Best way to store game levels in a file?

Question

This is a fragment of the code where I generate levels for my game. It's just a list (self.Enemies) with Enemy objects with defined position and type. Someone told me that I should try to store levels in a file and make a class that is gonna read it. I'm not sure what this file should look like, just a code in a file or maybe some parameters?

if self.level == 1:
    enemy_style = 1
    for y in range(1, 3):
        for x in range(6):
            a = x * 100 - 5
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 2:
    enemy_style = 1
    for y in range(3):
        for x in range(8):
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 3:
    enemy_style = 2
    for y in range(2):
        for x in range(3):
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 4:
    enemy_style = 1
    for y in range(3):
        if y == 2:
            enemy_style = 2
        for x in range(8):
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 5:
    enemy_style = 3
    for y in range(2):
        for x in range(1, 5):
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 6:
    enemy_style = 3
    for y in range(4):
        if y >= 2:
            enemy_style = 2
        for x in range(6):
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75 + 40, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 7:
    for y in range(4):
        for x in range(8):
            if y <= 2:
                enemy_style = 3
            elif y > 2 and x in range(3, 5):
                enemy_style = 3
            else:
                enemy_style = 2
            enemy = Enemy(x*100 + self.border, y*75 + 40, enemy_style)
            self.enemies.append(enemy)
elif self.level == 8:
    enemy_style = 4
    self.border = 10
    enemy = Enemy(DRAW_SCREEN_SIZE[0]/2, 170, enemy_style)
    enemy.shoot_ratio = 50
    self.enemies.append(enemy)

Read about the [`pickle`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/pickle.html) module. — Selcuk, Oct 12 '21 at 05:51
Welcome to Stack Overflow. Please read [ask]; what you are looking for here is too broad and too subjective. There are any number of ways to design the contents of a file - generally speaking, we don't deal in *design* questions, for exactly that reason. That said, you might find [this very old question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3321592/how-do-you-create-a-file-format) helpful. — Karl Knechtel, Oct 12 '21 at 06:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 12 '21 at 11:20

2

You should read about the pickle moudule. This will allow you to serialize data in python.

edited Oct 12 '21 at 11:20

Neuron

5,141
5
38
59

answered Oct 12 '21 at 06:08

Guilherme Féria

110
1
12

Neuron · Answer 2 · 2021-10-12T11:38:45.897

There are hundreds of solutions. But if you want to stick to well established file types which are easily editable by everyone and well support in all programming languages, I'd suggest one of these:

JSON - Very simple. Allow dictionary style properties and lists. Default for APIs on the web. See the python JSON encoder and decoder
XML - More complex. Allows to define individual types, but a bit more effort to work with programmatically. Check out the python ElementTree XML API
.properties files - Least complex, just a list of key-value pairs. This would work well if you use a file for every level. Available in python as the Configuration file parser

Best way to store game levels in a file?

2 Answers2