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Take a look at Super Mario, or even PacMan, or Arkanoid.

How are their levels made, do they created a simple level editors to visualize them, or they designed them by hand (directly with code)?

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    All those old games didn't have the good fortune of level editors, with the exception of some of the super marios. Being mostly written in assembly with limited resources(memory, cpu speed, etc...) a lot of them would have just been hard coded points. Array's do well for this. But at the end of the day there isn't much difference as a level editor will have to load in or create the necessary data structures. This question is fairly generic and without more information like the type of game the possibilities are limitless. – dennmat Feb 08 '13 at 17:40
  • Using arrays to define some more detailed levels would require a lot of imagination and work. –  Feb 08 '13 at 17:49
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    Writing an entire video game in assembly already requires a lot of imagination and work ;) – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Feb 08 '13 at 17:56
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    With pen/pencil and paper –  Feb 08 '13 at 18:38
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    @dennmat Don't underestimate paint.exe or similar programs as level editors. For example, all levels of the original Lemmings have been created in a simple paint program. – Hackworth Feb 08 '13 at 19:56
  • @Hackworth, however at the end of the day the "edges" and "points" were either hand inserted or detected by the colors of neighbouring pixels, and stored in some sort of point array or collision table. – dennmat Feb 08 '13 at 20:00
  • @dennmat So? Obviously the engine has to know what to do with the data it gets. The question was about editors, all I'm saying is that even pretty old games had editors. BTW I was not quite correct about Lemmings. They did create their own level editor, but made its UI like everyone's familiar paint program. – Hackworth Feb 08 '13 at 20:04
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    Even if most of these games were written in assembly and that lots of data was the result of 'trial and error' method, for some other stuff (sprites, levels, ...) they use tools. Tools also allow non programmers to create some stuff in the game. look at that picture : http://s9.postimage.org/uebv3q00f/019.jpg (especially the guy at bottom left, editing mario sprite). Good old paper and pencil for prototyping is useful too ! – tigrou Feb 08 '13 at 21:36
  • @dennmat I'd like to see an example of one of the "super marios" that used a level editor. I was under the impression that the levels were detailed on paper like in the picture tigrou showed us and then a programmer coded it up (I believe I read this in an "Iwata Asks") – Jeff Feb 08 '13 at 22:23
  • @Jeff how about Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy. He never specified which one, but seeing as he was comparing it to pacman I assume the first, which TIGROU was fairly toolless. I can't find it now at work but you should look into the post the creator of the original prince of persia guy made about making games like that in pure assembly and how he had some thousands(may have been hundreds don't remember the count) of pages of assembly and how he managed it. – dennmat Feb 08 '13 at 22:26
  • By old I had thought OP meant "NES and older", I hadn't even considered the 3D Super Marios! :P I'd still love to see one of those level editors (doubt there's anything public) – Jeff Feb 08 '13 at 22:50
  • @dennmap : Prince of Persia (for which source is now available after being recovered by the author) was made using a level editor. See the video : http://vimeo.com/2280934 (1987) – tigrou Feb 10 '13 at 12:50

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