Hello people!
I wanted to join the contest, but I will not be able to finish my project on time. And if a lot is done, there is still quite a lot to do. Therefore, so far I will not publish my project, but only describe what it was meant to be and what it is now, show some pictures and videos. I have been left with no more work for a month, so when I finish it, I will publish the project.
This project was initially meant to be just a simple, small windowed application, allowing to check a certain effect on retro 2D platform games. I'm talking about multi-layered levels where the hero can walk on every layer. Layers were to serve as a visual effect of depth (as a parallax scrolling), as well as a usable surface. This greatly expands the functionality of the levels, giving the opportunity to create not only large but also deep levels, in which movement is more difficult than in the one-layered (levels become a three-dimensional maze).
The parallax scrolling test and the visual effect of the transition between layers was finished long ago. Video presenting such functionality is available here:
Deep Platformer – layers test (quality is not excellent—I had a problem with setting the recorder). But this effect could be used somewhere… So I decided to create a simple platformer using the above-described functionality (and written code of course).
Many times I saw newbies trying to create games without additional libraries (in a window environment), without hardware acceleration, so I decided that I would try to make the game only with the help of a standard form and basic bitmap class. The best it can be. I love retro games and consols, especially
NES, so I decided to create this demo in a similar way as in the old days. No semi transparency, no floating point numbers to describe motion, game engine based on frame counting, not based on delta, etc. Going to be fun. I took
TForm,
TBitmap and wrote the whole code from scratch, each piece by myself. I did not design the code, I just opened the IDE and started writing.
I have determined that the game should contain:
- pixelated graphics (very low resolution),
-
Limbo-style level design,
- simple animated intro, on the shape of
NES games,
- simple menu, waiting for a key press and start the game,
- story consisting of short tutorial and several worlds,
- each world composed of title screen and several levels (each world in different background color),
- levels equipped with gateways to change the layer (to deeper or nearer),
- levels equipped with gateways to change the gravity direction (to up or down),
- hero as a small, animated square, able to walk and jump,
- moving fireflies to collect,
- animated outro and staff screen,
- fully functional debug mode, that allows to check the operation of each part of the game,
- easter eggs and a lot of references to old times,
- and more, more options.
The specifics of this project preclude calling it a full-fledged game, which is why I call it simply a technological demo. The lack of hardware acceleration is a big limitation, so this project will always be just a test. Therefore, the project code is not particularly universal or extensible.
Currently, the intro and main menu are ready, the logic associated with the hero and levels is also finished (hero control, fireflies movement, level and its content rendering, layer and gravity handling, collisions with the environment), as well as a fully functional debug mode, command line support and more. However, the story is not ready yet, neither the target worlds nor levels, nor the code responsible for traveling around them.
Currently, the project consists of 33 units, about 10.000 lines of code. The project also includes four console tools that allows to generate images of level layers, as well as binary files containing data about fonts, levels and title screens. There is still a bit of code to write, create binary files with title screens of the worlds and binaries with levels, fill some text files with information about this project.
Here is a recording containing a intro and menu:
Deep Platformer – intro and main menu (menu level is not finished).
Few screenshots in the attachments.