Pirate's Cove: Two-Player Fighting Game

What it looks like when you're in-game
The Main Menu

Inspiration

All of our group members like to play video games, and we all have, at some point, played 2D platformer games. In fact, one of our group members' favorite games is Celeste, a 2D platformer story game. As a result, we decided to create our own 2D platformer that combines elements of other games we have previously played.

What it does

Our game is a multiplayer fighting game, so two people have the chance to battle it out using the characters we added into the game. So once the players start the game, they can each move around (left, right, jump) and attack each other to deal damage. The first one to reach 0 hearts loses, deeming the other the victor.

How we built it

We built our game using PyCharm, a python IDE, as well as Arcade, which is a python library specifically made to build 2D platformer games. Arcade was a very important contributor to our game because without it, we would've had to manually create certain functions that are crucial for our game (animations, frames, etc.)

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge we ran into was getting Arcade to work. This was such an issue that we tried multiple different ways to fix the problem (searching online for assistance, asking the KnightHacks staff for assistance, even using ChatGPT) and it still wouldn't work. At some point, we managed to discover that we needed to download another library Pillow for Python to work, and after figuring that out, we found out that Pillow didn't even support the version of Python we were using. After much trial and error, we finally managed to get Python and Pillow to work properly, which led to Arcade finally being able to work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One accomplishment we're proud of is being able to add a good amount of detail to our game by the end of the Hackathon. Even after spending a lot of time trying to fix many issues --one being trying to get the library that was crucial for our game to work and another being debugging problems we encountered while coding-- we still managed to submit a functional game that looks nice. Additionally, we're proud of being able to make something we've never made before while using a coding language that none of us knew how to use. We believe we learned a lot while completing this project, which we are very proud of.

What we learned

While creating this project, we learned how to utilize Python, something we previously did not know how to use. Additionally, we learned how video games usually implement sprites/characters, animations, and details like text or images. It was very interesting to learn about important game mechanics like these as it can help us in possible future projects if we choose to go down a game developing path.

What's next for Pirate's Cove: Two-Player Fighting Game

What's next is possibly adding more mechanics to the game such as, obstacles around the map, new maps, a character select screen with new characters, new ways to attack instead of just the one basic attack, and possibly even items that you can pick up in-game to give you some type of boost.

Built With

arcade
pycharm
python

Submitted to

Knight Hacks VII

Created by

I mostly helped with implementing the game mechanics such as adding in animations for walking, attacking, dying, and I also helped with creating the map where the players fight. I also helped find and edit the background images and sprites used.

Catharina Oliveira
I worked on the setting up the controls of the characters making sure they were able to move. I also helped implemented the attacking features.

Jonathan Fabien
I designed and implemented the main menu and how-to screen, including navigation functionality. I also developed the HUD for the gameboard, which features dynamic health indicators and player icons.

Andrew Bulatao