raspurrin/so_long

A platformer with gravity, jumping, audio and two types of enemies!

So_long

Index:

• Description
• Bonus features
• How to compile and run the game
• Input maps
• Changing game settings
• Future additions

Description

My game was made in C with the graphical library MLX42

The goal of the game is to collect all pickups and go through the exit and... Not get killed in the process. Usually this project is made with a top-down view, but I decided to make it a platformer instead! It runs on Mac, Linux, and for Windows only the mandatory part works. If there are any issues with running it, refer to MLX42 for guidance.

Bonus features

• Smooth animations.
• Gravity.
• Sound effects and background music.
• The ability to jump.
• Two types of enemies which spawn in random locations and have random movement:
  • Ghosts, flying enemies.
  • Pink monsters, ground enemies.
• Lives with a cooldown period upon getting hit and a red filter to indicate that.
• Movement counter and lives counter on the screen.
• Ability to kill enemies by jumping on them.
• An ending message with a game over or winning screen at the end.

Screen.Recording.2022-06-09.at.3.20.04.AM.mov

The main character has a different animation for moving and standing still. And also switches between a reversed spritesheet when going in a different direction:

animation.mov

How to compile and run the game

You could clone the project with git clone --recurse-submodules <git url>, but even without the submodules will be initialised and updated automatically.

To run only the mandatory part of the game use make and to include the bonus use make bonus

If you are on Linux and simply typing make doesn't work, that means don't have all required libraries. Use this command to install them:

  make install on linux

And then run the game by typing:

  ./so_long input/large_map.ber

Input maps:

It can take different maps as input to generate different levels, provided it passes all requirements. I provided valid and some invalid maps in the input folder. You can make your own maps provided they are rectangular, use the .ber extension, are fully enclosed by walls, include only one P, contains at least one C and E character. 0 = empty space, E = exit, P = player starting location, 1 = wall or platform, C = collectible

Changing game settings:

In the header in the includes folder you can change macros to change the game, like how many lives you have, the amount of enemies, to toggle gravity, damage, change the jump modifiers and so on. Make sure to recompile everything by using make re to apply the changes.

Future additions

For now I want to focus on my other projects but at some point I want to improve this game a little:

• Make certain it runs on different platforms.
• Clean up my code. If you have any suggestions for this, don't hesistate to tell me, I would love to hear feedback!
• Fix the collision.
• Make the background and ending messages dynamic and scalable.
• Timer with decreasing visibility.
• Create a menu where you can change the game settings and a pause option.
• Make different levels.
• A scoreboard.
• A blog post/tutorial about the project, which will cover both implementation for Minilibx and MLX42.

so_long's Issues

Make a main menu

Make the window resizable/responsive.

Make it norm

Stop dead ghosts from being interactable

Add game over message that freezes game until a key press

I have to figure out how the special key hooks work and how to get it to work with any input.

End screens are not showing up anymore

segmentation fault

Get sprite animation to work

Clean up hooks to use more regular functions instead of a trillion hooks.

Fix segfault when character jumps through the wall

Fix collision V2. Instead of hardcoding things create a smarter solution that also fixes the collision with tiles.

Fix enemy collision

Get the program to close when pressing the cross on the window's frame.

Fix collision, it is slightly off.

Probably because of the floats I am pulling my data from... Perhaps I need to change other things to also work with floats.

Add timer with a fog of war

Get textures to work corresponding with the map.

Determine size of blocks beforehand, make sure the image sizes are appropiate for it. And then with the data of the amount of blocks in one line and the amount of lines you can determine the size of the window and with this information also the position of each image.

First initialise each different texture.
Then iterate through the map and depending on the character encountered, add an instance of that texture as an image to the window.

Gravity

Get MLX42 to work with my makefile.

Create a bonus folder to store the game with bonus features.

The forking, system call for sounds, rand functions for the enemy movement and usleep are forbidden but I could put them in a separate folder for the bonus.

Passing of the 2D array doesn't work. The content disappears after input_handling is done.

Make little sounds for jumping and dying

Adjust spawning location of ghosts, so they don't spawn in walls.

Unfuck git repo

Sounds!

Choose textures to work with, convert to XPM and then to XPM42

Choose some nice PNG images, make sure they are the right size, then use a PNG -> XPM converter and finally add them to the repo and use the Python script to convert them to MLX42.

Make flying optional

Make a limit on the amount of enemies

Fix segfault for more than one character check

(and fix debugger first)

Fix ghosts from spawning in walls

Fix textures

The walls need to be slightly higher and the door has some white around it that needs to go away.

Menu with settings

Get jumping to work

Fix segfault when the character loses a life and is too close to the wall on the left side.

Perhaps other than not wanting to meet a '1' on the map, perhaps I also need a condition that states that you can also not travel to something that is outside of the boundaries of the map entirely. Because I was moving 2 BLOKs instead of 1 with the knockback from losing a life.

Create a window and an image to start with.

Error handling

So if I handle errors with some of the mlx functions, image_to_window seems to return false even though the functions work fine O_o

Make it possible to kill ghosts when jumping on them

Add patrolling enemies

Make ghosts transparent!

Input handling. Store the map in a 2D array and check if it is a valid.

Actually make my own pixelart and/or find appropriate textures for the final product.

Adjust collision for tiles to be lower...

I could convert the tiles in the middle to '2' and then have separate collision if statements for them.

Introduce movement with the WASD keys.

First get the position of the character by
using the block_size * amount of blocks in the map and block_size * amount of lines.

Then keep this information in a struct and keep updating it with every movement. Movement works with a general hook and if statement based on the key pressed, which will then adjust the value of the instance of the image you are using.

Leave a blank map space where the character has been or perhaps do it differently, idk yet.

add lives

Adjust enemy seizure/speed

Create a hook that escapes the program when you press ESC.

Make background work for every size map or make a size limit or make it scroll

You won message

Improve gravity/jumping... =___=

Keep exceptions into account of movement in the map, with walls, collectibles and the exit.

Detect when the character overlaps with a wall or collectible or exit.
If there is a wall you cannot move towards it.
If there is a collectible, it has to disappear and be counted.
And you can only exit if all collectibles have been taken.

Fix string output overlapping

Count each movement and display the output.