MAGS: Revelation 1.0

[DoorKnobHandle]

REVELATION

Entry for MAGS-contest 09/2007

Revelation is a stealth/action jump'n'run game. It also allows you to create your own levels easily!

Features:

- Tile-based jump'n'run game with stealth-action elements...
- No boring story...
- Different weapons...
- Easily alarmed enemies with a waypoint-system...
- Two-dimensional parallax-scrolling in three layers...
- Easy to create your own levels, as many as you want...
- Music

Please do read the readme-file, it contains vital information:

CONTROLS

Move the player to the left or right with the left and
right cursor keys respectively.

When you stand next to a ledge, a flashing arrow will
point upwards. Once you see this symbol, you can climb
up by pressing the up cursor key.

To jump down a ledge, just walk over the edge. You are
a trained professional when it comes to moving, so even
longer jumps don't hurt you.

Hit the number keys to select a weapon, a little indicator
will pop up in the top-right corner of the screen showing
the different weapons you have availabe and which one is
currently selected.

In order to use a weapon, hit the space key.


TACTICS

In each level, it's your objective to find the way out of
the enemy structure. There are lots of enemy guards between
you and the exit, though, so prepare for a challenging fight.

The guards outnumber you and your fire power by a huge margin,
but they aren't exactly smart, that's your chance. Try to
sneak up on them. In addition to the weapons you can find in
the level, you will always be equipped with a knife. Use it to
overpower the enemy or try to solve levels without even being
seen at all. Be cautious when fighting though, the guards
aren't bright, but they will be alarmed when they see a dead
comrade.

Most likely, your knife will be your most preferred weapon,
there are, however, situations which are extremely hard to
survive without resorting to the range attack of guns.


LEVEL EDITOR

If you want to create your own levels for 'Revelation', simply
create a new text-file in the game directory (you can use any
text-editor such as Notepad or Word). The first line has to be
the width of the level in tiles, the second line is the height.
The rest of the file is the level. If you are new to concept of
tiles, feel free to open the two example levels called
"level1.txt" and "level2.txt".

In the level, certain symbols mean certain tiles in the game.
For the tiles, it's best to find these out by taking a good
look at the example levels, other symbols are: P for the place
the player starts, E for enemy, H for a health potion, 2 for
the pistol, 3 for the uzi and F for the finish, the goal the
player has to reach to beat the level.

Make sure that you have the correct dimensions of the level
in the first two lines of the file, otherwise the game might
crash or return unexpected results.

In order to test and play your own creation, save it, then
open the "levels.txt" list and simply add a line at the end
of it with your filename. Now it should appear in the main
menu of 'Revelation'.

Be creative, have fun and make sure to upload and announce your
own levels to share them with others.


CREDITS

Programming, Art, Animation and Music done by Jan Simon aka
'dkh' in one busy month.

DOWNLOAD LINK

[Nikolas]

This is ONE FANTASTIC GAME!

Very very well done Jan!

hehe!

Only downside that you can't move and change weapon at the same time!

But it is awesmoe man!

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks a lot for that. You're right about the weapon-changing. Letting the player change items while running is very hard to make look nice when you animate the character in one piece. Basically, I have a walkcycle for every weapon, but in order to make the walking look coherent while changing, I would've to switch to the other walkcycle and just the right frame of the new animation, so the foot-stepping isn't reset. It really wouldn't have been hard to implement, there just wasn't enough time already. I had a lot more ideas, maybe I'll produce an extended version some day.

[Thalon]

Nice game, I have only some small criticism: there's no way to edit the config with the usual exe (I really needed to change the resolution to a letterbox one because my lcd monitor cuts some areas from both the top and the bottom of the screen if the resolution is not high enough, and there's no way to prevent it because I can only move the screen area but I can't stretch or shrink it).

[DoorKnobHandle]

Argh, sorry for that. I took the setup out, because you aren't able to play it in windowed mode or with a different resolution anyways, it's too slow for that. Didn't think about the letter-boxing.

You can get a setup HERE though, just place it in the game-directory and run it!

[Thalon]

Thanks a lot, it works now (the only thing I had to do was renaming the game's executable from revelation.exe to jumprun.exe, consider it if you're planning a future relase).
BTW, another small (and last) request if you're planning an update: if I die the game automatically returns to windows, is it possible to return to the start screen (the one with the load level list/quit option) instead?

[radiowaves]

You ALMOST stole my idea hehe. But since I lack the time to creat anything like that anyway, I have no problem with it Looks cool!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Quite a nice little game.  One thing you could do to change the weapons realtime would be instead of making a separate animation of the character with each weapon would be to just make the weapon a separate character and draw it on top of the character by setting the gun loop and frame to the same as the player loop and frame.  An easy way to do this is to draw an animation of the character with the gun and then erase them and you have precisely where the gun will appear for each frame.  This makes drawing a new weapon easy as well.  Nice work!

[TheJBurger]

This game is pretty amazing. Great work!

I have a couple of comments:
- If it's possible, a drop down animation would be nice.  But then I'm sure you would've implemented this if it was possible.
- When some soldiers die their helmet is over the ledge. (LEVEL 1, bottom floor) It's just a minor graphical glitch.
- Though everything you need to know is in the readme file, it might be nice to have a little GUI tutorial showing you what keys to press when you first start.

Overall, it was very impressive to play and fun too. Good job!

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks for the feedback.

ProgZ: That's true, a split-up between upper and lower body would've been a good and professional solution, unfortunately I didn't think enough about this issue when I started the work on the game (due to the time limitation of the contest), next time I'm doing something like this, it will be the way to go.

TheJBurger: A drop-down animation would've been nice and not even that hard to implement, if I had more time and were a quicker animator, it would've been in there, but then I decided it looked okay as it was. The helmets will fly into the scenery. It's just a simple animation, in order to prevent that, I'd have to include a simple physics engine or multiple death animations etc., and that would've killed way to much time. As you say, it's just a low-priority glitch. About the tutorial: I actually always wanted to create one, but when you work on an engine with this level of complexity, there's just not enough time left for all that.

radiowaves: Hehe, you had a similar idea?

Thalon: Thanks, you're right about the renaming.

[Nikolas]

Oh, Jan?

How is this a jump&run game when the character does not jump or run?

Honestly if you would like to work on it a bit more, there are many things you could do to polish it up (since it is a MAgs entry and rather limited in time), but it would make a great game, reminder of those old games... (like Saboteur, for example, etc)

[DoorKnobHandle]

Ha, well, he does run!

It's a run'n'climb. Or just a sidescroller.