[Tutorial] How to use the Color Yellow (Platforms)

*Original post by CajNatalie with contributions from others

So this stuff is all common knowledge...
Pit, 000,000,000 (RGB, black color)
Wall, 000,128,000 (RGB, green color)
Walking area, 000,064,128 (RGB, blue color)

...but there are other colors out there. I only know about Yellow, but there's gotta be colors for water, ice, snow, and pits you can climb out of (please, someone tell me if you know it, so I can make the BKIII mod!).

The Hidden Color
Stage 7 Elevator Barrier, 248,252,000 (RGB, yellow color)

If more colors are discovered, they will be listed here.


How to use Yellow
Yellow is quite infamous for its apparent glitchiness, but I think we're all just using it wrong. I hope to have the definitive guide on how to use this damn color some day, but I believe I've hit pretty close with it.

Ledges
Yellow can make ledges. You can jump up through green and stand in a yellow area.
Do NOT make the ledge more than 1 pixel thick (unless you know what you're doing - see Benny26's replies). Remember this, and your ledges will be fine and glitch free.
To drop from a ledge, press up/down. Or run to the left or right of it.
Make sure that there is a blue pixel somewhere for you to land when you drop. You don't want to drop in to green territory and get stuck.

To make a ledge that runs up the screen, draw stripes as wide as possible up the rail.
Leave one pixel between each stripe and the one above it.
In any column of pixels, there should be no more than 2 yellow pixels. Following the previous rule, there will be a blue pixel between these 2.
If you have 3 or more, you're going to get loaded with glitches - shorten stripes until you can avoid this. With 2 pixels, you have good collision for jumping on the rail combined with minimal glitching when walking under the rail.
To escape a 'glitch' when walking under a rail, move diagonally.
Not properly tested: Since you drop off of ledges when you run in to green, I concluded that sticking a green pixel on the side of a ledge may help reduce glitching. Testing seems to have supported this, but I may have just been biased.

Low Walls
When you don't stick to 1-pixel-thick stripes and paint blocks of yellow, it can be used to make special walls to throw people over!
The wall must be at least 3 pixels thick vertically and horizontally.
Try to make it as thin as possible without going under that limit.
Generally, you need to be close to the wall to get a successful throw or anti-air knock-down, but it provides marginally better results than using the 'thin green wall method' (see spoiler).

Spoiler:

Important: When making a yellow wall, test the ends - top and bottom.
If you can slip through them to your death, add green around them to correct this.

Combining this Knowledge: SoR1 Stage 7!

CajNatalie wrote:Further investigation has shown that you shouldn't use a green wall, but a yellow wall.
That's right, yellow acts as a wall if you block it together.
If you want yellow as a ledge, it should only be one pixel thick! Because otherwise it will trigger the wall behavior that everyone labels as a glitch.
Yellow walls seem far easier to throw over. I even got knocked over it when I was hit during a jump.
Jumps don't have throw locking (each frame of a throw animation locks the victim's sprite in to a certain position, which is how you can throw/slam people past a thin green line - they'll get 'locked in' on the other side of the line), which helps support the reason to choose yellow over green for a better barrier effect.


Here is the magic map...

Now I'm going to actually... make Stage 7 (finally, lol).
If anyone can improve the ledge, please share how.

Upper Walking Limit Warning:

Playing only on the collision map with yellow (that's having the upper scene limit walking area right up at the top and out of the equation) will cause the char to drop off the platform from the yellow when it reaches the upper limit of the yellow. However, having the upper stage walking limit in play and having it placed just under the top of the yellow stops this "drop-off" from happening....if you have an elevator or diagonal stage though, you're screwed

Other Info


1) Climbing a yellow platform it's VERY tricky. If you climb from an X plane (from left to right of vice versa), your character WILL drop in the closest X line, and if you climb a yellow platform from Y (from down to up or vice versa) you'll drop down in the same Y spot you climbed. Pretty much, YOU CANNOT CLIMB FROM X AND DROP FROM Y AND VICE VERSA!
Example, if you climbed a platform from X (let's say, a left side of a table) and you try to drop down by going down, you WILL teleport in the spot you climbed up and the only way you'll cross that yellow platform without returning to the first spot is to drop from the right side of the table.
The same, climb from down to up and walk to your left or right and you'll be to earth at the same spot you jumped vertically.

2) Yellow platforms don't have hard collision properties. In the moment you climb a Yellow platform, you can fall from ANY side of it. It's like being surrounded completely by black. The only way to give yourself an upper wall/handrail property is by putting your horizon line of your map within SORmaker adjacent to the upper line of your yellow platform, otherwise your character will drop off even if you walked up.


By these two properties, you'll find out how tricky is to use yellow platforms, so bottomline, the don't's are.

1) Don't put yellow platforms not stuck to the horizon line.

2) Design your ledges, platforms, bridges or anything that needs an upper floor to be climbed and dropped from the same axis, otherwise, players, due of the X/Y property, will drop into the abyss (if they scrolled the screen and there's black below, for example) or simply will make the area unable to pass through.



And to close this post, Word of God has made clear that there's only 4 colors with value in the maps.

1) Green RGB 0 128 0 = Wall/hardness property.
2) Blue RGB 0 64 128 = Walkable area.
3) Pure Black 0 0 0 = Pit
4) Yellow 248 252 0 = Platform, ledges, handrails.