2D platformer (Boxman)

[arttu]

I started doing a 2d platformer and decided to share some thoughts of the development here. We are using Libgdx and aim for desktop and Android.

The latest screenshot:


Latest video:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/MWrFUOIHpr4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/MWrFUOIHpr4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Something else:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[masteryoom]

What are you supposed to do? 

[arttu]

What are you supposed to do?  

I've just recently started to make the game, so there isn't much to do yet. Right now you can just jump around and so. I haven't even made the map editor yet, although I also try to add some kind of procedural map creation to this.

Edit: Right now I'm trying to make collisions work 100% accurately.

Problems:
a) Moving box on top of another moving box is not working all the time (sliding away)
b) Leaning against an object on the left seems to put you 1 pixel inside that object.
c) Some other problems I've not identified yet.

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[arttu]

I made the game area a bit bigger, 600x300. I also fixed one bug on physics, but you may still go inside walls sometimes. The problem might be, that if the position of the object is corrected, I don't go through all the other objects to make sure it doesn't affect them. I need to start polishing the code and then figure it out.

I made a randomly created path so there would be a bigger area to test the game, and noticed, that at some point drawing starts to bug a bit. I think it might be when the x-position goes negative.

Edit: use + and - to change the size of the character.

[supercapacitor]

Nice! Seems to have potential. This reminds me of how mine started out (insert nostalgic smiley here) http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/bounce-2d-platformer-w-destructable-terrain/27023/view.html

[arttu]

Nice! Seems to have potential. This reminds me of how mine started out (insert nostalgic smiley here) http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/bounce-2d-platformer-w-destructable-terrain/27023/view.html

Thanks, and wow! Seems like you have put a lot more effort to your game. I'm trying to keep this small(ish), so I would actually finish the project at some point, and make it polished. I started this out as a "quick work sample" to my website, but it just keeps getting bigger (as they always do).

Two main things I'm considering right now are multiplayer and procedural map generation. Especially multiplayer is something I've never done, so it could be a real problem... And that's probably the reason I should do it.

[arttu]

I made the highness of the jump depend on how long the player presses the up button. I don't know if it's better than before, but I like the idea of being able to control the jump better.

I should refactore the physics and collision detection part of the engine. Too many magic numbers, and the code isn't well structured.


Edit: Now you can also jump from the walls. Just lean to the wall (press to the side) and then jump. This can be done only once per jump (the character needs to be grounded in between).

I also noticed that when playing in browser, the game doesn't look as smooth as when using the Eclipse Applet viewer. Anyone got any thoughts on that?

[arttu]

I've been trying to port this to Android, but something is not working as I think it should. Without any heavyweight things I get around 17fps, and with everything (especially physics) on, the game freezes to < 1 fps. Apparently I'm doing something very, very wrong.

[arttu]

I've added a way to "attack" by pressing down when the character is jumping.

Looks like hardware acceleration is not an easy task achieve with plain Java. I want to make this game without any external libraries which makes it hard to get smooth drawing... I'll need to get back to this later.

[arttu]

I think new graphics are pretty (Teemu did those).

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[PeterNicholson]

The graphics look very nice. What program do you use? (I use Paint.NET for pixel-art, and gimp for making backgrounds) 

[arttu]

The graphics look very nice. What program do you use? (I use Paint.NET for pixel-art, and gimp for making backgrounds) 

Teemu did mock-ups with Google Drawing. I usually use Paint.NET for everything I need to do (which isn't much or sophisticated). The drawing in the game is currently just filled rectangles - the intention is to change tile size depending on the screen size.

[arttu]

Looks like I got the hardware acceleration to work after all. It would be nice to hear how smooth the game feels if someone has tested the Applet? You can also open the Java console while playing to see if the hardware acceleration works on your machine.

Edit: I've added one video (quite poor quality): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTBJmiiL7Wo&feature=plcp

[arttu]

A small update. Rendering is now done in a separate thread which could make things smoother... But somehow something is still missing. You can compare the old and new implementations:

Old:
http://arttu.louhigames.com/game

New:
http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/


The new one doesn't look as good because it has smaller blocks. I'll figure out a way to draw them more nicely.

All feedback is welcome as well as tips on how to make the game run smoothly.

[arttu]

I added a bit longer tether to the camera and now this

http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/

version looks "good" I think.

Content would be nice.

