2D platform games

I thought I'd start a thread about 2D platform games. It's not about 3D games because they're whole different animal.

What are your favorite 2D platformers? I personally am fond of Sonic 2, Zool2, and Jamed Pond Robocod. Of course the Amiga had countless platformers and many good ones. I would love to do a game like Sonic someday.

And maybe here we can discuss the mechanics of making platform games, how to do the collision detection, how to walk on curvy surfaces, do tile scrolling, all that.

Cave Story! Mainly because it mixes things up and adds weapons into the grand scheme of things.

Traditional platforming, Mario Bros 3, I just can't think of anything better that eclipses it from my experience with the genre. I like Sonic's speed though, hence-why I'm ripping that idea off for my future project.

Rick Dangerous 2 had it all. Puzzles, traps, cruel tricks, fantastic level design, insanely infuriating chains of obstacles which all have to be navigated without a pause.

Robocod was pretty good too though.

For multiplayer, nothing beats a good game of Parasol Stars.

Rick Dangerous is my fav plaform which what gabriel say.

Turrican 2
Rainbow Island
New Zealard Story
Sonic

and there is more too

How do you suppose a game like sonic deals with varied curvy platforms and running in loops and such?

2D Physics?

Impossible Mission

In order of time spent playing them:

Pitfall 2
Flashback
Impossible Mission
Donkey Kong Country
Ghost 'n Goblins
Monty on the run
Jet Set Willy / Manic Miner

DKC was the best overall platformer for the 'pick up and play' factor. The controls are precise and responsive which is always a vital ingredient in platformers for me

Chuck Rock
Superfrog
Rick Dangerous 2




There's a Sonic-clone made in blitzbasic floating around somewhere, source included. :-?

me own MSX game: RNFF, in which the player runs around naked, while being chased by his own clothes! (I was sober when making this up, really!)

About Sonic curves, I've been thinking about the following:

Imagine 8x8 tiles for verylow-res/retro

Each tile you draw is a tile object that has:

- an image of the tile

- an array of 8 defining the height of the platform itself, e.g. if there's a ramp, then this array could look like [0 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 ], then it's simply a matter of giving this y-offset to the player.

- an array of 8 which moves up the player horizontally, so if we take our ramp from above, it'd be like [-1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1] or something. This should move you to the left gradually, as if you're sliding off the ramp.


But then again, haven't spent much time thinking about it anyway, perhaps it's all w'0ng. :P

And this would've been simple then, how about those transporters/elevators you can step on..?

For pure 2d platformers, I like Jet Set Willy, but I also like the later Wonderboy games (tWonderboy: The Dragon's Trap and onwards) which blended 2d platforming with simple RPG mechanisms.

Sober while using an MSX in 2006?

Wow.

Hey, even today! I'm admin and secretary of the biggest MSX website on this planet.. :P

These ones influenced me (there's probably more). I know they aren't all great to play like Shadow of the Beast but it influenced me nevertheless.

Turrican 1&2
Jim Power
Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Sonic
Super Mario
Rainbow Islands
Rick Dangerous
Chuck Rock
Dizzy
Fire and Ice
First Samurai
Flashback
Gods
Shadow of the Beast
Strider
Toki
Torvak the Warrior
Zool

I'm making a platform game in 2008 as a hobby.

Slightly OT ... Does anyone remember the name of that sidescroller ( I think it was on the Amstrad CPC ) where you had some sort of dinosaur you could ride and you whistled to bring it to heel?

the 1st sonic game is a classic its the reason i bought my first amiga & Amos

no idea how to do platform loops

uneven platforms
i tried to do this ages ago for a little 2d project and i used color detection on ramps and uneven ground

this is how far i got
Zip Click here!

You could have a anchor point at the centre of the loop. If the player is running fast enough then attach him to the anchor and rotate the anchor point and the player will fly round it. Release him at the end of the loop and bob's your uncle. Obviously this would only work for perfect circles.

I seem to recall also that James Pond 3 could run on walls and upside down and stuff pretty much any angle so I presume you wouldn't be able to get away with just having a center of rotation around a loop.

