v0.116.0-rc2 Lands On Its Feet

Everything in rc1, plus a 2D starting point. There's a new Pixel Platformer template with a tutorial that builds it, and one-way platforms. Bitmap fonts work anywhere a font goes. A 2D scene opens in a 2D Scene view, and screenshots and captures of a 2D level now show its tiles.

Start a 2D game in one click

• Pixel Platformer template. Pick it on the Hub's New project screen, or run floptle new my-game --template platformer2d. You get:

  • a pixel-art level painted from a tileset, with slopes, ledges and grass;
  • a player who runs, jumps and faces the way it moves;
  • a camera that follows the player and stays inside the level.

  Every piece uses the 2D tools: a tilemap, a sprite with a 2D body, and a 2D camera.

• A tutorial that builds it. 🎓 Learn ▸ Build a 2D pixel platformer goes from an empty project to the same game in about 25 minutes. It covers painting a level, collision worked out from the art, the player, and the three things that make a jump feel fair: coyote time, buffering and cut-off.

• The template list says 2D or 3D. The 3D platformer, the top-down RPG and Flappy say what they are built from.

One-way platforms

Tick one-way under ◫ Tiles ▸ TILE and a tile is solid only from above. A character jumps up through it from below and lands on its top. It works with any collision shape, so a thin plank stays thin, and a one-way ledge never merges into the solid wall beside it. The Pixel Platformer's planks are one-way.

A 2D scene opens in a 2D view

A scene whose camera is orthographic and faces the front opens with the Scene view locked to the front, orthographic, and centred where the game camera looks. A tilted orthographic camera, as an isometric 3D game uses, leaves the view as it was.

The camera stays inside the level

A 2D camera's keep inside a rectangle now keeps everything it shows inside that rectangle. It used to stop only its centre at the edge, so half a screen of empty space showed past every end of the level.

Bitmap fonts

A BMFont .fnt file (text or XML), with the sheet images it names beside it, is now a font. Use it for a text element, for draw.text, or as the project's UI font. BMFont, Hiero, Littera and most font-sheet tools export this format.

• Letters are exact at the font's own size and at every whole multiple of it.
• They take the text's colour, so draw them white.
• .ttc font collections load too, using their first face.

Screenshots show your tiles

floptle shot and camera.capture now draw tile layers. A picture of a 2D level used to show its sprites over an empty background.

Upgrading

• A 2D camera with limits now stops half a view further in from each edge. If you set your limits inside the level to make up for the old behaviour, set them back to the level's edges.
• Everything else from rc1 applies.