Difficulty ratings for levels: try the new icon generator!!

[cloudrac3r]

It's kind of annoying, when downloading a level, that you have no idea how difficult it is or isn't. If you're not the most accomplised puzzler (like me) you will find yourself with many unfinished levels in your RTW folder that you have no idea how to solve, and will end up deleting them, or moving them to some sort of archive folder.
Wouldn't it be nice if you knew how tricky a level was before downloading it?
Of course, you get to know your level creators after some time, for example Mark makes hard levels, Jutomi (boop!) makes strange levels, but sometimes, these people - and others - upload an easy level because they can.
I propose that we create some kind of unified difficulty scale, for everyone to use, to tell the approximate difficulty of a level.
I have noticed that RoberTime has already started using the happy/worried/grumpy/frustrated faces to indicate the difficulty, and that's cool, but I've seen puzzles much more difficult than the purple face from other people, so we can't use that for everyone.
Jutomi's got their rather odd system of about 100 different colourful words, which I'm sure does the job well, but is rather confusing!
I've started using something in my very recent levels which is to gauge the difficulty of the level based on the average difficulty of other people's levels. For example, a certain level might be about RoberTime's difficulty, so if you can solve his levels, you can probably solve that. But I doubt my method will catch on.
I haven't seen any other techniques on the forum in recent times.

If anyone else has some ideas, please share your thoughts!

[Amnon]

You may not be sure about the difficulty of a level that you made, but we could introduce a range, say between 0-10, then initially you could declare your level as say, "3-7", if you are convinced that the difficulty is somewhere in between, then you can edit the top post and narrow it down according to the responses.

There should really be no difficulty-level 0-1 here, as these should go to the kids section. One exception is when the purpose of the level is to introduce a new concept or glitch, rather than to present a challenge.

Mark's hardest levels could be rated "9", because difficulty-level "10" is probably reserved for LeMarquis.

Another measure should be the amount of work. Some puzzles are easy but require lots of repetitive work - so this should be stated too.

One suggestion though: sometimes it is a good idea to hide the difficulty-level and amount-of-work because they might become spoilers. Those who want to check it, would then need to highlight this information.

[Jutomi]

Hello, Cloud-

Yes, I do believe this is a good idea - in principle,
but I do must have to say that while they could be useful in giving you a general idea as to the level's difficulty,
they aren't the most precise things to work with - or, at least, for me.
Many times I've had "medium" levels end up as hard as "hard" levels in the WA section.

So, yes, to keep at mind, while it's a good idea, often times you'd end up needing other peoples' opinions as well - and by then, the level's pretty much out of style.

Also: I did once post a level 0 difficulty level here....
if anyone remembers my little April Fools gift.

[RoberTime]

Yes, about the thing I use for my difficulty ratings, I'm actually paying homage to the difficulty types in Geometry Dash:



From left to right: Easy, Normal, Hard, Harder, Insane, DEMON (I've yet to make a "Demon" level, but when I do... )

Now if only I could apply these faces to a Stinker body, that would complete them.

[FinnThor]

Yes, about the thing I use for my difficulty ratings, I'm actually paying homage to the difficulty types in Geometry Dash:



From left to right: Easy, Normal, Hard, Harder, Insane, DEMON (I've yet to make a "Demon" level, but when I do... )

Now if only I could apply these faces to a Stinker body, that would complete them.

What about Auto?

MAKE AN AUTO-LEVEL!

[cloudrac3r]

An auto level? Sounds funny, but let's stay on-topic here.
Ok then. RoberTime can keep using his faces. If I make a level which fits within the difficulty of those faces then I'll use those, otherwise, I guess I have to use some other system.
Ah, here's an idea. I could create a webapp where you choose lots of pictures to represent the level. We could have the Geometry Dash faces, but also various icons for the subject of the level, like boxes, mazes, spikes, enemies, ice, and I'm sure I can think of more. You choose the pictures you want and it generates the code for you to put into your forum post.
Hey, that could work! It would basically be Jutomi's rating system, except choosing pictures, which would make it a lot prettier and easier!
What do you think?

[cloudrac3r]

I spent a few hours throwing together a test version of the difficulty icon generator. It actually does in fact work, but not all the images are the same size as each other, meaning that if you try to use the forum code, everything will look a bit strange. Generating correct size icons is on my to-do list. Here's the URL to try it for yourself: http://cloudrac3r.ddns.net/wdla/difficu ... culty.html

Here's some output which was pasted from the generator:


Yes, the icons definitely need resizing. But what are you waiting for? Try the generator, try to find bugs, have fun generating image sets, and tell me what I could improve. Any suggestions for more icons would be awesome!
(Obviously, the Magikarp, the Game Boy and the tree will be removed for the final version.)
Anyway if you didn't figure the goal is to have the icons basically sum up the level. Some quick ideas would be a cannon if it's an action level, a clock if the time limit is tight, an Arno if it's modded, the geometry dash faces for difficulty, you get the picture. What icon ideas can you think of?

[cloudrac3r]

I just updated the picture generator! All the icons are the same size now (50x50 pixels) and they all have a transparent background. The forum code box also does not look ridiculous any more. I also gave it a proper title, icon, description and a nice font.
Happy days!

Again, what icons should I add, and what else needs to be improved?

Here's some more sample output. Notice how nice it looks now!