Bringing an Old Project Back From The Dead

Bringing an Old Project Back From the Dead

 

For my A-Level project in 2022, I made a platformer game with a built-in editor in Python using Pygame. This is when I properly learnt to program. I had lots of knowledge of programming concepts before this but had never properly put them into practice. This was my first proper game, I would say.

I really got carried away with the programming aspect and had a lot of fun creating everything in the project from the enemy mechanics to making my own GUI system.

Fishiles patrol and then bomb you when you get close

Kugiutsu hide in their shell until you approach, at which point they'll fire a barrage of nails 

A couple years ago, on a nostalgia trip, find the project on a dusty old drive and boot it up on my PC (it was actually just Google Drive). To my dismay, it just did not work anymore. Pygame updated since 2022 had completely broken the physics. The player would clip to the edges of tiles and clip out of the world. I didn't think much of it and forgot about it pretty quickly. Fast forward to today (or well the other day) and I was in a nostalgic mood again, except this time, I was going to try and fix it. No, not by fixing the spaghetti code, I didn't dare wade through the mess I had created when I was 16, instead I downloaded a 2022 version of Python and Pygame and set up a virtual environment, hoping it would fix the physics glitches. To my surprise it did and on the first try! Woohoo! So, I used PyInstaller to create an executable build of the game and it mostly worked. Turns out I was missing a few libraries that meant that the online level download feature didn't work but nobody put any levels online anyway so that's fine.

When I replayed the game, I realised how far I've come in terms of game design. It was full of blind jumps, untaught mechanics and uninteresting gameplay. However, I still think there's a lot of value in it. The level editor is decently put together and if I had continued to develop the game (and maybe learn a thing or two about level design) I think it could've been something really cool! Who knows maybe I'll come back to the idea someday. I love platformer games and have always loved editing levels. Super Mario Maker was my favourite game even though I didn't have a switch to play it. Nowadays, I'm a huge fan of Celeste's modding scene and the map editor, Lönn, which is used by modders to create some amazing stuff. I've been playing the Omori map in the Celeste Crossover Collab. It's been super fun. It's taking me a while, though. I'd love to make a platformer with as tight an input scheme as Celeste. It's such fun to play. Anyway, way to get sidetracked. Play Celeste.

Anyway, if you want to give the game I made when I was 16 a try, you can download it here. Just unzip and run main.exe. If you decide to make any levels with my level editor that lacks any form of documentation, you can upload them to Pastebin and send them in the comments :3

By for now!