Plattform Game - Level design?

[wanner]

Hi.

I have some basic knowledge about java. And i thought i would try to make a plattform game. A basic one where the player should be able to move a character, jump etc, and fire weapons.

But im not sure how i should design the level. The only way i can think of is to make it one really big array. What is the best way to do it?

And i should also mention that i've planned to make it as an applet.

Thanks.

[Kommi]

you can use a text file to store the locations of all the tiles. a good source for such information is http://brackeen.com/javagamebook/. If you download the source to the sample game he has, you can see that both levels are stored as txt files

[TheAnalogKid]

For better level management you can use Tiled (http://tiled.rpgdx.net/index.html) but be aware that the development is inactive for several months and according the authors, they don't expect to continue it for a while. Anyway, it's a good starting point to develop 2D platform games and it's open sourced so you can modify it and adapt it to your needs (what I've been doing).