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Scrolling Game Development Kit 1.4.0 Released
BlueMonk writes "Hoping that 2D gaming is not dead yet, version 1.4.0 of the Scrolling Game Development Kit for Windows was released at the weekend. It helps beginners as well as more experienced developers create 2D scrolling games. Take a look at some of the games created with the kit while you're at it." It's great to see homebrew 2D game construction supported like this.
I am glad to hear that because I think the physics model is where the most effort was put in. Sprites don't just have a single hot spot; they check all 4 corners to determine whether they are running into a solid. Sprites that follow paths don't have a pre-set exact path (although that's an option), rather they try to follow the path by altering their current velocity (indirectly) just like the player has to do. And if the kit itself doesn't give you enough control, you can set the sprite type to "scripted" and write your own script to define exactly how you want it to move.
Oh, and in reply to the rest of your comment, the kit doesn't support a truly isometric view, but the included Wizard sample game does demonstrate a simulated kinda-isometric view. Rather than effectively offsetting the camera downwards and to one side, it only offsets it downwards. That means you can walk behind walls when your sprite is above (but partially overlapping) them on the screeen, but everything is still aligned to vertical and horizontal lines. You'll also have a problem if your sprite is tall enough to need to be in front of a particular graphic sometimes and behind it at others. (IE, walking in front of or behind the same piece of a tree trunk is not possible based purely on the position of the sprite).
At least there are some ways to kind of kludge a semi-isometric view. But it's not quite as helpful as a true isometric engine would be. Hopefully the parallax scrolling multiple layer support makes up for part of that defficiency.
Hopefully the small number of games and the 2 rating systems on the projects listing page alleviates that problem. Each project has an admin and a user rating.
It's open source. It can export to XML. It would be easy to create a program that exports selected pieces of data (or all of it) to practically any format you like. That could be done as a stand-alone program or even as a VBScript that runs in the IDE.
Did you take a look at the games with the highest staff ratings? Rolly the Purple Ball, Ethereal Peace and Chode?
The power is there, just nobody's pushed the kit to its limits yet. It can support maps with millions of animated tiles at full speed (1 frame per monitor refresh or more).