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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.
It may just be me, but in my opinion the physics model is one of the most important features of a game. Good physics means great control, which makes all the difference between a good game and a great game.
Take, for example, the difference in physics between Super Mario 2 and 3. Each character in Super Mario 2 had their own funky physics, like Luigi's leg-spinning jump, which was sort of the charm of the game. However, Super Mario 3 had solid physics where you could easily predict where your character was going and send the character where you wanted it to go. I think that's a big reason why Super Mario 2 is a good game and Super Mario 3 is one of the best of all time.
Anyway, to relate this back to the article, a good side-scrolling game development kit needs a good or customizable physics model. Do many open game development kits emphasize that?
Version 1.4.0 introduces support for larger graphics. So, while most of the existing games use small sprites, the new version supports sprites and tiles up to 128x128 pixels. Even though the maximum size prior to version 1.4.0 was 64x64, many of the games didn't make graphics that large. Hopefully 128x128 will invite the larger graphics and make more people happy with graphic sizes in general. The new version also introduces support for multiple resolutions. Previously, all games were 640x480, but now they can run in 320x240, 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768.