I guess it's got to come down to some kind of pixel contour detection thing and adjustment of the player's graphic to the appropriate angle and animation.

I thought about doing slopes using arrays of heights per pixel too, I guess it would work for the most part. I recall Assassin on the Amiga had curvy surfaces too, and Zool.

I am thinking like someone else said earlier, that maybe it requires a generic 2d collision system able to handle all kinds of angles like a simple physics system, although sonic was definitely not physically correct in his movements. I recall he also could enter tunnels and rotate 360 degrees around the X axis depending on momentum. That doesn't sound like it would've been based on a 2d physics system because it needs movement in Z. It also had a plethora of moving platforms and shapes like cogs which rotate and Sonic can jump in amongst the teeth of the cogs as it rotates, which has to be quite a dynamic thing.

I wonder if there's anything on the web where the workings of it are explained. I seem to recall you could edit sonic levels by choosing an object and just placing it anywhere you liked, and it would work.

Manic Miner was the one that had the biggest impact on me. I played it to death.

Regarding collision detetion on odd shapes, N's Tutorial B demo (with source) shows a ball/box movin smoothly along multiple slope/curve types, albeit it's all in Flash.
(now if only I had FlashMX installed on my home rig ;/)

Games that stick in my mind from my childhood:

Chuckie Egg
Treasure Island Dizzy
Fantasy World Dizzy
Manic Miner
Turrican
Turrican 2
Wolfchild
Shadow of the Beast
New Zealand Story
Rainbow Islands
Bubble Bobble
Batman the movie
Green Beret
Flashback
Prince of Persia
James Pond
Robocod

If you have u3 on your jump drive, you can download maniac miner for free from the download center, and run it off of your jump drive

I was waiting for someone to mention Chuckie Egg. I never got into it myself. :)

I wouldn't be surprised if Sonic had a whole invisible background layer (every tile had a foreground/background) that defined all of the edges. Then with a simple 2D physics engine, and some Sonic specific tweaks, he could run just about anywhere.

(some) Favorite platformers:
Pitfall II
Donkey Kong
Super Mario Bros.
Metroid
Ghosts 'n Goblins / Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Sonic

And a little plug:
very basic 2D platform example
2D platform example

Manic Miner is in the code archives:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=823

One of my favorite platformer is "Adventure island" (wonderboy) on the Coregrafx. I'm very found of the Mario series too.
Cave Story
Rick dangerous
Alex Kid
Jacky Chan
Super Metroid
Castelvania
...

Knytt Stories
Within a Deep Forest

Midnight Mansion. (www.actionsoft.com)

1. Another World
2. The Lost Vikings
3. Flashback
4. Donkey Kong Country
5. Turrican 2

Actually first samurai was pretty cool, and all the more cooler because there was this huge article about how the game engine works in something like Amiga Format, which was very inspirational.

No sure if it qualifies as a platform game but I always loved, and can still play today, Bubble Bobble.

Another World
Megaman 2
Super Mario Bros. 2

LodeRunner

Bounty Bob Strikes Back (well, I liked it)

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Ruff 'n' Tumble, a fantastic Amiga platformer.

Loved that game - needs a updated version for the DS or XBLA.

I was fond of Ruff n Tumble, too, plus also Fire & Ice was good.

There is something to be said for cute game characters and nice graphics.

Ah yes, I never played Ruff 'n' Tumble but I understand it's great + there's a remake being made in Blitz Plus (it's taking a long time.

ImaginaryHuman: Think I read the same article. Only problem was the game was too hard. I wish I could have seen more of it because it was easier.

Prince of Persia, Flashback and Impossible Mission are the absolute winners here.

Also Shinobi, Cadash and Ninja Gaiden were pretty good.

I think it's interesting when these games mention physics engines, that they aren't exactly `accurate physics`, like Sonic being able to run up a wall or even along a ceiling if he's going fast enough. Presumably the physics doesn't have to be accurate, so then it's more of a case of lots of bits of localized `special case behaviors` depending on where you are in the environment?