Questions regarding platformer development Weekly progress post #62: Baba takes the show Tags: Games, Streaming, Regular updates, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Cloud Realm Nordic Game Jam 2017! Tags: Games, Baba Is You, Nordic Game Jam, Happenings, Plans, ESA 2, Cloud Realm, No More Sweden, Other, Art, Small games Weekly progress post #61: An end to farting Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates, Nordic Game Jam, Happenings, Plans Weekly progress post #60: Shadowbeasts! Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates, Nordic Game Jam, Happenings, Plans Weekly progress post #59: Snake Game Stuff! Tags: Games, ESA 2, Cloud Realm, Regular updates, Streaming TURTLES Tags: Games, ESA 2, Other, Art Weekly progress post #58: Yggdrasil Tags: Games, ESA 2, Cloud Realm, Regular updates, Streaming Weekly progress post #57: Chill and chatty Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates Weekly progress post #56: Things Are Taking Shape Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates, Cloud Realm Pages
Posted on 2017-05-05 01:29
I was asked these questions on Twitter and since Twitter is Twitter with its letter limits, I decided to import the questions here and answer them more elonquently:
What are the key features a 2d platforming game should have?
“2d platforming game” is a fairly abstract concept and defines only a very small part of a game’s design; there are 2D platformers that vary from each other greatly, and most of their defining features don’t stem from being 2D platformers but rather from other things. Technically I could try to find some defining features that 2D platformers should have that aren’t dependent on other factors, but the list of said features would be pretty limited. Let’s try:
Things a 2D platformer needs to have:
- A playable character
- Sideways perspective
- Obstacles that block your way or offer something to stand on
- Gravity (although even this can be done without)
There are also things that 2D platformers usually have, such as collectibles, goals, failure conditions, enemies, HP, lives, levels, environments etc., but with a strict definition none of them are required to call a game a “2D platformer”. (Note that the list of things 2D platformers need was just something I made up on the spot, I’m sure there are valid arguments to reduce even more things from it!)
If someone were to learn game development via making a 2D platformer, I’d say that using something like Super Mario Bros. as a guideline on what’s expected from such a game could be the best way to go, because it contains all those strictly platformer-related concepts listed above, but also lots of handy learning opportunities in form of those other, less definitive but nonetheless handy things such as coins, score, level progression and losing.
What’s the best art style for a side-scrolling platformer?
This is a very subjective question! The definition of “best” definitely hinges a lot on both the budget and the personal taste of the developer. The game screen should be easily readable, i.e. it should be clear what is background and what is a wall, an interactable object etc., but there’s a huge amount of options to choose from in terms of unique artstyles that achieve that, and whether one of them is better than the others depends entirely on the opinion of the player/developer.
I’m personally rather biased towards retro-style pixel art graphics with stretched pixels (see: Cave Story, Eternal Daughter, Maldita Castilla). It’s important to note, though, that even stretched-pixel pixel art doesn’t have to look retro (see: WitchWay, Fez, Hyper Light Drifter for a non-platformer example) and that non-stretched-pixel pixel art is definitely also an option and can be achievable by a smaller team (see: Within a Deep Forest, IJI). Outside of the realm of pixel art things require a bit more work pretty quickly which might not be worth it for a smaller team, but on the other hand the results can be sweet (see: Saira, Braid, LIMBO). Taking a nonstandard approach to the artstyle might also be a good option (see: An Untitled Story), so nothing’s really that clear. These are obviously just my own personal tastes!!
If I were to suggest an artstyle for someone making their first 2D platformer or aiming to learn game development, I’d probably recommend something like the visual style of the NES Megaman games; stretched pixels, limited colour palette, very high readability, fairly easy to work on, tile-based background art to lessen workload and so on.
What type of music would go well with a pixel art style?
I don’t think I can really answer this properly. “Pixel art style” in itself is such a vague concept that depending on other factors pretty much any kind of music could go well with it. There are good examples of orchestral(-style) music (see: Owlboy, Titan Souls, Gods Will Be Watching), retro-style music (see: Cave Story, Spelunky classic, Shovel Knight), music with more modern instruments that I can’t think of a good category name for (see: Nuclear Throne, IJI) or minimalistic electronic music (see: Within A Deep Forest). Games like Undertale combine stuff from several musical styles very successfully, and some utilize existing music as their soundtracks (see: Space Funeral, Hotline Miami).
Again, retro-style chiptunes might be the easiest way to go, but really the answer to this question is pretty much “anything”.
EDIT: I actually haven’t played Owlboy and added it in because I checked that it has an orchestral soundtrack and pixel art graphics. I’m fairly certain that the musics fit the game but I implied too much up there. My apologies!
Posted on 2017-04-30 04:46
Lately I’ve been, unsurprisingly, really into working on Baba Is You, to the detriment of the progress on Snake Game and ESA 2. Today’s stream started with a new trap and a new type of moving platform being added to ESA along with a new room that showcases both, but soon afterwards I moved to Baba territory. Due to moving more things to lua lately Baba was in a somewhat buggy/crashy state but some really neat suggestions were thrown about and a bunch of bugs were fixed and features implemented, so that’s nice! I spent a bunch of time afterwards fixing said buggy/crashy behaviour in Baba, and apart from a couple more hairy issues things are looking pretty good! I’ll still have to figure out how exactly I’ll want to approach a “full” version of Baba, though.
