E02 Multiplatform 2D Game Engine and Sonic the Hedgehog Example Game

[New to E02? Check the lower portion of this post for info]

This is a major update, bringing about new and better editing interfaces, new and enhanced functionality and ease-of-use script features, and other feature updates such as stereo and Ogg Vorbis music support! There is more, but the specifics are too numerous to list here. Please see the the What's New document

Also, those who have been keeping up may have noticed that I've been promising for a while to update the old Sonic example scripts with much better formatting and commenting to make it easier to read and manage. It was a long and boring process, but it's finally complete! On top of that, the functionality has been greatly expanded, including the addition of Tails and Knuckles as playable characters, and as a playable game, it has been expanded to include the same Green Hill zone from the 2008 Project Mettrix demo, as well as an all-new level using Green Hill and Labyrinth Zone objects, graphics based on PlaySega's online Flash Sonic the Hedgehog editor, and two new bosses - "Gemstone Garden Zone". There are even Bonus and Special Stages. Once again, there are too many updates to go into complete detail, so please view the ReadMe document

There is also a gameplay video spanning Gemstone Garden from start to finish, though it doesn't cover all possible routes, and only shows the location of two of the nine Special Stage rings (It is possible to get all 7 Chaos Emeralds. There are 7 "difficulty levels", plus a "hidden" eighth difficulty. The layouts are generated randomly each time)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVD1aQH6ZCg[/youtube]​

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E02 is a versatile, performance-oriented engine for creating many different types of 2D games. Any game developed with E02 will run on any supported system (assuming the spec of the lowest-supported system has been considered), which currently include: Windows, Linux, Intel/PowerPC MacOSX, PSP (Custom Firmware), Wii (Homebrew Channel), and GP2X Wiz

For more information, check out the official site:
http://stealth.hapisan.com/E02

Games currently in-development for E02 include:
Megaman: Triple Threat - http://stealth.hapisan.com/MMTT
Sonic the Hedgehog: Project Mettrix - http://stealth.hapisan.com/Mettrix

Currently-Available game templates include:
Generic Template - Just enough to be able to put something on the screen and fiddle with it
Sonic the Hedgehog Example Game - Made from the same scripts and data as Project Mettrix; six gameplay levels, two types of bonus level, and more demonstrating many features from the original Genesis games including complete Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles player characters, and provides a basis on which new levels, enemies, items, and abilities can be added
http://stealth.hapisan.com/E02/#Templates

For discussion and support, visit the Forum:
http://stealth.hapisan.com/Forum

Or the official IRC channel:
Server- irc.badnik.net
Channel- #OC

The following resources are also available for instant update notification:
http://www.twitter.com/E02Stealth
http://www.youtube.com/OCStealth

 

I... what? Well, I assume you're talking about one of the old posts on my forum. Between E02's current state and the amount of time I have to dedicate to it right now, messing with resolution is very low priority. Considering that what I have gets the job done without leaving anyone out, I think time is still much better spent on functionality and usability than things like worrying about how to transparently manage varying resolution for a hundred different desktop setups and devices

If I had one, I could sure give it a try :P
http://stealth.hapisan.com/Donation/
^ That's how the Wiz became supported

E02 is primarily a 2D engine. I might look into some 3D after I've done some more work on the 2D game aspects, the editing interface, and probably producing a few more basic usage examples, but most likely not any sooner

Oh. It was a downloads problem.. I had over 200 files to add to a files list for the download, and in the end I appear to have forgotten a single one. Naturally it was in the one place I forgot to test- the Special Stage

Try downloading it again to get the missing file. Sorry about that...

