next »

[Eendhoorn]

Genre platform, racing
Players 2 - 4
PlatformWindows, might expand later with mono.

Gameplay
The entire game plays from a side-view, as you would imagine from a platformer. Players have to race eachother to get to the finish, simple as. There are no different lanes or anything, every player races on the same environment.
The courses will contain obstacles which can be overcome by using vaults and other typical parkour moves.

Players will be able to do "tricks" (flips, spins) to gain points. These tricks will be rewarded by speed boosts or powerups, not sure yet.
Players will also be able to interact to mess with eachother.

Graphics
I'm not a great artist, so I'm only able to create 8 bit sprites.
Artists who might be interested in this project, feel free to contact me :D

Programming
The programming is done in a custom engine with C# and SFML.net. This means that I won't be able to port it easily, but I just want to enjoy myself and use my favourite programming language haha.
The engine uses tile based environments, and since I'm not great at maths it will most likely not use too many dynamic objects, or even slopes. (Which is not a bad thing, since the limitation pushes me to come up with other interesting gameplay mechanics.

DOWNLOAD

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b43iukydhy1gw0m/publish.rar

You will need the XNA framework: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20914
And .NET 4: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851

Please note that this is an early version and is missing alot of polish.

Controls

Keyboard
WSAD: walk and jump
Space: vault.
LeftAlt: flip, Space during flip to tuck and increase rotation speed.
LeftShift: dash
ENTER: select level

E: enable level editor.
F1: save level;
F2: disable level.
Left shift: enable/disable solid tiles.
Mouse scroll: switch tiles
Q: enable/disable autotiling
Mouse click: place tile, hold Z to remove tile

Xbox360 Controller
Control stick: Jump
A: Jump
X: Vault, tuck during flips
B: Dash (decreases meter)
Back: reset when out of view (ugly gameplay solution due to lack of time  )
Triggers: Flip.

Known bugs/incompletions:
- No way to finish yet.
- Terrible UI
- Vaulting against a ceiling displaces character
- Dash meter fills up beyond limit, scales incorrectly

To do (order on priority)
- Dynamic 2D camera (using zoom to keep all players onscreen)
- Handle players falling ofscreen (temp solution for now)
- Level select [needs polish]
- UI [needs polish]
- Fix bugs
- Powerups

[Eendhoorn]

I'm currently busy with porting over some code from a lua gamejam engine, I couldn't stand the lack of autocompletion anymore.

Also thinking about some powerups. I think it would be interesting to incorporate some other environment based sports.

Skateboard
Gain some speed, but lose the abillity to climb or walljump. (ends on environmental collision)

trials-bike
Uses rear-wheel hops to move over tight gaps, making difficult timed jumps easier.
(ends on environmental collision)

double jump
One time use to save your ass.

Hookshot
Not sure if I have the skills to make this, but might be an interesting addition.

[Eendhoorn]

I'm more or less done with the engine base, I got animation, "physics", input, tilesystem and tilebased-collision finished. I'm kind of postponing object vs object collisions, because I hate writing a spatial partitioning system haha.

Anyway, I got basic "vaulting" in the game (I think the proper parkour name is a "gorilla").
Your basic jump is not always high enough to clear every object, so you need to vault to get over it.



It's very sensitive to timing; too early and you will hit the edge and land between the two walls. Timing it perfectly pushes you over the gap. You can even vault the second post. I think the player would be rewarded for combo moves during the game.

The sprites are not final ofcourse, I always pick mario to try out styles. It's a bit hard to see details in the animation in this minimal style, you can't really see him stretching his arms while playing. I don't really have the skills to easily switch styles though, so artists are welcome :D

[Inanimate]

All the power ups sound excellent; many of them have a great tension to them. They help, but at a cost; and in the case of the double jump, you're never quite sure when you're going to need it.

A combo system sounds wonderful. It'd really push players to strive for perfection.

[Eendhoorn]

Yeah I don't want to create too big of distances between the players, so I'm trying to keep it balanced for now. I still have to think what happends when players get too far apart from eachother (all the players share the same view, no split screen).

I'm still working on the vault, I want to get that perfect because it's the key move in the game.
Right now you can hold the vault button, on an environmental collision you will automaticly do the vault - making it alot less hardcore to time.



You can still fail though, which will result in some delay getting over the object.





However, you can also release the vault button just before you collide, getting you up the object, but not actually doing to little jump.

I was initially thinking that I should punish players for this behaviour, since they're not executing the vault correctly. But this could actually create some interesting gamelay mechanics, where you can use this method to get up higher ground, and acess a alternative path.



This is pretty hard to time though, you could mess up but still make it with a slight delay.



