Know any good side-scrolling action platformers?

Fair enough.

TTK, never seen Ninja Five-0 before, but that looks like a brilliant game.

Well that looks fairly awesome.

It was actually known as Ninja Cop over here, though apparently the release was small and very few people seem to have ever played it.

The original Ninja Gaiden?

OR (maybe) the original Prince of Persia, which was remade for XBLA with better graphics.

Jaxley wrote:OR (maybe) the original Prince of Persia, which was remade for XBLA with better graphics.

That's debatable.

In any case, Other tweaks to the gameplay systems and extra levels in some system ports (SNES, for example), mean that the XBLA version of Prince of Persia simply joins the list of "acceptable conversions" however, rather than becoming the definitive version.

Alpha eX wrote:If I can't go in that water cave your game fails. Don't make it fully A to B, have some secret caves and things to find and places to explore.

Yeah, I looked at the cave and instantly thought, "what's it for?"

Also for sword-swinging side-scrolling action check out Strider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWD8B81bSh4&feature=related

Lostwinds is about the best of the current bunch.

Didn't I mention that already? I thought I had.

Strider is great, and there's a more or less arcade perfect port of the original game included with Strider 2 on the PS1.

Love that "Raid!!!" Theme from the first stage.

Voiceoverless one credit finish

I think the critical thing in a 2D game of this kind is that the game's collision always feels utterly fair, which is why I favor games like this and Probotector, where you could. hypothetically. finish the entire thing without ever taking a hit if you were some kind of gaming god with Picosecond reactions. It's very important that the player ALWAYS know where he can stand, and what will kill/cause damage.

None of this "The player makes a jump and takes damage, but it's OK because there's a medkit there" malarkey.

Echarin wrote:
The Alchemist Penguin wrote:What format are you thinking of making the game for?

Windows, Mac and Linux at first... at least I hope we'll be able to do all three. Depends on my friend really.
The aim is also to make it really scalable, so maybe we'll get it on the iPhone/iPod touch and other mobile devices.

And if everything goes really well? XBLA.

Why not develop it using the XNA SDK? Admittedly that puts Linux out of the picture, but for 360/Windows (and Zune with v3.0 I think) cross-platform development it's ideal. Don't forget that the homebrew games channel is coming to the 360 this autumn- it makes publishing and showcasing your talents on the 360 a much more realistic proposition.

That's what I'm doing anyway, but for fun rather than profit.

I thought of this, but in the long run I think this is the right choice for them. XNA basically irrevocably ties you to Microsoft. Their platform, their tools. Porting C/C++ to XNA is relatively easy I believe, but it's not worth the effort to write for XNA from the off, since all you do is make it more difficult on yourself when it comes to porting back to other platforms later. I believe the PC Market usually winds up being more lucrative than digidistribution on a console, too.

TheTurnipKing wrote:I think the critical thing in a 2D game of this kind is that the game's collision always feels utterly fair,

It's very important that the player ALWAYS know where he can stand, and what will kill/cause damage.

None of this "The player makes a jump and takes damage, but it's OK because there's a medkit there" malarkey.

I'm already tackling a similar problem in the level design process. I feel the player has to know where he's going to go if he keeps walking forward. Does he go up here? Or Down? Or he keeps going straight forward? It's much easier to do with a tile-based engine, or just something flatter in general, but I'm trying to give depth to the environments.
It's not always a problem, like with the first staircase from the left in the image from before, you know as you're approaching it that the game path leads straight up those steps, but take this quick sketch here:

This is the path the player walks:

It's not very clear just from looking at the first picture. So suddenly the player's gonna start walking up the hill and he's gonna go "Oh, I'm going up now? Wasn't expecting that." Not a good kind of surprise.

I've come up with a few ways around this. One is very direct and obvious; I just create a visual path:

Could be a cobblestone path, a dirt road, or just whatever fits the scene.

Another way is to try to clue the player in on what's about to happen with small visual details:

Basically I'd have to "train" the player throughout the game to notice these small details along his path, so whenever he sees something like this he knows the path's gonna change direction.

And if the player thinks the path will go up that hill but it actually goes straight forward? Same thing of course:

And I'm thinking of employing a Castlevanian system when there's two path options. Wanna take the stairs? Press up as you walk. Wanna go down this path instead of straight ahead? Press down as you walk.

The classic example of clever level design is the Super Mario World series, whereby your route is subtle indicated to you through the placement of the gold coins. Often you'll find them perfectly placed so that if you go for them, you'll find that it places you perfectly to kill an enemy.

This is one of the reasons that abstraction works so well for classic video-games (like Geo-Wars). What you see doesn't immediately give you any preconceptions of what you should be able to do.

But of course, abstraction also makes it a harder sell to convince people to play your game because people aren't likely look at the screenshots and go "ooh, I've always wanted to play as a hexagon" in the same way as "Ooh, I want to be a ninja".

And this is at least part of the hidden truth of the "gameplay over graphics" mantra.

I was thinking of having some kind of collectables, but I hadn't thought of using them to mark the paths. Makes me wanna play through Super Mario World again, this time with my eyes wide open.

You know, I don't think I'm at all opposed to bringing you in as a tester once this thing gets rolling. If you have the time when/if that happens I'd really appreciate your input.
(But considering my friend's in college at the moment this thing's gonna be really slow cooking.)

I almost always have the time. I waste far too much of it here, for starters

I think Metal Slug had situations where you started walking up instead of in a straight line, that worked really well, have a look at that if you've not already.

Viewtiful joe

Know any good side-scrolling action platformers?

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