Platform Masters development (November 24, 2011) - Jeremy's House finished

World 1, Jeremy's House, is now my masterpiece. One look at this world, especially the foreground, and it really gives a sense of amazement. From a road closed barrier (with a detour sign directly below it) and stop sign, to surprisingly realistic 3D effects, traffic, and the distant coastline, everything is detailed. Ever since the initial conception of Platform Masters in April of 2009, I intended on taking parallax scrolling to an extreme never seen before. Platform Masters is a purely 2D game - no 3D stuff is used at all. Looks really are deceiving here. Starting since the second revision of Jeremy's House, I also wanted the game's first world to give a great first impression. 2D may seem outdated, but this shows very well what a 2D game engine is capable of and it runs perfectly fine on a GeForce 7600 GT (a very outdated card as of the time this video was recorded).

The foreground is dominated by the neighborhood. The closest parts have road signs, a road closed barrier with a "detour" sign directly below it being one of which, a stop sign being the other. Beyond these are traffic. From the typical family sedan and minivan, to trucks and even police cars, you'll find quite a large variety of traffic. Only the 18-wheelers are left out. Traffic in the foreground repeats every 16 Kbl, so long that you practically won't notice the repetition for a long time. The more distant traffic repeats every 8 then 4 Kbl, still a long distance. Outside the traffic, there's also houses. What would a neighborhood be without houses? The same houses covered by the previous Platform Masters development videos are here. These repeat every 1/2 Kbl, much lower due to memory limitations.

Beyond the neighborhood, large, smoothed out hills are present. These are unchanged from the previous revision.

Beyond the large hills are farm fields. These are part of the Yuris region. The neighborhood is the Ronnisa region. In the Yuris region lies a fairly small city named Yurisville. These ground decals have ponds, lakes, forests, gravel roads, paved roads, and even a freeway complete with on and off ramps. The coastline, however, is my favorite part. Far out to sea and the water appears a deep blue. Close to the shore, it's more of a turquoise color.

I've added another measurement unit as well - the scaling unit. This unit of measure is unique to Platform Masters and is exactly 2048/3 CU (about 102.444 feet or 30.518 meters). This unit of measure is used with setting Z positions, the depth of objects, referred to as the "scaling". It's an arbitrary unit as it depends on the field of view used. In my case, I directly set it that way. The closest houses, for example, have a scaling of 2. The foreground action has a scaling of 1. This way, you'll get an idea on how distant objects really are and how vast the scenery really is. The closest part of the hills have a scaling of 32. The farm fields start at 256, which is incredibly far away. The visibility is 896 - good luck getting that high in the first place!

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Tags:

• Platform
• Masters
• game
• development
• Jeremy's
• House
• neighborhood
• streets
• roads
• traffic
• scenery
• software
• hints
• secrets
• tips

[chrisxdeboy]

Hold on a second, If it's entirely 2D, how's the ground rendered? Mode 7-type transformations?

[ulillillia]

Nope, not mode 7. I have no idea how to do mode 7. Instead, I'm using, in a way, about 2000 layers of scenery objects rendered in a special way. See my 110-minute-long "making ground decals" video for details and you'll see how I make ground decals. The overview video shows the result when I get to Lake Keveran and Lake Keveran is beautiful from about 1000 feet above.

[IdeonFukkatsu]

This game needs more mirrors! Just kidding. But I find the main character is hard to see with the motion of the background. Not so much in the air, but close to the ground, against the colorful city backdrop.

[ulillillia]

Even the largest of mirrors are but a few pixels. A typical floor-to-ceiling mirror might be 32x48 pixels, quite small (and that's at the distance where the character is).

[oducayen]

Air taxis ARE the vehicles of the future.

[vinnieveritas]

I'd master your platform ulillillia, if you catch my drift

no homo

[ulillillia]

See PM's site and the "parallax" section for details on what parallax scrolling is. I'm pretty much the sole designer of the game... outside the audio creation. I have a few contributors making good music for this game. You can contribute music and sound effects if you'd like as well. See PM's site's audio section for the details. Visit platformmasters spec c o m for in-depth details about PM (at least for what's publicly available).

[iiperento]

@ulillillia What means parallax scrolling? If its the jumping them i must say its hilaruously awesome! I started the long way of learning game-developing and i think you will be my inspiration for the next cpouple of months. Keep up...oh and, really, really well made game and the details. How many people are you working and how much time you puted into making this from scratch. Thanks for the answers and keep up i sub.

[zeioIIDX]

I MUST play this game. The more I watch your videos, the more fascinated I become and the parallax scrolling looks amazing as hell...

[HiNu7]

sooo much better..mmkayy...

[ulillillia]

Game play is not my focus right now. I need to redo the character's animation before most of the game play stuff can be done (otherwise my efforts will only get undone).

[x1te]

It looks good, but the gameplay could use a little work. The jumping physics seem really floaty.