Project: Doodle v0.1.0

Here is another alpha release of the game I've been working on, codenamed Project: Doodle.

About Project: Doodle

Doodle is a "drawing-based maze game" where you can draw your own levels freehand and then play them as a 2D platformer game. You can drag premade "doodads" such as buttons, doors and keys into your level to add some interaction to it.

The game is being designed to be very friendly for custom content: you can create your own doodads and program their behavior in JavaScript, and eventually, when you share your levels with others you can bundle the custom doodads, wallpapers and other assets with the level file to enable others to easily play your custom map without needing to go hunt down all the custom assets you used.

The game comes with the "doodad.exe" command-line program which helps in creating custom doodads; it's the tool I used to create the default ones that come with the game.

Downloads

The game is free to download in its alpha versioned form.

• Windows: doodle-0.1.0-windows-64bit.zip
• Mac OS: doodle-0.1.0-macOS-64bit.dmg*
• Linux:
  • Fedora/CentOS: project-doodle-0.1.0_alpha-1.x86_64.rpm
  • Ubuntu/Debian: project-doodle_0.1.0-alpha_amd64.deb
  • Others (tarball): doodle-0.1.0-linux-64bit.tar.gz

Note: the program isn't signed yet for Windows and Mac so you may need to click through some warning dialogs. This is an early alpha release and I'll get the signatures sorted out eventually in future releases.

Mac users: let me know if the performance is okay. I only tested running it in the QEMU virtual machine I built it in, and it got < 30 frames per second there (hit F3 key in-game to see the FPS). Linux binaries and Windows (in Wine) ran at full 60 FPS for me.

Changes

New doodads:

• Start Flag: drag this into your level to set where the player character will spawn. There should only be one per level.
• Crumbly Floor: a rocky floor that breaks and falls away after a couple seconds when the player (or other mobile doodad) walks onto it.
• State Blocks: blue and orange blocks that toggle between solid and passable when the corresponding ON/OFF button is touched.

New features:

• An inventory overlay now appears in Play Mode when the player character picks up one of the colored keys.
• While editing a level, you can click the new "Options" button in the top menu to open the level settings window (like the one you see when creating a new level): to change the wallpaper image or the page type.

Other changes:

• Added better platforming physics to the player character: acceleration and friction when walking.
• The colored Locked Door doodads have been re-designed to be shown in a side-view perspective and have an open and closed state in either direction.
• Tooltips added to various buttons in the Editor to show names of doodads and functions of various buttons.

Cheat Codes

In case you happen to clip out of bounds in the game and fall to the bottom of the map, press the Enter key to open the in-game developer console and type in cheats like these:

• import antigravity turns off gravity for the player character; arrow keys freely move you in any direction.
• ghost mode turns off collision detection for the player, allowing you to pass through walls, floors and solid doodads.

The README.md contains more.