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The screen to the left of a visible room in MAGE will look like this.
The first step to editing rooms is selecting what layer you want to change. There are 3 layers of tiles that changes how the room looks and one layer that determines how the player will interact with those hitboxes.
You can only have one of these selected at a time to edit. You can also click on their views to show/hide them in case you need to see something from a different perspective. Keep in mind that all of these layers scroll at the same rate, and as such you will not experience any parallax scrolling with them.
Brinstar, Room 6 with and without BG 0 view
The final choice of importance is “clipdata”. Clipdata is not tied to any layer; rather, it decides how a specific block in the room will act. You can select to edit clipdata along with layers while making blocks; however, since you may want to edit clipdata for several different blocks at the same time it is possible to select clipdata without any other option.
Shown above is the drop down menu for selecting clipdata. I will explain the different types of clipdata later in this chapter. Keep in mind that some types of clipdata have only minor differences that may wreak havoc upon level design if used incorrectly (i.e. no reform and never reform).
This section will explain how to edit how a layer “looks”, but now how it works (clipdata). Make sure that you have selected the correct layer to edit before you start editing the room you have chosen. Also, make sure to choose the correct layer that corresponds with the type of block you want to work with.
Controls
When selecting blocks to copy, you can select from either the tile table or from the map. If you select blocks from the map, it will only copy blocks from the layer you are currently on. This can be used to build pre-determined structures more quickly or to copy things that you may want to reuse several times in a room.
For example, in the pictures below a door is selected. Later, it is pasted into the room as a whole set of blocks (the red box is the outline for where it would be placed if the mouse left clicked again).
A general rule of thumb for editing layers is to make the blocks that Samus can stand on be Layer 1, since Layer 2 will always appear behind her.