[arttu]

I've added digging and building, and simple sounds.

Arrow key + x => digging.
c + arrow key => building.

Seems to be buggy and may crash. Deleting objects probably causes some nullpointers.

Jar also works as standalone:
http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/

[HeroesGraveDev]

If your OS is Windows, you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder for screen recording.

It has amazing performance even with high quality recordings.

And it's free for the full version.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27870

That might help you get a better video.

[arttu]

If your OS is Windows, you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder for screen recording.

It has amazing performance even with high quality recordings.

And it's free for the full version.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27870

That might help you get a better video.

Thanks a lot, I've added a better video. Didn't get the audio though, but I'll figure it out when I have the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMhLiHLCCnI

Edit: I also fixed a bug that caused a nullpointer ex and added some delay so that you could more easily jump from the edges (certain amount of time after the falling has started when the jumping is still ok).

[arttu]

I want the maps to be very big, so I've been implementing a way to activate and deactivate blocks based on the distance from the player. The base functionality is done and surprisingly also somewhat working, but I still need to do some performance tuning. At some point I was able to play 100x100 map without the modification, and 1000x1000 with the modification, so I think it's going to work just fine. Enjoyable programming.

[arttu]

Now there is line of sight too. LoS and block activation / deactivation runs in a separate thread scheduled to run in intervals.

[arttu]

Does anyone have an idea of how I could (should) make a "continuous" map, meaning that if you go far enough to one direction, you'll end up to the beginning at some point? And without the player noticing any "joints".

[arttu]

We have started using Libgdx for this game and it feels very promising so far. We will target both desktop and Android from now on.

http://louhigames.com/2013/05/07/we-are-back/

Here you can see "chunks" working:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/HU3FMl0hsFI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/HU3FMl0hsFI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

And here some new blocks:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[newera31]

Break your maps into "sections".  If the player nears the end of a section, load the next section (from disk) in a background thread.  It's probably a good idea to keep the previous section in memory until the player nears another section.  If you need more detail, let me know.

The game looks really cool!  I like how you can create a block when jumping.  What would be neat is if you could create the block, jump off it and after a second or two, it drops (maybe on an enemy below -- killing it).

Keep up the good work!

[arttu]

Break your maps into "sections".  If the player nears the end of a section, load the next section (from disk) in a background thread.  It's probably a good idea to keep the previous section in memory until the player nears another section.  If you need more detail, let me know.

Yep I've done that. The map begins from (0,0) and each coordinate point is a section of a map containing blocks. The section in which the character and all adjacent sections are active, others are serialized to disk. It is not yet threaded because I had some weird problems and need to clean the design before adding concurrency. I'll post later how it works. :b I have some performance issues with Android and I think I'm killing the gc with those section loads and saves.

The game looks really cool!  I like how you can create a block when jumping.  What would be neat is if you could create the block, jump off it and after a second or two, it drops (maybe on an enemy below -- killing it).

Keep up the good work!

That sounds fun, I'll need to try it out! All the physics are not perfect yet. Earlier I had also moving blocks "done" but I had to redo most of the game when I started using Libgdx and haven't done them again yet.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

[arttu]

One video to show those map sections loading:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[arttu]

I've started adding lights with Box2d lights.



Next I should probably try to start using Box2D for collision detection too, and check if the physics would feel good in platformer. I like the game play feel of the game right now so I don't want to mess it up with too realistic physics simulation. Box2D would just allow us to make so many cool features that we are not going to be able to make ourselves.

[Vermeer]

That just looks so good! It really changes it with the lighting..

[arttu]

That just looks so good! It really changes it with the lighting..

Yeah it's amazing how much it changes the atmosphere of the game! I'm gonna concentrate a lot more to the lights and maybe use it as a game element. The graphical style might change quite a bit, but we will definitely use lights.

I'm not sure what the graphical style should be. I've been thinking about some kind of steampunk-kind-of-style mecha/tank, that could move and jump around, break blocks, and maybe get upgrades (jet packs and so on). The underground could be dark, and you'd need to use lights in the vehicle. Well, we'll see.

[arttu]

A short video:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/MWrFUOIHpr4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/MWrFUOIHpr4?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[wessles]

I think I came up with a game play Idea. You could have some blocks be corrupt, and kill you when you touch them. And make some coins! It would totally be the new doodle jump idea!