Many of the 2D Mario games are something of a case study of quality 2D platform game implementation
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Got an idea for a 2D platforming game? Then you’d do well to lend an ear to Rodrigo Braz Monteiro. When he’s not undertaking his day job at Bossa Studios, the developer turns his eye to analysing game design. Here he delivers the first of a two-part guide to implementing 2D platforming games
HAVING PREVIOUSLY been disappointed by the information available on the topic of implementing 2D platform games, this is my attempt at categorising different ways to address the issue. Here I list the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, and discuss some
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implementation details, in an attempt to help those making a game that fits within the genre. First, a disclaimer; some of the information
presented here comes from reverse engineering the behaviour of the game; not from its code or programmers. It’s possible that they are not actually implemented in this
way, and merely behave in an equivalent way. Also note that tile sizes are for the game logic, graphical tiles might be of a different size. I can think of four major ways in which a
platform game can be implemented. From the simplest to the most complicated, and I will detail them over this two-part article.