Or completely fail, wasting alot of time.




(Ps, does this forum has a spoiler tag? I feel bad for spamming you guys with all those gifs)

[Eendhoorn]

I ported the whole thing over to XNA yesterday because I might want to port this to android using monogame in the future. It only took me about 2 hours and I got everything but input and camera movement working. Someone be proud of me 

[eigenbom]

haha this game could be a lot of fun. good luck

[tipp]

sortof reminds me of precision by cactus, looks like it could be fun

[Eendhoorn]

I haven't worked on this for a week because I'm getting pretty demotivated by my horrible art skills
I cannot seem to come up with a decent design for the characters and environment.

I was trying to create a city scene, since that's generally the best environment for parkour.
But my art skills are too sucky for this. I think I'm going to go for a simpeler style with gymnastic training materials in an imaginary environment.
Sort of like how mario bros 3 blends in element from a filmset in an outside grassy environment.

So yeah, lots of funky big foam blocks and stuff like you see here
http://www.gopiers.com/images/gym.gif

I should be able to draw a rectangle haha.

On the technical side of things, I implemented a "dash meter" which fills up with each trick. I implemented the abillity to flip by using the shoulder buttons. During the flip you can press X to tuck, which increases your rotation speed.
I also implemented walljumps.

[egoitzOsa]

I´m in love with this gameplay. It´s a really interesting idea, and it´s development seems to be really atractive. Good work man!

[Eendhoorn]

I´m in love with this gameplay. It´s a really interesting idea, and it´s development seems to be really atractive. Good work man!

Thanks!I might release a playable version tomorrow if I can get around to fixing some minor issues. Curious if you would enjoy it.

Working on the project more actively again since yesterday, I'm satisfied with the art assets I got so far. They're not great, but it doesn't look like a programmer game so much now.
Pretty bummed out that I took a week off now, won't have enough time to finish it the way I intended it.

[QCPolmer]

I got to wondering how this game could look,
so I spent a little time and did a quick mockup of it.

Feel free to use the tiles (or not, either way).

Best of luck on getting the game done in time!

[Eendhoorn]

I got to wondering how this game could look,
so I spent a little time and did a quick mockup of it.

Feel free to use the tiles (or not, either way).

Best of luck on getting the game done in time!

That's awesome!
I was going to make a simple editor today, and I will include your tiles in the global tileset 
It also looks like you did some shading on the mario, looks nice.

[QCPolmer]

I could give it a try.

However, I will need the spritesheet.

Edit- I misread the last post.
I thought you were asking if I could shade
the mario sprite... Oops.

But yes, I shaded it a bit.
Seemed to fit better.

[Eendhoorn]

I have worked a bit on the editor, it's as barebones as it gets right now. You can place tiles which autotile based on their surrounding.
I have captured a little clip so you can see some of the new features and the tileset.



The bar on top is your dash bar, and yeah it's still ugly as fuck and it incorrectly scales. I can't be bothered with it atm :p

I could give it a try.

However, I will need the spritesheet.

Edit- I misread the last post.
I thought you were asking if I could shade
the mario sprite... Oops.

But yes, I shaded it a bit.
Seemed to fit better.

Haha no problem. Yeah it fits your tileset !
I'll capture some footage of a level made with your tileset soon. I need to either implement some new features or fork an autotile-compatable tileset based on yours before I can get it into the game.

If you want to help with the tileset, this is the format I use:

That's basically the order in which the tiles in the tileset need to be to succesfully autotile.
(full article here: http://www.saltgames.com/2010/a-bitwise-method-for-applying-tilemaps/)

[QCPolmer]

I've never used the autotile thing, so these may not work:









Also, I'm not sure how useful the following will be:

[Eendhoorn]

Yeah it's hard to figure out when you can't actually test it. I'll test em out tomorrow and let you know.

[egoitzOsa]

Thanks!I might release a playable version tomorrow if I can get around to fixing some minor issues. Curious if you would enjoy it.

Where? Where is the playable version you promised to me ? jajajaja .

[Eendhoorn]

Thanks!I might release a playable version tomorrow if I can get around to fixing some minor issues. Curious if you would enjoy it.

Where? Where is the playable version you promised to me ? jajajaja .

Haha yeah I kind of forgot about that. I'll try to get one up in a few hours.

[Eendhoorn]

I have added a downloadable version. It's pretty hard to play with a keyboard though.
The install process is a huge bitch, but I don't really have time to find out how to include the prequistes into the installation, so bear with me for now 

The game is not much fun right now (especially when playing alone), but criticism on the controls and general feel would be appreciated.
Feel free to PM me with any unlisted bugs as well.