Also, one other thing. For Linux and Mac ports, you can still get quit error messages like missing files, but only if you've run the program from the command-line. If the program mysteriously quits like this, you might be able to get some information about it that way

 

Man, I'm really getting the "this day and age" treatment? "New" doesn't automatically mean "better", you know :P

In regard to wide screen in specific, I really don't see it as one of those "just do it" things. As the developer of E02, I have to consider what kind of impact my choices in available features and how they're used will have on the game developer. In general, before I implement anything, I had better be damned sure I'm happy with it, because the last thing anyone needs is for me to make mistakes that complicate things, otherwise have a long-lasting negative impact on one or more features, or end up requiring end-users to make their own changes to compensate for any corrections I have to make. I can't rush into any particular feature without running that kind of risk, and that's why I have to be very careful about what I choose to implement, and when and how it's implemented. On a slight tangent, that's why the developer tools are only recently getting more attention- for me, the most important thing is to have something to develop -for-, and that functionality and performance not be restricted by hasty tool design choices

To move back to the subject of the screen aspect, I'll start by saying that I haven't felt that it was important enough in relation to anything else to have given it much thought, given the multitude of other things that need to be addressed to make E02 more complete and usable. In that respect, I can't implement it until I do, because implementing features I'm not at least around 75% comfortable with just seems like an extremely bad idea. Issues I can think of already are that I'm really not of a mind to completely drop 4:3 as it is still possible to display a lesser resolution on a larger screen, while the opposite is impossible. That would also mean that if I were to implement aspect in such a way as it would be locked per-game, I can see many people choosing 16:9 just for the sake of it, which would make it unusable in situations where 4:3 were ever to still be required. If I were to implement gameplay user control of screen aspect (the person playing the game can choose 4:3 or 16:9), every single game developer would have to account for both options. This becomes an important matter when you consider aspect-specific game mechanics, like single-screen-sized boss arenas and the like. Take, for example, Sonic 1's boss arenas. They wouldn't directly translate to wide aspect, and would require modification to lessen the impact that the extra width would have on gameplay

All I'm saying is that this sort of thing is more of a difficult matter for a general tool developer to handle than, for example, the designer of an individual game. This would apply to the 3D question posed above, too

 

That's not exactly a real problem. The PSP has a screen resolution of 480x272, and I currently deal with that by centering the 320x224 screen in a black border. Conversely, I can say that, for example, the Wiz has a fixed resolution of 320x240, and therefore wouldn't be able to handle any widescreen "enhancement". 320x224 is thoroughly sufficient for the duration of developing the core engine and development tools, and as a base, guarantees greater compatibility

Yes, there is. The emulator is fifty times slower than molassas, does nothing for me in terms of multitouch, and actually does not otherwise cover the full range of features of a real device. For instance, if you look hard enough, you'll find that the emulator does not support OpenGL ES 2, although that's what they push for you to use. There are things that run on devices that will not run on the emulator, including, and you'll see you don't give me enough credit, some of my own tests

In any case, an emulator is never sufficient for real platform testing, because it is not the same environment. My ability to properly build and maintain any platform version of E02 hinges entirely on whether or not I personally own that platform, so you'll have to wait until I do

 

Show of hands - how many people are dead-set on ignoring the fact that some of the code in E02 dates back to 1997 and that the whole thing, being a complete, "powerful", and generic game engine, meant for use by anyone, for practically anything, has been built roughly 97% from scratch, by one person, for free, in spare time?

I'd ask you to tell me, honestly, if I were to backtrack right now and retrofit E02 with 16:9 support, would any more people actually be making use of it than are attempting to right now, even in silent, but the only way you could prove your answer to me is to show me those people making use of E02 as-is. 16:9 support wouldn't have helped back in 2009 when the entire script system hinged entirely on using number values to identify Commands. It probably wouldn't even have helped once I had changed that so you could use alias names, because entering expressions was still a total hassle until I added keyword support a couple of releases back, and it was much more incomplete then than it is as of only about three days ago. I've heard from people who hated using the editor in 8x8 tile mode (ignoring the copy/paste feature) up until I added Stamps, again, only about two releases back. But I suppose a wide play area during gameplay is much more important than actually being able to develop the game, right?

You're seriously going to make blind assumptions about my motivation and start slinging insults at me? That's pretty awesome of you