2D Engine

[Zelest]

I've spent a whole lot of time lately to produce a design document for a game I want to make. Now that I'm almost done with the document, I can't really hold of making the game for much longer. What I'm making is basically a Castlevania: Symphony of the Night-clone, with early Prince of Persia influences (grabbing ledges, etc) with a diablo-like drop system in a random-generated world. Graphics would be retro-styled sprites in 16-bit era colours.


The hard part now is to actually make the game. Meanwhile I'm not good with coding or scripting, I do know my way around C-like languages and can handle reference manuals like a pro. However, when it comes to programming physics engines, effect handlers, yadda, yadda, I'm utterly worthless. Thus, I need something which is easy to use, preferably easily portable to many platforms (Pandora, PSP, DS, PC, *nix, SNES, Cucumber, Moose, Windows, etc). Any suggestions for a 2D engine (but which can perhaps handle 3D elements in the sense of having 3D backgrounds and 3D elements in monsters in the same way as Symphony of the Night?


A quick summary of the game document here!


A proof of concept of the game mechanics here! (requires Unity web-player)

 

[ibisum]

I think Box2D would be suitable, no? Maybe Bullet? Either one of these will give you good 2D physics .. the trick is going to be setting things up so that you have an engine that can be driven by simpler inputs (you don't have to hard-code everything) .. what is the source material for the levels, and so on .. a plain ASCII document could work for a 2D game. The important thing is to separate the engine from the game levels and thus from the artwork so that progress can be made in implementing features in one component without drastically effecting the others.


You could build an engine with Box2D + Lua that would allow you to make level design and character design implementation fairly rapidly .. does that sound like a feasible approach?

 

[Zelest]

Box2D looks very interesting and seems to be handling 2D physics very well, even when you overcrowd the playing field. Although it looks a bit intimidating for me as a utter newbie to game programming, I'm sure that can be fixed (after all, I did manage to produce those Unity3D prototypes). Meanwhile I'm really looking for a more complete framework (like löve2d)... perhaps it isn't too hard to use a 2D engine, stuff in a sound engine like FMOD and what not?

 

[bzar]

Love the idea. I have too many pots on the stove to help myself, but I wish your project the best