Back in high school, and friend and I wrote a 8-bit video game for our C++ class. He wrote the graphics engine (this was Pre-DirectX/OpenGL technology), and I wrote the game engine. I also did the graphics, but that’s not something I’m bragging about. We tried to get a fried of ours who was studying to become a graphic designer to redo the images for us, but when we graduated high school we kinda lost track of the whole project.
Anyway, armed with my 15-year old graphics, and nothing else, I decided to re-create the game in a modern setting (the old game doesn’t even run under DosBox 🙁 ). Of course, being the genius that I am, I didn’t make a backup of the source code for the original game, literally all I have is the old graphics, the DOS-based map editor (which DOES run in DosBox), and a vague recollection of how the game worked.
I was going to use Microsoft XNA, but they stopped supporting that. Instead I’m using C# and MonoGame, a great open-source implementation of XNA functionality targeted for OpenGL (XNA is obviously DirectX). And behold, the first screenshot is posted:
AgbarTest Level 1
So, what does the game currently do? It loads a pre-defined map, textures, sprites, etc… Draws a world with the textures from the map. Spawns our hero (Agbar, Sheep Destroyer, (nee Sheep Laser Tagger (long story) ) ), loads a couple of his most cunning adversaries (sheep), and lets you control the character. Movement is with W A S D, firing left and right with Q and E respectively. Jumping is the space bar. The window scrolls with the character, missiles collide with bricks or sheep, sheep walk back and forth on platforms, character can climb ladders, and that’s it for now.
Video Demo:
In the original game, there were 4 types of enemies, landing on a potion bottle gave the hero magical flying/invincibility, and you could move through the doors (brown to brown to brown, etc…). None of that is implemented yet, but I’ll work on it. The original also drew everything palette-based (this was 8/16-bit DOS we’re talking about here), so the potions and candles used to blink thanks to palette-swapping. That’s a thing of the past, so I guess I’ll need to draw more sprites.
The source is, of course, in my repository, so check it out (if you dare). NOTES: This needs .NET 4.0/4.5, OpenGL, OpenTK, and possibly OpenAL (though there is no sound).