Cuckoo Castle - GBJAM entry

0 favourites
  • 14 posts
From the Asset Store
Various, high-quality, multiple resolution elements for castles.
  • A few days ago me, Ziryf and Pongball released Cuckoo Castle, a mini-metroidvania for the annual gameboy jam.

    The gamejam ran for a week and we poured our souls into it. We took some days off from work so we could spend as much time on it as possible.

    In Cuckoo Castle you take control of a lonely knight seeking to defeat the evil force that resides in the Cuckoo Castle, an enormous castle that appeared out of nowhere.

    A quick summary of the game:

      A small metroidvania. 2 unlockable characters 2 bosses loads of enemies epic soundtrack a hit in the childhood

    the game can be played here:

    http://gamejolt.com/games/cuckoo-castle/87063

    In this gamejam Construct 2 proved it's value more then ever. Super fast development speed, tiled integration(nice!), shader effects, sound just works, the list goes on. I tip my hat to you Ashley What a great product!

    Insights

    I hope you enjoyed our game. Here's some love for the community.

    Shader effect stack.

    One of the requirements of a gameboy jam is to make your game actually look like it runs on a gameboy.

    A gameboy can display 4 colors, wikipedia: Color Palette: 2-bit (4 shades of "gray" {light to very dark olive green})

    But we wanted a special 4 color palette, something that we thought was prettier:

    Almost all art assets were made in those colors, some weren't though. So to make the whole game consistant with the palette we used a shader stack.

    Shader stack on the game Layout :

    monitor effect by 

    Somebody - dynamic range set to 70[/p] // this flattens everything on the layout to 4 shades of grey[/p] [/p] 4x replace color by Scirra [/p] // this takes the 4 shades of grey and converts them to the custom palette[/p] [/code:3vvwuovd][/p] [/p] With this applied we could basically throw anything in to the game, and it would still look like something that a gameboy would be able to display. So now we could get crazy with [i]soft brushes[/i] (which we used for the flames and lights) and achieve effects we couldn't otherwise.[/p] [/p] [b]Metroidvania rooms[/b][/p] Most of the game takes place in one big layout. That layout contains special [i]cameraArea[/i] sprite objects that indicate the boundaries of the [i]rooms[/i] in the castle.[/p] One of the nice things about a gameboy jam is that you know that the screen size is always going to be 160x144. [/p] So a room that doesn't scroll is just that, 160x144 pixels:[/p] [img="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5573960/forum%20stuff/roomsc2.PNG"][/p] [/p] Rooms that [b]do[/b] scroll are bigger then that.[/p] [/p] For the camera I clamp the positional values to the current active room. This way I create the illusion of different rooms, but actually it's just a really big layout.[/p] [code:3vvwuovd][/p] every tick[/p] clamp(playerMask.X+camera.xoffset, cameraArea.X+80, cameraArea.X+cameraArea.Width-80)[/code:3vvwuovd][/p] One of the best things about this approach is that once you have the rooms, you can easily generate a minimap.[/p] [/p] If anyone has any questions don't hesitate to ask.

  • Epic work. Congratulations

  • I think this is a great demonstration of some devs who know how to work with a tool and properly utilize it.

    Good job and awesome game guys!

  • Awesome game bro!

    Excellent GB atmosphere!

    Can you share the capx?

  • How did u do the light effect?

  • Can you explain a little more about the light effect? You used the "Replace Color" effect, right? Where you put this?

  • That should be released on GameBoy or DS. It's amazing.

    Also... how did you do the light?

  • One of the best games made with C2!

  • Fantastic work, shows us once again how powerfull Construct 2 is. And how skilled most of the community is.

  • Wow, love everything about this!

  • You should seriously consider a Wii U release

  • Amazing work!

    Just a few questions, Where did you put the code to make the Gameboy "Shader".

    Light system looks amazing

    Thanks for giving us some tips on how you made this.

    Really Appreciate it

  • Probably the best stuff I've seen here so far. Really takes me back to the Game Boy days. Hats off!

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • I can only see a black screen when trying to play online on Chrome. :-/

Jump to:
Active Users
There are 1 visitors browsing this topic (0 users and 1 guests)