[DEPRECATED] The Platform-Vania Engine - Physics and Raycast Based 2D Action Platforming

Melee Combos, Swimming, Grapple Hooks, and intense 2D Platforming Action!

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I'm happy to announce the release of my new Physics and Raycast Based 2D Platform Adventure Kit, The Platform-Vania Engine, which just released today!

Play Demo​

This is a fully customizable kit to quickly whip up and get a 2D action platformer designed, and I plan to expand it and polish it more and more over time, based on user feedback, here in this forum!

It's fast, it's user friendly, and it's flexible. Just add your own assets and customize the abilities!

The Kit Currently Includes:

• Dashing
• Jumping
• Running
• Dodge Rolling
• Ground Pounding
• Climbing Ladders
• Ropes and Procedural Ropes
• Grappling Hooks
• Swapping Weapons
• Projectile Weapons
• Melee Weapons
• Pushable Objects
• Breakable Objects
• Melee Attacks and Combos
• Health Bars
• Taking Damage
• A fully set up animator ready for your animations to be slotted in
• AI character movement
• Attack AI
• Ray Casting
• Ledge Grabbing
• Swimming
• Gliding
• A Game Manager
• An Object Pooler
• Spawn Points
• Way Points
• A fully featured character controller
• A just-slot-animations-in Animator controller
• Breakable Objects
• Bullets
• Health Pick Ups
• Moving Platforms
• One Way Platforms
• Easy To Add Sound Effects and Particle Effects
• ...And More!

What's more, everything is tool-tipped so you're never out of the loop!

I designed this engine with flexibility in mind. There's nothing worse than trying to use an engine someone else created and being prevented from doing seemingly simple actions, such as being pushed around by physics, or not being able to control a player's reactions to physics.

This system uses a flexible character controller which alows you to turn off and on the player's reactions to physical forces, throttle their movement, give the player a whole list of abilities (and easily extend and add your own abilities), and control AI.

There is also quick and easy level transitioning, so creating a whole 2D world is quick and fun.

It's still in its early stages, so I greatly appreciate any feedback you may have. Thanks for checking it out!

 

Not related to the kit, the trailer doesn't have equalized audio. The dash sound effect and a couple others are nearly twice as loud as the other sound effects. Just mentioning so it can be corrected on the next promo trailer.

 

Thanks! Yea as of now the trailer is just quick and dirty. Should have a legit one over the next week. Thanks for the tip!

 

Looks good...but I have some questions...I noticed you are using a Dynamic Rigidbody which is great...but how are you moving it? Are you using addForce or velocity or movePosition? Can the player move other rigid bodies using the built in physics?

 

Hey, Nick! Thanks for the question! The answer is a combo of both! For basic stuff like horizontal movement and wall sliding it just controls the velocity by throttling it and modifying it directly, but jumping and dashes and anything that involves a burst of movement is typically done by adding a force while also throttling the velocity. You can also apply a force (such as wind) to push the character while they're moving and that will work as well. And yes, the player can move objects around, bump into things, etc, all via built in unity physics.

 

I'll be adding more demos and updates to demonstrate these features very soon

 

Currently setting up additional online documentation as well as rolling out fixes and some new features, so if anyone needs help in the meantime, feel free to contact me directly! I'm here if anyone needs any assistance.

 

V 1.02 is live, stabilizing all known bugs, along with the new trailer.

 

V 1.03 is going live soon! Changed everything to Tile Maps and fixed a lot more little bugs I've found here and there that led to inconsistencies in the abilities. Also converted movement to addforce instead of directly modifying velocity and normalized slopes Everything looks and feels pretty solid now!

 

Latest update (going live) fixes new bugs found in melee attacking. Combos should be 100% synced up now.

 

Some new tutorials up!

 

Is it optimized for mobile?

 

I didn't do anything specifically to optimize it for mobile, but it's not very resource intensive (other than the built in physics) and I'm sure it will still play smoothly on mobile devices. You'll have to add your own mobile joystick and map it to the input buttons, but other than that, I believe so.

 

I assume asset includes full source code? If so I'll definitely buy!

 

Yup! Full source included. I'll update the store page to say so.

 

Big ole 40 minutes tutorial upload today on melee attacks. It's a doozy! Hopefully you guys find it useful:

 

New Tutorial for setting up AI Characters!

 

And AI character movement.

 

New update coming up with a new little demo!

 

Hey guys, a new update is coming up that includes swimming! Also I've changed the animations workflow for the characters so you no longer need to create and modify your own Animators. This also will allow me to change the animations constantly as I add new features without you having to change a thing! Exciting! This will be included in

Version 1.07:

Animations Update:

Swimming!

 

Hi, I need separated sprites for every direction because I have a material with normals to reflect lights. Does the engine suports distintc sprites or flip a unique sprite when the direction change?

Thanks in advance.

Fernando.

 

Hey Fernando! Currently it just flips the game object, so no it doesn't have support for multi Directional sprites, sorry!

 

OK. Thank you.

 

I'd like to chime in and say I'd love support for multi-directional sprites if it's something you're considering.

 

I just added it to my list I'll let you guys know when it's in the engine. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

 

Would be nice to see a upgrade to the the Attack & Combo System to be able to do Weak/Strong/Kick/Projectile attacks that could also be linked together with Combos!!!

 

I'm trying to setup a bouncing platform using a SpringJoint2D, and I thought since this is physics-based, that should just work naturally... But I'm not exactly getting the results I expected. The momentum of the platform doesn't seem to have any effect on the momentum of the player's jump.

So then I tried applying the Moving Platform script with "Dynamic Rigidbody" checked because you specifically mention using that with a spring joint in one of the tutorials, but that seems to make the behavior even stranger: I can't jump off the platform, but when I hit the jump button, the platform suddenly moves upward more quickly. I don't know what could be going on there.

