Okay I have basic grasp with C++ and Allegro. Ive made: pong, breakout, a vertical shooter, a soundboard and a sonic game.
This is my best work so far:
But Now I want to research how to make a top down adventure game like Zelda. What should I research? I have no clue how to begin this. Maybe isometric programming?
Sure, search for Isometric tutorials, top down tutorials, sprite based tutorials, grid based tutorials, tile based game programing tutorials, jrpg tutorials, etc.
If you've done all those things a 2d sprite game is not that different from your sonic game. Take away the gravity and optionally "lock" the user to a grid for the first Zelda and you're most of the way there. :)
You might take a look at some 2d XNA tutorials. I find working with their SpriteBatch pretty easy. The tile engine tutorial series is pretty good.
http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=TUTORIALS
I'm not sure how easy it will be to translate over to Allegro, but it would be a good learning experience to see how it works in one library and think about how to make that work in another.
- Eck
I assume you mean the 2D top down Zelda games, such as A Link to the Past. These games used oblique projection and was achieved through the tile based art itself, not through isometric programming.
Judging by your previous projects, you probably already know enough to create this type of game. It's just a matter of setting up everything to work in a top-down environment instead.
Nice game!
As others have said, you have the skills to create this type of game already. The basic idea behind it is to use an image file that has 32x32 (or whatever size you want to use) "tiles" in it. You draw each tile basically the same way you did your animation for sonic (if you had one image that contained all the animations). The way you would add depth to the game would be using something called Z-order which is just means you draw the ground layer before the collidable layer so things like fences appear above the ground layer. if you want to have a tree cover a player, simply draw the top part of the tree on the sky layer as opposed to the collision layer (where the bark of the tree would be)
I've been trying to make a game like this for years but I keep getting caught up on design issues and whatnot. I want to make it as perfect as I can which is why I haven't even gotten into the development of the actual game yet.....
Anyway, take a look at Tiled for an easy/opensource way of creating your 2d maps. Then you can roll your own reader for the xml file that tiled produces, or you can use http://code.google.com/p/tmx-parser/
Let me know if you have any other questions about this style of game. (Been trapped here forever haha)
You can probably adapt the tile system in your Sonic game to a Zelda game. You're gonna have to program:
RPG Style Leveling / Inventory!
And Plenty of other stuff to make your game a success.
But don't give up! If you can remake sonic, you can definitely make an awesome zelda game!
(You can also look at my new blog post about a semi-similar game)
Cheers :)!
The open source program called Tiled, is a great 2D map editor. It can create xml files for your maps which you can then load into your game.
I am currently working on a zelda style game ( the game play ), but the story is modern day.
Me and my team are using SFML 2 libraries for rendering and sound, which is an Object Oriented Library, unlike allegro, which when using c++ is a huge advantage. Also it wraps internally openGL, and openAL so it provides cross platform support.
If you are interested in this project you can check it out here, it is open source.
What should I research? I have no clue how to begin this. Maybe isometric programming?
Okay I have been using mappy as my tile editor but if tiled is better than im willing to learn it.
Okay I have been using mappy as my tile editor but if tiled is better than im willing to learn it.
By all means use mappy if you know it. I found tiled easier for me to understand which is why I'm using it.
