Extra Levels
Beginner
default.kye from the original game was intended as an introduction to the game, but includes some good puzzles. There is also Beginnner.zip, which is intended as an introduction. Play these just long enough to get the basic mechanics of the game.
Other simple level sets from the registration set are Lizzy, Lucy, Tail.
Remember that if you get stuck, just go to the Game menu and Restart Level to start over.
Intermediate
Most of the levels in Quests, Jungle and Maze are of intermediate difficulty.
From the registration levels: the first few levels of Andrew, Butter, Jasper, Jenny, Monsters, Nathan, PetesKye, Shapes, Volcano.
Kye has no facility to save games — deliberately, so that you have to get it right in one run. Each level set can contain any number of levels, and you can't jump to a later level without knowing its name (so you should remember the name of the last level you were playing, and jump to this level using Goto Level from the menu). But it's pretty easy to cheat, if you forget, or get stuck and want to skip a certain level: you can just open the .kye file in a text editor, and read the next level name out of the file.
Tough Levels
There are my other levels, plenty in the registration levels, and the levels on My Kye Page. It's worth looking around the rest of the My Kye Page site which has other levels to download.
Python Kye Differences from the Original Kye
Python Kye tries to be as compatible as it can with the original shareware Kye. It should be compatible with the vast majority of levels written for Kye v1.0 and v2.0 for Windows.
And conversely, Python Kye includes no features that are not available in the shareware Kye. So levels designed for/on Python Kye should work fine on the original.
There are a few things from the original game that I cannot or have chosen not to replicate; for reference these are:
- In the original, timing-sensitive mechanisms in levels would sometimes break for no reason; I think the original used two separate timer objects to control the faster and slower objects, and these would sometimes drift apart. My version does not do this; but this effect was so marginal that I doubt any levels exist which depend on it.
- The animation of black holes appear to interact in the original game; black holes will skip frames back or forward, speeding up or slowing down their consumption, if there are other black holes eating at the same time. To some extent this seems to be just that later black holes try and match state with earlier ones; but it appears to be more complex than that. I suspect that this is really a bug of the original, and as I don't fully understand it, I have not tried to reproduce the effect.
Creating your own levels
The original Windows version of Kye contains a built-in level editor. Python Kye includes a separate level editor Kye-edit. You can also create levels in a text editor, with a bit of imagination (most of my levels were created this way): see "My Kye Page"'s "Level Building" page for a more complete guide to the different ways to design levels.
In Kye-edit, a palette of the available objects is shown along the bottom of the screen — select objects from here, and then left click on the playing area to place them. Use right click to remove objects. Note that the palette is condensed to show only one object of each type — click on the palette entry repeatedly to cycle through similar objects (e.g. to get different slider directions).
Remember that each .kye file can contain multiple levels. Use the Level menu to select between the levels in a file, add or remove levels, and also to name individual levels and set their hint etc.
Every level should contain at least one diamond (otherwise the game will exit the level immediately), and exactly one Kye (or the game will get confused) (the editor now warns you if you try to save without this minimum). It is best to always have a solid border around the level, or at least to never allow the player to reach the edge of the grid.
And remember to share your levels with the rest of us :-). I believe Robert will put new Kye levels on his levels page.
