Playing the demo game is a great way to get an idea of what the platformer game engine can do. We make available the Mac and Windows versions because they are easiest to obtain (and maintain).
Download Game v1.0.2 for Mac Download Game v1.0.2 for WindowsIt's becoming more and more critical to a game's success to publish on multiple platforms. With the platformer engine it's just as easy to deploy to Steam as it is the iStore, Google Play or Ouya. Using the same C++ codebase, you can produce working binaries for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. You can develop in Xcode, Visual Studio and Eclipse.
Part of the magic involved in cross-platform development is handling input in a flexible way. There's touch input, keyboard input, mouse input, controller input and even networked multiplayer input. The trick is in getting them all to feel just right. Our goal for the example game was to get the input to feel like a controller even on touch screens. To this end we set up a customizable nintendoesque button scheme. We also added support for gamepads, joysticks and other controllers so you can play your game couch-style. See the documentation file on Input.h for details.
Getting a game to run well on multiple platforms -- let alone feel right -- is no small achievement. Countless hours have gone into getting that "just right" feeling and years of experience developing cross-platform have been relied upon.
What new-school game engine would be complete without procedurally generated textures?
The Level object has the power to generate pixel-perfect textures using sine waves and lots of randomness.
Another one of those things that makes a game "just right" is physics. Since that is something unique to each game, we've built in the ability to swap physics engines. The default is Box2d, but you can use another or roll your own simply by changing the cpp file. See the documentation file Physics.h for details.
The platformer engine has support for water, ladders, platforms, boxes, slopes, jump-pads, one-way tiles and more. See: Terrain.h.
In-app purchases are a great way to make money with games. We've included Soomla, a cross-platform purchasing and virtual economy framework. See Store.h for details.
What's a virtual economy? It's a way for your game to keep inventory of and allow the purchasing of virtual currencies. Your game might have a currency called "gold" which allows the purchasing of certain kinds of items and a currency called "silver" which allows purchasing other things. Soomla helps you keep track of everything and enables you to easily add purchasing to your game.
The platformer game engine is built with realtime networked multiplayer in mind. The time step is fixed, object updates have been separated into tick and animate, integer math is used for game state variables and determinism is possible.
The example game enables a special realtime multiplayer mode on iOS and Android that uses Nextpeer. Two opponents are thrown into an arena and allowed to battle it out. A BotPlayer object takes over for either opponent if no input is detected. See Multiplayer.h for details.
Javascript files can be triggered at the beginning of levels, when enemies die, or when the player reaches a certain place. The script has complete control over the cocos2d-x game engine, so not only can you create story events, but you can do just about anything you would do in C++. In fact, we've extended the Javascript with a few bindings of our own that make scripting story elements easier. You can find level objects easily, lock / unlock the input, start a line of dialogue, and easily run an animation from a character's profile.
The Player object implemented for the demo game can walk, turn, jump, fall, land, crouch, stand up, hang from edges, aim in eight directions, fire projectiles, swim, climb ladders, step up stairs, be given items, perform special animations, get knocked out and knocked back.
Each Character, Item, all the objects in the game have a Profile property list which parses a format string to load many spriteframes into an animation, preloads sound effects needed by the object and specifies any attributes for the default object class. You can setup a ninja property list, for example, that auto-loads a walking animation with 8 frames, 7 different sound effects and specifies that ninjas have 10 hit points and deal 2 damage by default. Attributes can also be overriden by TMX object properties. So creating a ninja object and giving it an hp property of 15 will override the default 10 hitpoints.
Object types: Player, Item, Chest, Platform, JumpPad, Box, Slope, Door, Debris, Fire, Decal, Particles, Terrain (water, ladders, etc.), MagicMissile, Bone, EnergyBall, Squirrel, Blob, Knight, Jellyfish, Mage, Skeleton, Sasquatch and BotPlayer.
Object properties: x, y, width, height, name, id, tag, scale, z, background, hp, damage, music, onDeath.
At the heart of the platformer engine are TMX tiled maps. Each level is a separate map and they are stitched together by an overall world plist file. Maps are drawn with the open-source Tiled map editor and parsed into the game using cocos2dx' TMXTiledMap class. The platformer engine extends on the TMX format by providing map properties, layer properties and a host of objects with their own properties as well.
Drawing maps in Tiled is fun, but wouldn't it be cool if they could be procedurally generated? We've built a level generator into the engine. In the world plist you can specify that an area has 10 different levels for example, and you always want level 1 to load Home.tmx. The other 9 are magically generated. In this way you can mix and match dynamic level generation with traditional TMX files. You can also use entirely traditional TMX files or entirely dynamic levels. It's your choice.
Procedural area generation creates a random overall structure of levels that connect together sort of like patchwork, only the patches can be all sorts of rectangles, not just squares. The area generator ensures all the exits points line up, then decides on which levels to put quest items, powerups, enemies, save points, and bosses.
We offer a few different licensing options depending on what kinds of games you want to publish. Licenses are upgradeable at any time. Discounts are available for students and those who agree to post a review. Contact us for more info.
Licenses are backed by a 14-day 100% money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied, please contact us for a full refund.
Non-commercial LicensePublish 1 non-commercial / free gameArtwork, sound effects, ambience, music and other art assets for the demo game WizardMoon are included, but remain the copyright of Wizard Fu, Inc.
We donate 10% of royalties to charities such as JustGive.org and CFCA.
Mac development requires Mac OS X and Xcode 5.1 or newer. Mac OS X and Xcode are free.
Windows development requires Windows 7 or newer and Visual Studio 2012 or newer. There is a free version of Visual Studio available.
Android development requires the freely-available Android SDK and NDK.
Linux development requires Linux. 'Nuff said.
Q: If I purchase a license, how long will I get updates from your engine?
A: For the lifetime of the engine.
Q: Is there a difference in the source codes / binaries for the different licenses?
A: No. The source code is exactly the same.
Q: Do you have a link for a roadmap on what we will be expecting new features next?
A: Not yet. But the next thing on the list is a custom, pixel-perfect physics engine that can replace Box2d by switching a single define.
Q: What design does this engine use for the implementation? Is it entity / component based design or OOP?
A: Check out the documentation. It gives the actual header files for every class in the engine. It's mostly OOP with a few component-based classes. In future updates, entity/component-based design will be used more and more.
Q: If I purchase the 'non-commercial' license, would the bonus art package be allowed to use commercially?
A: Yes. The bonus art is all royalty-free for whatever use you would like.
Q: Do you have a preview image of the bonus art package?
A: The bonus art is by Reiner's Tilesets. Check out his website for examples. In future releases, the engine will provide links to other royalty-free art. Here's a link to get you started.
Version 1.0.1 - August 24, 2014
Version 1.0.0 - August 22, 2014
Version 0.9.10 - August 20, 2014
Version 0.9.9 - August 19, 2014
