platformers

^ tabz’s platformer map guide

But regardless, this guide is really helpful, the contextualization is also great.

I’m aware, but those guides doesn’t really need visuals to help explain the concepts.

Yeah, this guide is fine.

That will be great, also I can play clarinet too (I just read your bio)

8 Likes

i didnt see any of those other guides sry
should i try and add more to the guide?

Removed ideas because thats for Help topics.

1 Like

Yes yes, that would be great!
You can add more in layering terrain, creating the more unique/cooler shapes with barriers, and PLEASE add an intro =D.


An intro would really make it better.
Also some humor sprinkled into the guide will be nice.

2 Likes

cheeezy bump :cheese_wedge:
me see me bump

1 Like

Nice guide @cheezesRcool, Very helpful!

cant edit it anymore so just adding on

Table of Contents

[1]

The Visual Part! (only the parts that i would edit)

Choose a color scheme! (or just choose the right colors)

blah blahhhhhh pink background and hawaii blahbdjfjksllllllll

Then that should be fine would be okay, since the blue would likely make the blueish white clouds even bluer, which wouldn’t be quite visually appealing. (pls laugh its a title drop)

And now you may be asking,

I mean like, I get it. Don’t use pink. How do I even make a color scheme in the first place???

Don’t worry! There’s a lot of guides online, but you basically use color theory.
There’s a lot of relationships between colors, but these are the ones that are used the most.

Monotone palettes

Now, contrary to popular belief, monotone does not mean every shade of white, but every shade of any color!
Red, blue, yellow, green, all of those can be used in a monotone palette!
Here’s an example of one.


I made this with a mouse. Please don’t judge me.

Complementary palettes

Colors opposite of each other on the color wheel.

Analogous palettes

Colors next to each other on the color wheel. (one color is chosen and two colors on the left and the right respectively)

Here’s the color wheel for reference!


Don’t use lazars at the bottom of the map!

blah blah blah coordinates blah blah

If you dont want to use coordinates you can also use zones.
Just make sure that you cant jump somewhere outside of the range, since theres a limit to the zones size!

How to knock out players using zones.

Connect the zone to a respawn or damager.


  1. i have no idea how to do this (this is now a reminder so i can remember how to create the text box things) ↩︎

I would make this a wiki but… I might be bl1nd… I can’t find the wiki button… Am I Delusional?

Is gimkit lying to me :sob: I swear I saw the wiki button when I first got TL3


Oh I was delusional, I swear I had to option to wiki others posts before though… Im just dum ig

Regulars cannot make other users post/topics into wikis, only TL4’s can sadly.

You can only wikify your own posts. Only TL4+ users can wikify other user’s posts. It’s really inconvenient though, since Jeffo, our only moderator, is never here. :eyes:

Last time he was online was two days ago, @Cvefy. Go fish.

4 Likes

@cheezesRcool Quick Question… How did you make the background purple?

this part?

i think used a barrier, made it big enough to cover the part i was gonna screen shot, put it as far back in the layers as i could and then colored it pink

Lasers is spelled wrong, its kil1ing me :pensive_face:

1 Like

2 more mispelled words, but it’s not like they could edit it.


:wilted_flower:

3 Likes

to be fair
i was having an identity crisis and didn’t know whether to use lazar or laser (for some reason both had a red line when i was typing)

3 Likes

also bigger guide more focused on gameplay
might have some a couple more tips i didnt talk about

2 Likes

Bump :anger_symbol:

1 Like