Platformer Game Engine

With this engine you can write a game in Python. SDL2 features are used in C++ functions that are exposed via Pybind11. We have recreated the game Galaga in python, but other games can be created as well! There is also a tile map editor you can use to create your own tile map, by putting in the complete file path of an image you want to use and the tile map dimensions you want. You can also preview sprite animations, by using the sprite animation tool and putting in the complete file path of the image you want to use, how big you want the sprite to be, and the start and end frame number.

We wanted our game engine to be extensible, therefore we used Entity component system as the foundation of our engine. ECS follows the composition over inheritance principle that allows greater flexibility in defining entities where every object in a game's scene is an entity (e.g. enemies, bullets, vehicles, etc.). Every entity consists of one or more components which contains data or state. Therefore, the behavior of an entity can be changed at runtime by systems that add, remove or mutate components. This also helped enable use to create a variety of games using our engine, so you could make a platformer using our engine, it could be top down or bottom up, or you can make an arcade game like Galaga.

In order to move the spaceship use A and D, and to shoot your enemies use spacebar. You can quit the game by pressing Q. You have 3 lives so be careful! There are no levels, but as time goes on the game gets more challenging.

A project like a game engine is never fully completed. If there was more time there are many things we would have like to try to implement. We would have liked to try to optimize our collision handling system, perhaps by implement a broad phase and narrow phase system. Also we could have exposed more SDL2 features to python, so users creating their game in python could have more creative control when developing the game.

We would have also liked to add other tools. It would have been nice if we could have created a paint like tool that users could use to create their own background images and characters, instead of making it on another platform and saving it and loading it from there. Another tool that would have been useful is a simulation tool used to view how collisions are handled.

Class Hierarchy

The following libraries are needed in order to run the game: Tkinter, PyQT, Pybind11, SDL2, SDL_Mixer, SDL_ttf, and SDL_image.

Run the following in order to build the executable python build.py. After you can run the following to start the engine and play a game, use the sprite tool, and tile map tool. ./bin/start .

Entire Project: download project files

Binary for Mac OS: download binary file

Documentation: download doxygen generated files