Robin Hunicke, Northwestern University's philosopher of gaming and game designer extraordinaire, has offered up her advice on mastering BoomBlox for the Wii in this month's edition of Game Informer magazine. Read on for an excerpt of her ideas for the create mode!
"Simplified Stacking - Use the camera to help create tall structures. The easiest way to stack items on top of each other is to view your construction from the top. This makes it much easier to build tall towers.
Group Select - You can select and manage groups of multiple blox. Rotate the camera for a top-down view of the blox you are working with. Then use the select tool to drag select a box around the ones you wish to manipulate. This will create a set of blox that you can copy, rotate, and place as desired.
Height Tool - You can place objects in mid-air. Use the height tool to pull the ground plane up above the default height. Place regular blox to start a level with falling items, and place immobile blox to create shapes that float in space. You can also use the height tool as a mask. Things below the ground plane will not react to the paint, selection, and erase tools. Advanced Tip: To combine the group select and height tool tips, first select a group of blox. Then switch to the height tool to move the ground place up or down. Switch back to the select tool and grab your group selection - now you can place the group at the desired height.
Sets - Copy and paste elements from these pre-assembled pieces to make any level more interesting. The biplane object has payload of bomb blox inside. The small ramp comes with a giant sphere - the only one in the final game.
Rules - Editing any puzzle from the main game will let you play with its rules. Not seeing the behavior you'd expect in a level you're editing? Be sure that the rules are turned on. Special blox textures are sometimes available in a particular level or environment. To access colored gems, check out the Castle Attack levels in Multiplayer. This is also true for things like character spawners, pucks, and other blox with special behavior. Copy and paste them to be sure they work properly."
-from GameInformer Magazine, August 2008