Any suggestions?

If you want to see what I'm seeing, just throw down a cube with a RigidBody2D, BoxCollider2D, and SpringJoint2D with Frequency and Dampening turned way up (so it should be pretty stiff), then jump on it.

 

Sure thing, I'll try it out right now.

 

Hey, Darkhitori! Great suggestion! I definitely want to make the system more and more in depth over time, so I'll definitely add those specifically to my list. Thanks!

 

I sent you a PM so we can figure this one out. Seems to stay pretty solid for me.

 

Hello, i'm planning to buy your amazing engine, just 3 questions :

Is the glide power integrated ?

Can i create a 2.5D game or only 2D =O ?

And maybe has notting to do with a metroidvania xD, but can i make something like rayman legends,kirby,etc, with this engine ?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards =D

 

That's awesome =D

 

1. Glide power is not yet integrated but it's actually the next thing I'm working on.

2. Works great for 2d or 2.5d. Doesn't matter at all!

3. Sure you can make something like Rayman Legends. I actually took some inspiration specifically from that. Though you may need to tweak things to get it exact.

Thanks so much for the kind words!

 

So, I'm slowly making my way through the tutorials and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. However, I'm running into a small issue with trying to get the horizontal movement that I'm looking for. I can't seem to get instant acceleration on the horizontal movement script to work properly without turning the friction down to 0 on the character controller. However, when I turn the friction down to 0, the character slides. Even when playing around with small friction values, I can't seem to get instant acceleration without sliding. I'm using some pretty small sprites (32x32), so this might be the problem. I just need instant acceleration with instant stopping. Any recommendations?

 

Awesome, thanks for your very fast reply =D.

Btw this engine has a save system ?

Thanks again for all your help

 

Let me look into this. It may be currently broken I realize as I changed the movement code, so it may be a bug. I will check it out and fix it today and try to get a new version up asap with this fixed. Many apologies and I'll let you know when that's fixed. Sorry about that!

 

Currently the engine doesn't have a save system. It's on my list for sure. However if you want to implement saves it's pretty easy using Playerprefs. I'll try to get a new version up soon however that has that.

 

Okay, fixed it. Yes that was an error on my part so I do apologize for it. Here's the next version that should be up within the next day or so with the instant acceleration.

 

Hey guys! Just want to let you know that I've included flippable sprites in the latest update! Here's a quick clip. All you have to do is slot your reverse sprite animations into the animator override controller in their respective places. All the code does is swap between the two animation layers, one with the animations facing right, the other, left. Let me know if that works for you guys!

Here's a sample of what it looks like:

 

Oops, little bug with the sprite flipping when in water for the Van Helsing demo. Fixing that really quick and should be fixed by the next update. Sorry about that!

 

Another weird movement bug fixed and awaiting review. Should be fine by tomorrow. Thanks for your patience guys!

 

Just want you to know that gliding will be going live in the next update! (probably by tomorrow or so!)

 

That's amazing =D, btw, i already bought the engine and i left you a review ;D.

I'm checking the engine with the demos and it works great, just had a weird feeling with the wall jump, but i guess i need to tweak around x).

 

Yes there are aspects that aren't exactly perfect and I'll be constantly tweaking. I kind of expanded the project a bit rapidly so I'll be going back in and polishing some of the existing scripts over the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy the glide feature! I really enjoy it myself, especially the wings

Thanks so much for the review. It really does help SO much to increase visibility. If you have any more suggestions or little oddities you notice, please don't hesitate to let me know! I do want to make this the premiere Metroidvania engine in time. So again, thanks so much!

 

Coming up in the next round of updates, Rope Sliding! This can be used to make the character grind on the rails or hold on and slide down them! Here's a quick clip of the progress:

 

No problem you deserve it (= !!, indeed, the glide looks really cool, but it will be good to be able to move in any direction while gliding i think =O.

I have a quick question, is there a posibility to change or have different attacks while the player is grounded or in the air ? for example, when is grounded, to have the normal attacks and combos like punching, but in the air to be able to do only one different attack like a kick.

Thanks again for all your help ='D

 

Wow i love that you're putting a lot of effort on your little baby.

Keep up the good work

 

Yep I agree, I will be adding the ability to move the character while gliding in the next update. Didn't get around to it by the last update.

Yes most definitely! The grounded attacks and the in air attacks are totally separate. If you look at the PVWeapon script on the Laser Whip game object in the Van Helsing demo, you'll see there's an array for In air attacks and grounded attacks. This is also in the PVMeleeAttack script, but the demo uses weapons so we ignore that when using weapons as they have totally different sets of attacks per weapons.



Notice in this screenshot how there's an air attack combo and a ground attack combo. You can specifically define here each of the attacks in a combo and how they behave. Also the SIZE of the array dictates how many attacks are in a combo. Check out the melee attacks tutorial for more detail. I definitely need to add more tutorials but I've been traveling and kind of unable to do so at the moment.

The only difference in workflow now is that the animations system has changed, so you'll also need to check out this tutorial to get the animations right.

Those should get you started. Let me know if you need anything else! Thanks!

 

So much to do! I'm currently working a real job too so it's hard because I have so many things I want to add. But if this engine works out, you can bet I'll quit and work full time on this!

 

=O !!! How i could be that blind o.o... Sorry is just that everything is new for me and i need to figure out where is everything xD.

But really thanks a lot for sharing those tutos, will help me a lot, and for the superb support as always.

And last, i just want to know if the character can walk and run by holding a button, if no, its ok i'll figure out.

Again thanks a lot for all tour help =D