An AGS platformer (MariVania)

[Calin Leafshade]

I know this has come up before but i just thought I'd share my attempt at a tiny little "Tech Demo"

How does it feel to play? I tried to add in acceleration and stuff like that.. Is it believable?

http://www.thethoughtradar.com/AGS/Platformer7.zip

[Arboris]

Yes, it is. It feels very good.

[Matti]

Yep, nice and smooth. Good work.

[Snake]

Wow, Calin, that's great! It doesn't feel "AGS-ie" at all. Great work! I especially like how you made his hat flip up when falling down or decending from a jump... great job.

[Calin Leafshade]

I especially like how you made his hat flip up when falling down or decending from a jump... great job.

I stole the idea from somewhere... I wont say where... It's secret

[DoorKnobHandle]

Bouncy Boxing? :p

Haven't checked this out yet but will asap.

[Calin Leafshade]

Ramps!

http://www.thethoughtradar.com/AGS/woop.zip

mario assaults draculas castle.

But you'll notice that the ramps dont work.

Im using regions to define platforms.. so Region 1 defines the top of a platform and will not allow the character to fall through it and region 2 defines obstacles that cant be passed through horizontally. Obviously this means that slanted ramps dont work.

Any ideas?

[TerranRich]

Colin, you magnificent bastard, your platformer works like a charm and feels smooth... except for the multi-jumps. If you hold down "up" you can jump endlessly, which not many platformers actually do. This can be easily fixed, however.

Now I know why you asked about room width limitations.

[Crimson Wizard]

That looks realy cool. Did you draw these background graphics?

[Arboris]

That looks realy cool. Did you draw these background graphics?

My guess was a tile set from castlevania actually

[Calin Leafshade]

That looks realy cool. Did you draw these background graphics?

HAH! I wish kiddo.

[Calin Leafshade]

So I had a quick try at parallaxing.

I paint the background (the sky) onto the room surface at the viewport but it seems to lag slightly and is especially noticeable if you jump.

Any ideas why that might be?

Code: ags

DrawingSurface *surface = Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground();
surface.Clear();
surface.DrawImage(GetViewportX(),GetViewportY() , 14);

http://www.thethoughtradar.com/AGS/Platformer.zip

[Wonkyth]

This looks nice.
However, when I tried the second one you uploaded, I sometimes fell through the top of staircases.
Sometimes with disastrous results:


EDIT:
Having a look at the parallax problem, I'm haven't really got any ideas, except that it might just be general lagging.
I did notice that when you move to the left, you get a similar thing, but when you move to the right, it's fine.
You get this when you walk to the left:




My thoughts on the ramp problem are that perhaps if you were within a certain distance of the surface of the ramp(a couple of pixels should be enough), then you could make it so that....Arg! I cant explain!
I'll try pseudo

Code: ags

if (this.Location == StairAreaType.Right)                    //if the thingy is within the special ramp area of a ramp
{                                                                                 //going up to the right

this.HorizontalRightMovement = const_ALittle;          //make it so that pressing the right arrow makes you
                                                                                   //move to the right AND up a little
this.HorizontalLeftMovement = -const_ALittle;           //make it so that pressing the left arrow makes you
                                                                                   //move to the left AND down a little
                                                                                   //it should be set up so that when it's moved it stays 
                                                                                   //within the ramp area
}

I hope I'm making sense, and I hope it works...

[Scarab]

Well if you created a hollow rectangle GUI which makes the screen smaller, then the viewport would be able to load behind it, which would stop the background from showing you its pink bits.

[Wonkyth]

That would work, except that you'd still get the weird squashing effect whenever you jumped.

[Calin Leafshade]

I really can't see why this doesnt work.

I paint the background everyframe at the viewport.

The only thing i can think of is that the GetViewPort functions dont return a pixel-perfect result.

EDIT: FIXED!

The following code seems to return the viewport more accurately (if the viewport is following the player)

Code: ags

int BGx = cEgo.x - 160;
if (BGx < 0) BGx = 0;
if (BGx > Room.Width - 320) BGx = Room.Width - 320;
int BGy = cEgo.y - 100;
if (BGy < 0) BGy = 0;
if (BGy > Room.Height - 200) BGy = Room.Height - 200;

[Calin Leafshade]

So I've done another build to show off the parallaxing a little more but does it hurt your eyes to play?

it seems blurry to me.. is it just my monitor?

http://www.thethoughtradar.com/AGS/Platformer2.zip

[Arboris]

Hm, it's sharp here.

Try putting the filter on '4x nearest-neighbour' in the game options, and don't allow your monitor to manually stretch it (keep the aspect ratio).   

[Denzil Quixode]

It doesn't look blurry to me. Looks pretty awesome, in fact

My only (minor) gripe about the way Mario moves is that you can't control the height of the jump by tapping the key instead of holding it down. I don't know how difficult that would be to script, though. If you managed that I think you'd get it feeling close to indistinguishable from the original game.

[Calin Leafshade]

you can't control the height of the jump by tapping the key instead of holding it down.

Yeah i'm working on this but havent come up with a decent way of implementing it yet.