16 Bit Life

Project Status: Unfinished

A comedy platforming game about three friends who got stuck in a video game and are trying to get out. I know that trope is super played out nowadays but back when I came up with this it was pretty original plus I wanted to do a less serious more jokey take on it.

This game and its elements were conceptualized a long time ago but I didn't actually start working on the programming until I was a sophomore in high school. At the time I didn't know about modern day game engines, so I created the first version of the 16BL game engine just for this game. Eventually I got so attached to the 16BL engine that I started using it for the majority of my projects.

Out of all my games 16 Bit Life is definitely the one with the most features implemented with 50 enemies and 63 other level specific gameobjects so I'll just list out some of my favorite things


Creepy Butterflys

A swarming enemy I have grown very attached too he has basically become the "mascot" of my games at this point

Machine Gun Crab

A crab with a machine gun that chases the player down heavily

Portals

Classic portals go through one end come out the other

Swinging Vines

Vines that you can grab onto to get accross gaps

Popcorn Bombs

One of Ryan's weapon a flaming bag of popcorn that exlodes into a flurry of kernels he can use to heal

Pogo Stick

A bounce move the crew gets for a short time while invading the mafia base

Zombee Tree

A midboss tree infested with undead bees

Party Manager

A system in place that lets the trio travel together or split up depending on the requirements of any particular level, any combination of them can form a party including 3 parties of just one character each.



Triggers and Cutscenes

Triggers are Objects you can place in maps to make certain events happen for example a map with these triggers produces this output

The Triggers are evaluated from top to bottom so when I hit them it first activates the trigger to pause the game then it activates the cutscene trigger and plays the camera pan cutscene. After that the trigger to unpause the game gets evaluated and finally a "break trigger" which makes the trigger evaluation stop until I hit it a second time.

The Cutscenes are all done using a set of "Events'' that are written in the code. To specify what events a cutscene has and what arguments those events have you just need to modify a JSON file for that cutscene here's the JSON file for the cutscene we just saw.


This game wasen't finished just because the scope was far too large for me at the time. There was too much to do and I hate to admit it but I just diden't have the skills to do it a the time. Even now It would take me a very long time to finish this one so it might stay on the shelf for a while

Back Source Github