Thomas' Recycling Adventure - Platform Game

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Last autumn I decided to evaluate PureBasic 4.30 having never used it before and thought I'd build a little platform game for my 6 year old son.

He wanted to do a game about recycling but it also had to have robots, skeletons and a dragon in it, so thats exactly what I did! There are 9 levels in total.

Have to say that PureBasic was a joy to use - but by far the hardest part of writing a game is producing all the graphic content!

Anyway I'd be interested to here what people think of it and if anyone is interested I'll make the source code available too.

Here's a link to the executable hosted on MediaFire:
http://www.mediafire.com/?emm3y2wjkze

Enjoy

[Kaeru Gaman]

by far the hardest part of writing a game is producing all the graphic content!

indeed!

... welcome to the tasks of the classic one-man-army.

just downloading your game right now... will drop a note the next days..


[edit]

ok... just played it right away...

really good work!
you said it was your first game in purebasic ... but it wasn't the first game ever you programmed?
does not at all look like n00bwork!

did you really create ALL the content on your own? (or did you 'borrow' some somewhere else...)
Anyhow, all of it looks really good.

really fantastic work.
your son must be really proud "I got my own computergame.."

[PB]

Very nice! I played up the 4th level then stopped, which is good for me, as
I get bored easily with games these days. In other words, yours hooked me!
And I only stopped because I had other things to do. Most games only get a
few minutes play by me these days, but not yours. Well done!

[ts-soft]

good game

[adshead]

Thanks for the kind comments

It is indeed the very first game I have developed so I was quite pleased with the outcome. I'm a .net developer by day but have never done any game development before.

I think purebasic helped a lot as I didn't have to worry about all the low level graphical stuff and could just get on with coding the game logic.

As for the graphical content - I kind of cheated I used a product called Daz Studio which is free, you just pay for the content that you buy. The great thing about the tool is that the content you buy comes as 3d models that you pose and animate inside the tool, then output as 2d renderings. I found this to be the quickest way to create sprites but it still took a lot of time to produce them.

The one drawback was that it was all too easy to purchase content from their website. In total I probably spent around £200
- but I figured I would have never finished the game otherwise.

I think for my next game I will try to create the graphics procedurally - hopefully it will save me money

By the way there is a little cheat in the game. Just type the name Thomas to renew your energy - my son loved the idea of a secret code in his game

[Demivec]

@adshead: I can't seem to get the game to function after it is installed. I'm using Windows XP sp3.

When I start the game it shows the title screen which includes the "Press Space" message and plays music. If I type a Space it starts animating "Press Space" by moving it in slow circles.

That is as far as I get. No key presses of any sort result in any changes to the display. If I Alt-Tab out of the program the music still plays. The program exits when I Alt-Tab back into it.

[adshead]

Sorry to here your having problems - your the first person who has been unable to run it and I've tried it on a wide range of desktops and laptops both old and new.

After pressing Space on the title screen there should be a single page of instructions and pressing space again should then take you straight into the game.

To be honest I am unlikely to ever make changes to the game now as it was really just a proof of concept as well as a game for my son. It works for him so hes happy

[blueznl]

My NC4400 Compaq laptop runs your program but main character does NOT show up, everything else seems to work.

Hmmm.

Almost sounds like a sprite size issue. What size is the main sprite?

[Demivec]

Sorry to here your having problems - your the first person who has been unable to run it and I've tried it on a wide range of desktops and laptops both old and new.

After pressing Space on the title screen there should be a single page of instructions and pressing space again should then take you straight into the game.

To be honest I am unlikely to ever make changes to the game now as it was really just a proof of concept as well as a game for my son. It works for him so hes happy

I see. I'm glad it works for you.

[PB]

> type the name Thomas to renew your energy

I felt the energy went down too slowly anyway. Seems too easy to play, but
it's for a 6-year-old so I guess it has to be. Maybe have a skill level setting?

[zxtunes.com]

Last autumn I decided to evaluate PureBasic 4.30 having never used it before and thought I'd build a little platform game for my 6 year old son.

Tell please, backgounds draw in handmade or it is the photos processed by filters? :roll:

[Kaeru Gaman]

I think the energy doesn't go down too slow...
I didn't make it beyond the dragon on first play, so I think it's hard enough for a child.


@zxtunes
I think you took the wrong smily by accident, this one is considered "annoyed"..

[adshead]

Yeah getting the difficulty right was tricky but my main concern was making sure young children could play it. I always wanted them to be able to get through most of the game relatively easily and its really only the final Dragon level that can zap your energy quite quickly.

I had thought about having lives rather than one energy bar but in the end decided to just reduce the energy bar by smaller amounts instead.

As for the backgrounds, they were 3d scenes I built using Daz Studio, rendered out as 2d images and then I used a product called GMX Photopainter to turn the images into nice looking oil paintings. They have a fully functional 30 day trial so I at least saved some money there

[Fluid Byte]

After hearing the name I thought that this will actually suck but it's a surprisingly good game!

Well, the graphics are not my taste but that's just me. You also have to consider that the graphics are still great compared to most of the regular stuff posted here. The game itself seems very solid. It feels professionally programed with a good gameplay. I found no major flaws or bugs so far. So the sound is good, the gameplay is good and level design is nice. Maybe the difficulty is just a tad to high for a kid.

Overall a very good game for a first release. Btw, I played to the bomb squirrel level but then killed myself on purpose.

PS: Wich Photoshop filter you used for the backgrounds? Was it "artistic"?

[adshead]

Fluid Byte - your too kind

Its hard to know whether something you've worked on is of decent quality so its nice to get re-assurance from the comments in this forum. It's definately encouraging me to have another go at perhaps a more ambitious project.


The filter I used in GMX Photopainter I believe was simply "oil Painting", although I do recall a filter called "Hairy" that also produced a nice effect. There are a number of packages around that do this type of thing but I personally thought GMX Photopainter gave the best results for me.