Best engine for 2d Platformer Game?

[sirleibl]

I am looking to create my first video game. I am a CGI student, by the way. My game will be a 2d platformer and it will be in the same style as the earlier Castlevania games which are the games before Castlevania:Symphony of the Night. Also, I don't want the graphics to be squarish like most 2d games I see now but a little more freeform in the terrain the character will be walking on. What is the best game engine that can pull something like this off?

[Funkmachine]

At 1/15/17 09:42 PM, sirleibl wrote: I am looking to create my first video game. I am a CGI student, by the way. My game will be a 2d platformer and it will be in the same style as the earlier Castlevania games which are the games before Castlevania:Symphony of the Night. Also, I don't want the graphics to be squarish like most 2d games I see now but a little more freeform in the terrain the character will be walking on. What is the best game engine that can pull something like this off?

Well its your art work that determine the graphics. Most people make games with squares or rects because that the easiest way to do collision detection, hence the squarish games and sprites. If you want the game to be more freeform you can easily do it in any engine, but having complex shapes will complicate your collision detection quite a bit.

If you are a CGI student its likely you will want to use 3d at some point, so you could use something like unity. it will allow you to make 2d games now, and then you can easily move to 3d games later without having to learn a whole new toolkit as unity supports 2d and 3d development. And there is no shortage of unity game tutorials to help you get started.

[BlackerTheBerry]

At 1/15/17 09:42 PM, sirleibl wrote: I am looking to create my first video game. I am a CGI student, by the way. My game will be a 2d platformer and it will be in the same style as the earlier Castlevania games which are the games before Castlevania:Symphony of the Night. Also, I don't want the graphics to be squarish like most 2d games I see now but a little more freeform in the terrain the character will be walking on. What is the best game engine that can pull something like this off?

If you have at least a little knowledge in programming or know someone how does have these skills, you can use LIBGdx. IMO a very very good engine (it's a gigantic library and build tool). You can use extensions and third party extensions with LIBGdx wich will take off big parts of work like physics, typed language (so to say letters in the game <_<..?), and many other things. You can also extend LIBGdx with E.G. Overlap2D wich is a great and very easy to use 2D Level build tool wich has it's own section for lightening wich is FANTASTIC. You need to use Libgdx in an IDE (bcs of the fact that it is a library) E.G. eclipse, InteliJ, Android Studio.... and so on.

[Supahninja]

I personally use gamemaker studio I'd go with that.

[Zhon]

Ultimately I think it depends on what platform you're shooting for. I think Unity would be great for what you are trying to accomplish, because you can mix 3D detection with 2D sprites, though you would lose the advantages of a purely 2D game (which may not matter depending on your platform).

Known tradeoffs between Game Maker and Unity, though: GM is generally smoother and faster for larger games, whereas Unity offers far more versatility and has functional 3D elements (GM requires a lot of workaround for 3D). GM also sucks for HTML5 multiplayer, if that's important for you.

EDIT: Also, to note, publishing to Android, iOS, Windows store, and html5 requires a special license, whereas Unity is free.

[CaveDancer]

Well, i'm using GameMaker to programm 2D games, but you can also use Construct2 (which is very easy)

[StaticSkull]

I'd say Flash 8 or Animate CC

[Raza]

Gamemaker or if you already own flash that's a fine alternative. If cost is an issue and you don't have flash, I would suggest using Gamemaker. Also not sure of this, but I've done games in Flash before and it does require quite a bit of programming, even though the language (actionscript) is fairly simple. Gamemaker might be easier.