Is it possible to create a game like prince of persia?

It's old. It's messy. And out of date. But served it's purpose good

shinkan nice sample

I'm currently rewriting my engine after stumblinng upon a few problems but anyways.

My biggest flaw was that the engine didn't check for trigger points before performing actions, so for example when you stepped forward, the game would not check if there's even a surface next to you, but instead would check what kind of surface is below you after you've moved. This proved to be a very stupid way to do things when I wanted to implement pits and ledges. As the project went on I had to do some crazy workarounds that would produce countless bugs. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Good thing I now have a grasp on how the engine is supposed to handle stuff so rewriting it has been very smooth thus far. I might actually put up a .capx for it later for people to see how I personally did it. Maybe.. We'll see.

It is possible. And it's not that hard or difficult. But it requires quite a lot animations and setups.

This is a small part based on my very old project, which was unfortunately dropped because guy responsible for all sprite animations stopped answering to my email without any reason... Yeah don't know why but in game development people I only had problem with were always graphic designers/animators - quite few of them :/

Hehe, me too.

Keep us updated on your progress. I was thinking of making something similar as well. Prince of Persia, Flashback, Another World, are some of my favorite games.

Engine is going good. All I need to implement next is the run-jump and the ledge grab from a running jump and all movement mechanics are set. Things look like this right now. If anyone wants to ask how I go about making the game, feel free to ask!

eliasfrost I was wondering, how does it goes "responsiveness to the controls" wise, I cannot say I did play the Dos or apple versions of it, only the game boy color and the master system version (well I also'played prince of persia classic, but clearly the controls feels easier)

I can finish the game boy version without any trouble while the master system one is really hard to control, as the "latency" is far too unpredictible (perhaps comes from the fact that it was played in a 50Hz configuration which made it slower).

So I wonder how did you do to make it playable (since this methos of movement used in prince of persia is actually pretty easy to break), do you just test the state of the inputs at each "tile" to predict what will be done?

Thanks for asking!

The game is grid based (16x16 pixels) and the character always moves 1 unit at a time. So to get the smoothest animation all actions are registered ahead (when pressing the buttons) but are not actually executed until the character have finished a step. So if you want to jump, you have to press the button one grid unit ahead (unless you're standing still, then it's executed on the spot). the same for going from walking to running.

It's much more reminiscent of the movement in the first Oddworld game. I think Prince of Persia had a lot of player standing in-between tiles and such and made it a bit hard to maneuver in certain situations, in Oddworld and in this game, the player always allign with the grid which makes movement very predictable.

A problem I noticed when playing Blackthorn is that the character has no windup and runs at full speed once the run button is pressed, this made run-jumping from ledges a hassle because you wouldn't have time to react before falling down the ledge. What I implemented in my game is a windup that is half the speed of running to give the player a bit of time for input.

My job is to teach the player how the basic movement work and also to effectively introduce them to new areas with different looks. Like giving them safe areas to learn the basics and even learn how the areas look, how ledges work, how far you can jump, the width of tiles and such. Once the player understands how the game reacts to their input I think they will be fine. But maybe I shouldn't speak too soon, I haven't playtested this with other people yet.

oh oki, I did played oddworld once so I see what the feels is in that one, I hope it will turn out ok in the end.

SenJos I advice you start making a lot of tutorials. Then try to make some super simple 1-day/2-day games, before attempting to make a game like that, but of course it can be done and I think it can be done in a short time (few weeks, less than a month) given you have the sprites ready...

Nothing new I can offer that hasn't already been said... Except to say the one lesson I'M STILL learning, myself: Keep It Simple.

By all means, BRAINSTORM like crazy. Have ideas and document them. But be ready and WILLING to cut OUT those ideas to the most basic. Keep them FEW and make them well. Otherwise, as I have learned the hard way and am still trying to work out in my own development skills, you will find yourself hitting so many roadblocks because you're not sure how to properly program an action or how to utilize a feature in C2.

Speaking of brainstorming and documenting, this is a problem I struggled with early on, too. Still rather do. I'm often so eager to begin the project that I haven't fully fleshed out all the details of my game - the WHYs and the WHATs.

Make sure you have a clear plan. Often called a Game Development Document (GDD). If you're familiar with that, then you're probably ahead of me! LOL And all just as good. Follow that plan and unless absolutely necessary - or if you're ahead of schedule or feel any changes would be minimal. Basically, it makes no sense to have a plan if you're not going to follow it. That's part of the reason why I have yet to finish a project - I had no clear PLAN. Ideas, but no plan to follow. So that's where I'm at now...

I offer these as "hard lessons learned"...not like I have any real authority on the matter. But I hope it helps.

may be you need to tools or plugin