Creating Levels for Rabbit Escape

< < <Back to the Rabbit Escape main page

Watch this video for a quick introduction to how to create levels using the Rabbit Escape Level Editor.

Alternatively, do it the old-fashioned way!

Make sure you have Rabbit Escape downloaded and working before you start.

Extract a level

The Rabbit Escape .jar file you downloaded is really a zip file, and the levels are simple text files inside it.

We are going to extract a level from it, change it, and then put it back. Once you've done this, your new level will appear instead of the one you extracted.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

Rename the Rabbit Escape .jar file to have .zip at the end instead of .jar
Double-click the zip file to open it in your zip program
Open this folder in the zip: "rabbitescape", then "levels", then "easy"
Drag "level_01.rel" out of the zip onto your desktop
Open level_01.rel in a text editor program like Gedit or Notepad
Change the level (see the next section for how)
Save level_01.rel
Make sure your zip program is still open , and you are still looking at the "easy" folder
Drag level_01.rel back off your desktop into the zip
Rename the .zip file back to have .jar at the end
Run the game as before, go to Start Game, Easy, then Level 1, and you should see your new level appear instead of the previous level 1!

Add your levels to the Rabbit Escape Levels forum. If you say we can, we will include our favourites in the next version of the game!

Editing Levels

Rabbit Escape level files are little text files where we've tried to draw the level using letters and symbols. (This is sometimes called "ASCII Art".)

Here is an example of a level file. On the right you can see how it looks in the game:

:name=Digging practice
:num_rabbits=3
:num_to_save=1
:dig=5
###########
#   Q     #
#\      /##
###########
#         #
#\       O#
###########

Symbols to use

The most important symbols to use are:

# - solid block
/ - slope up to the right
\ - slope up to the left
Q - entrance
O - exit

At the top of the file are some properties you can set, using lines starting with ":". These are all optional, but here is what you are allowed add:

name - the name of the level
description - more information about the level
num_rabbits - how many rabbits will come out of the entrance (default is 10)
num_to_save - how many you must save to win the level (default is 1)
rabbit_delay - make this larger to make the rabbits arrive slower (default is 4)

Be careful!

The game is very picky about the format of level files.

Make sure every line (except ones starting with ":") is exactly the same length. It's best to use a fixed-width font in your text editor to help with this. Try "Courier New" or "Ubuntu Mono".

Make sure no lines have extra spaces at the end.

It's best to run the game from a Terminal or Cmd window, using "java -jar rabbit-escape-*.jar" so that you can see any error messages that come up when your level file isn't quite right.

Contact me on rabbitescape@artificialworlds.net if you need any help, and send in your levels by adding them to the Rabbit Escape Levels forum