Team 1 - Jumpless platformer

Inspiration

We wanted to do something fun, interesting or silly and one of us happened to bring their Nintendo DS with them and so we decided it would be fun to try and figure out how to create a game for the DS with 0 experience.

What it does

It's a 2D platforming game with 7 levels integrating a range of interesting mechanics with the main mechanic being a lack of jump button. Instead, the player climbs up through any walls they come into contact with to gain elevation. This provides an interesting challenge for the player in figuring out how to maneuver through the level without jumping and is coupled with things such as spikes to act as obstacles; portals to invert your gravity or controls and keys unlocking end points and additional obstacles.

How we built it

We built it using the DSGM through a combination of their action blocks, C and DBAS (their own language). As well as using the level editor to add our different objects together to form the levels.

Challenges we ran into

The DSGM was discontinued in 2014 meaning there is little to no online support. Furthermore, the only documentation that exists is lackluster and doesn't cover a vast majority of the events and commands nor is it particularly helpful with explaining how to create a working program. Additionally, there are no keyboard shortcuts available (including copy and paste) which slowed us down and was slightly frustrating but there was also no undo functionality meaning if we accidentally deleted something we had to rewrite it entirely. The commands available to us were more limited than we had anticipated which meant we had to find unique workarounds to some issues and others were deemed impossible which meant we had to slightly change our initial plans to work with the limited command set. We encountered a large range of issues in regards to compiling the program onto the Nintendo DS due to the mod installer being incompatible with DSGM though we eventually managed to resolve this by bypassing the installer. Another challenge was the small screen size (256x192) and the minimum object size being 8x8 meaning that we actually had quite a small design space for each level and so we had to streamline our level designs down to their core concepts to create a fun and challenging level that still fit within the limited space.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to make a functioning game that runs on the GBA emulator despite having no experience in creating games outside of python. We were able to create a reasonably sizeable selection of interesting levels with new mechanics for most of the levels creating a good proof of concept for these mechanics and showing some of the possibilities in terms of functionality for platforming mechanics on the Nintendo DS. We managed to make the game actually run properly with all the sprites and backgrounds on the Nintendo DS and not just the GBA emulator with full functionality!!

What we learned

How to use DSGM How to make a game for the Nintendo DS

What's next for Team 1 - Jumpless platformer

Adding more levels making use of the mechanics we have laid the groundworks for. Having eventually sorted out getting the program to run fully on the Nintendo DS with both screens useable we could add integration using the second screen to enhance our levels by both allowing more mechanics and a slightly larger level area.

Built With

• c
• dbas
• dsgm
• palib