Posted on 2017-04-28 00:19
(Cool photo & cool cake by my girlfriend, Anni :3)
Nordic Game Jam 2017 was last weekend, and I ended up winning it with my game, Baba Is You!
I went in not really expecting much; I wasn’t initially really in the mood for making new games so the plan was to kinda feel the situation and possibly just work on ESA 2 and/or Snake Game. The theme of the jam was “Not There”, and at some point it got me thinking about “not” as an operator in programming/logic. This in turn made me think of a puzzle game where the game logic is part of the game world, and eventually this idea turned into my entry. I was expecting to run to some really hairy coding problems and not be able to finish, but hey, that very much didn’t happen!
I’m not totally sure where to take the game from here; during the event my plan was to polish it a bit and release it mostly as-is, but since people really liked it and it even raised some philosophical considerations in some players, I think I’ll be working on it further.
Download the game on itch.io!
In other news, Environmental Station Alpha’s second anniversary was also last weekend, and I almost completely forgot to announce the sale that went with that. Oh well! Let’s hope we won’t get to its 3rd anniversary before ESA 2 is done.
Next up in the indie gamedev event schedule will be No More Sweden in June; we’ll see what happens there :O
Posted on 2017-04-20 02:03
Nordic Game Jam starts tomorrow! I really want to be able to show bits of ESA 2 and Snake Game there, so I spent today’s stream polishing some tiny bits of both. Thursday will be mostly quiet so I hope that I’ll be able to pull off some more polish in preparation for the actual event.
In ESA 2 I finally updated the double jump effect as well as the hookshot’s graphical look. Not 100% sure about the latter because of how “lasery” it looks, it almost feels as if this new hookshot should be able to be used offensively. Nevertheless, it’s an improvement. I’ll try to add some polish to certain early-game areas as well so that I could show off the beginning of the game without feeling that it’s way too work-in-progress.
In Snake Game I worked a bit on a cutscene/hub area that’ll be used for accessing the various encounters in the game. I needed to implement a ladder for said area, and to be honest the code for it is fairly hacky, but hopefully that won’t become a problem later on. I’ll try to get this area polished further before NGJ so that the player can somewhat seamlessly move from the main menu to the first encounter while learning controls on the way.
Posted on 2017-04-15 02:07
Today’s stream saw the addition of 1 new small room, beginnings of the tileset for the ~FINAL NON-OPTIONAL AREA~ and a new enemy for the previous area, seen above. The penultimate area is starting to feel pretty good apart from certain awkward room transitions, a missing bossfight and the general lack of background details that applies for almost the whole game at the moment. I’m going to have to spend a bunch of time decorating everything, eventually…
I’ll also have to redo the in-game map soon! I think I’ve talked about this before, but it’s nevertheless something I’ve been hesitating with because the current system has some really obscure code going on and picking that apart will probably be less than enjoyable.
Nordic Game Jam will be next week! I’m probably going and based on previous years it should be good fun. Not sure if I’ll get anything worthwhile done, though…
Posted on 2017-04-10 03:00
Today’s stream was fairly short & uneventful; I added a new small room to ESA 2, fixed some bugs and started working on the transition to the next area. Surprisingly Snake Game saw more development; I implemented a system where the player can enter their name when starting a new game. The system ended up being really hacky which will probably cause trouble for me at some point, but at least it works.
If the player can name the main character of a game, should they be able to add stuff like exclamation marks, numbers or dots to the name, or should the game force the name to be somewhat standard?
Posted on 2017-04-02 00:18
ITS NAME IS BLOCK THE TURTLE
THANK YOU ANNI
Posted on 2017-03-31 03:21
Still didn’t get out of the current area in today’s stream, but there’s very little left to be done here (sans the bossfight, which I skipped and will implement later). I added a new room, worked on & polished one and finalized a couple others. I also added the basics of a Very Important Cutscene along with a fairly important (and hopefully cool) gameplay thing. Hopefully I can now get this area mostly done before next week’s stream!
Also finally managed to implement the player’s parachute in Snake Game! That’s another thing that has been coming for nearly a year, so it’s great to get forward on that front, too!
Posted on 2017-03-25 02:21
Today’s stream was very nice and there was a fair amount of discussion going on, which is always a joy! I added 2 new rooms and a new enemy; it’s not that much especially considering the stream was about half an hour longer than usual, but on the other hand said enemy is somewhat more complicated than usual enemies, used as a miniboss-type deal and by implementing it I ended up also finishing a couple plot-relevant things.
I really want to get done with the current area because I feel I’ve spent a long time at it already, but luckily the end is nigh; if I work on the area a bit between streams, I should be able to get it finished next week (sans optional rooms & the boss of the area) (maybe).
I was planning to add some stuff to Snake Game as well, but after spending so long on ESA 2 stuff I wanted to end the stream so that’ll be a thing for later.
I need to draw more.
Posted on 2017-03-20 01:29
Today’s stream was fairly uneventful, but there was a surprisingly high amount of viewers, which was really nice. Thanks, people! :) I added 2 new rooms and implemented a new enemy, albeit one that works mostly as a way to teach the player a movement technique, seen above. I feel that I’ll have to add a couple larger enemies to this area because it’s meant to have a strong theme going on and right now that theme really isn’t there.
Also started the stream with working a bit on Snake Game’s spritework! I’ve finally redrawn the main character’s sprites to look more like what I had in mind; it took me over a year to get that done because I was so scared of the task. There’s still the walking/running animation left to do, but after that I can finally move onto other stuff (momentarily, but nevertheless).
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