protoformer devlog #1

2022-08-08

word count: 531

approx reading time: 3 mins

welcome to my new gamedev adventure! if you follow me on the fediverse, you might have seen that i'm working on a new pixel platformer game, where the main mechanic is your ability to switch between dimensions:

the work in progress title is protoformer, because it started as a prototype platformer game, and im not good at coming up with names. you can play the latest build here, right in your browser

i have a nebulous idea of where i want to take it, which i will be narrowing down more as time progresses. i like taking a more exploratory approach to art, so im just following the current and seeing where that takes me so far i've found a couple cool mechanics that have come up.

one of the biggest questions i have right now is whether this is gonna become a metroidvania or just a "regular" platformer. im not against metroidvanias, but i haven't played many and im not too familiar with the conventions. i guess i'll just make a game and see what genre it ends up being :)

inspiration

it's very inspired by Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause level, in which the player uses a time machine to constantly jump between the same place but at different times.

another big inspiration is [Celeste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeste_(video_game)) (yea yea im a trans girl stereotype, i know). this game is deeply important to me, and i feel the need to make my own interpretation of it. and also, it's just lots of fun!

engine/code

for this game im using Bevy, cause it's cool it's swag it's comfy it's hecking nice to use and it's written in rust baybeeeee 🦀

if you know me at all, this will not have come as a surprise to you, bevy is the only game engine i've used since before version 0.2 came out (almost 2 years ago now!). there's probably other engines that would be better suited to making a 2d pixel platformer, but i do not care :) i like bevy and im okay with dealing with its lack of features and its api changes

what's currently implemented?

movement works! you move with the wasd keys, and jump with j or space. you can walk around a couple test levels i've created, and switch between dimensions using i. there are a few collectible objects around the levels, in the form of teddy bears.

i also implemented death and respwaning, but for now you get sent back to the first room when you die. i'm gonna change that so it works like in Celeste, where you respawn at the start of the room you died in.

there's not much else yet! most of my time has been spent figuring out how to fit bevy_ecs_ldtk into my needs, which i probably didn't do too good of a job with. but that's okay cause there's a work in progress rewrite, so i'll probably have to re-do all my level loading stuff 🙃

anyway that's it for today! see ya soon hopefully!