Game Update #3

I'm Andrew Ekeren, the programmer working on Panda Flip. Some background info: the game is made using the open-source Flash game engine, Flixel. This is my first attempt at creating a release-ready procedural game. The goal is to use (relatively) simple procedural techniques to extend the life of the game. To keep it simple, there won't be any actions other than movement and jumping. I want to polish the core mechanics until they are fun.

Setting up a Level to Loop Infinitely

Early on, I decided that I wanted to take the principles of object pooling (link to photon storm) into procedural levels. Something easy on the memory while also being varied enough to call it procedural. To do this I created a LevelManager class which manages smaller levels, named Cells. LevelManager is responsible for the creation and destruction of cells, populating the cells with tiles and obstacles, as well as cycling the cell positions to create the illusion of infinite levels.

Procedural Obstacle Creation

So creating the objects is by far the easiest part. The hard part is creating them in a way that is interesting to play, as well as possible to pass. In its current stage there are pits and platforms created that can stop the player from progressing. I've created a function that counts solid or empty tiles in any direction from any point. I use the count function within nested loops in order to check certain conditions, and then place the obstacle if its appropriate. For example, before placing a pit it first checks if there is a solid tile to the left, then if there are enough tiles to the right to create a pit, then if there's enough room above the pit to jump across, and finally creates a pit. A problem with how its currently implemented is that the individual cells can't detect tiles in adjacent cells. To solve this I'm either going to pass in more references for a more complete check, or generate "bridge" cells to place in between template cells to ensure that there are no impossible areas.

Now For the Good Stuff

Here's a low FPS video of the work in progress. The bright pink tiles are the generated platforms, while the light grayish pink are the pits. You can see where there are impossible areas.

Link to the Video

Game Update #2

Today's goal was:

Andrew needed to refactor the code, and fix the player jump.

Esther needed to create a tileable background.

It's important to note that Stage 1, where we are at right now, is the 1st prototype of the game. And once we have all the elements we intended to have implemented into the game, we will move on to Stage 2, and polish the game.

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Andrew was able to refactor the code and fixed up a memory leak he found in the game.

Esther created a tileable background. It would be great to get some parallax-ing, but that will be for a polish later on. 

Game Update #1: Stage 1 - Beginning Stage

To get up to speed to where we are now, this will be a summary:

The programming for the game started on May 7, 2012.

Andrew had been working on prototyping a procedural engine that would be the inspiration for creating a sidescrolling platformer!

On May 18, he had a working prototype. He invited me, Esther, onto the project to help with making art assets. The game was codenamed: Project Panda Flip, because as of now the player character is a panda that does somersaults when he jumps. This was Andrew's initial game idea, which involved a panda flipping. So now we have the flipping panda as a place holder for the player until Esther creates the final player character.

On May 19, we had to get this done:
1. Implement Spikes & Enemies into the game.

Andrew worked on placing the entities into the procedural cells, making sure it worked fine.

Esther worked on creating enemies and animating them.

We were able to successfully reach this goal for the day, although Esther did loose a piece of concept work she made that was used as a draft for the pixel enemy's creation. Remember to save, gosh!

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Our goal is to have the game done by June 10th.

Introduction

Hello!

This is a blog about Project Panda Flip, an independent game project! It is a side-scrolling, procedural, go as far as you can to left collecting as many points as you can before you die kind of game. A game where no level will ever be the same, and you are currently a spirit (temporarily a panda for now) trying to escape the afterlife.

We are going to document our progress for other aspiring game developers, and hopefully for any potential player testers to keep an eye on!

There are 2 main developers on this project:

Andrew Ekeren: Programmer Google +

Esther Love: Artist Blogger