1. General information about my game

Long ago, like when I was around 10 years old or so, I used to use my middle and pointer fingers and walk with them jumping between various places in the house or stores I visited. In this game, there was almost always "blue water" below that you could go in, but I flat out avoided it. In this game I made up, you were to rescue someone named "George" by jumping between various places carefully. It originated inside the house and in stores. This game demonstrates this basic idea, but in a much better way. Strange as it may seem, I called the game "George Game 13". Why 13? That I don't know. I probably made up a version number.

There are many games in development and many more already on the market, old and new, but, in almost every game you'll come across, you'll come across common limitations such as where you can go, a set maximum for the height, a limit on the number of lives you can get or the score. I've always disliked these irritating limits, many of which can easily be avoided. That is, instead of using an 8-bit char for the number of lives, one could use a 32-bit long or a 16-bit short which takes but three or one byte of extra memory (big deal on just one or three bytes, especially in today's games and computers (one byte on 1 gig of storage is virtually nothing). Another common limitation is just where you can go and how fast you can get. In my game, you can go just about anywhere you please and the worlds are so vast, you can see a great distance. Yes, you may hop around on the buildings or cruise 200 mph along the roads.

George Game 13 has numerous features planned for it. Here's a simple list on just a very few of the major features I have planned:

Over a thousand levels and two different modes to keep you busy for a long time. Normal mode is where you play the game normally. No time limits or anything. This is the easiest mode. A third mode is an explorative mode where you basically try to find stuff. Details about it are vague at this point. You can, if you want, enable time mode to enhance the difficulty further. This gives four ways to play.
Over 25 awesome worlds ranging from the desert, the ocean, the city, the swamp, a forest, and a few others with 40 levels in each world. (levels are fun and easy to make ya know)
A level-creator so you can make your own George Game 13 levels complete with custom moving platforms, the ability to choose which world to build the level in, and so much more. This will be my top favorite feature that I definitely don't want to leave out. This will almost certainly be implemented. If you've used the classic Sonic the Hedgehog debug code to design some miniature areas or some games to design a skating course of your own, the level creation tool's bounds are much greater with far more potential. The only thing missing is the ability to create worlds, but you can design the platform levels however you want without much of anything in the way of limitations. Yet, the output files are so small, you can upload ten very large levels (500 objects even) on a dial-up connection in under a minute!
High-speed movement - you can really cruise, especially with falling.
Everything is mathematically accurate - If you ever wondered what it's like to stand on top of a 30-story building or cruise along at the speeds NASCAR drivers experience, you can get an accurate feel for it. Because I'm mathematically inclined (skilled), wrong mathematics are not my thing.
No annoying limits - in many games, you cannot score more than 9,999,999 points or something or you can't get more than 99 lives. The score has 20 digits! That's enough to get even two sextillion (a sextillion is a billion trillions)! Better yet, the score keeps on increasing as you play along.
Best of all: player freedom is my ultimate goal. Many games nowadays have limitations on where you can go and what you can do. My goal is to attempt to remove many of these, though I have no choice but to have limitations, but the most common ones players come across are nearly going to be absent.

To beat all the levels, you're going to need about 6000 minutes of play time (100 hours (about 4 days)) to finish them all at the most in the two basic modes (normal mode and search mode).

So, what are you supposed to do in the game? It depends on which mode you use. In normal mode, you basically jump between platforms quickly to reach the goal. The platforms come in 64 different colors and 16 different sizes. Some platforms move, others don't. The levels are short-lasting and take but a minute or two to finish (if you don't fall off). With time mode active, you have to beat the clock or you lose a life and start over again. There are plenty of extra lives scattered around to help and the score helps add more extra lives as well. You don't collect anything in normal mode. In normal mode, there are 40 levels per world. You can choose to play a short game with 10 levels per world, a moderate game with 20 levels per world or a full game with 40 levels per world. The levels are randomized upon loading and each time you play, you'll get a different group of levels.

In search mode, you need to explore the vast worlds, usually around 1 square mile in size or larger. You basically search for random objects, which may be coins, gems, bottle tops, anything. You never know. When you find 10 of something, you need to reach the goal platform to finish the level. There are two levels per world (debated) and in the increasing level number in the world, you have to find more objects (with more time to do so). Enabling time mode increases the difficulty. If you run out of time, you lose a life and you have to start over again.

For time mode, there is a difficulty setting from 0 to 8 that determines how much time you have to finish a level. At difficulty 4, you have half the time as with 0. Difficulty 8 is half that of 4. You'll have four times the amount of time for difficulty 0 than you do with 8. You can use fractions and decimals as well to create an even greater sense of ranges.

2. Current issues

Player model animation isn't working right no matter how I do it. I have but one other alternative, though it may seem stupid. It's about the only way I'm going to get the model to animate properly. The other thing is getting the detail mapping code to work.

3. Showcase

Screenshot gallery - These are 1024x768 screenshots of my game. Currently, there are 60 screenshots in the collection. Do note that, only screenshots of things from in the demo version will be available. Read the notes for further details if you'd like to get more in depth coverage on design.

Screenshots 52 and 53 are of visions I'm having for my game. They show an approximation on how the game will look when it's nearly finished as I'm envisioning it.

The top image on this page is my most spectacular screenshot of my collection.

4. Latest developments

My latest developments are as follows:

I've nearly completed the tutorial level. I just need to replace the platforms (again) with the high-quality ones. The newer ones have a texture resolution 8.5 times greater (see screenshot number 32 (on page 4) in the screenshot gallery for a comparison between the two versions).

The city's buildings have been redone, but would like to add more buildings. The rooves need to be redone as well. Due to the changes in the design of the buildings and roads, the beach needs to be redone as well.

One of the worlds is almost completed, the city. The main stuff for the city world is completed except that I'd like to add beach decals (beach umbrellas, towels, and maybe a few scattered buckets and sand castles). Also, figuring out a way to have realistic-looking waves without hampering the frame rate, but this isn't that important right now. If I could, I'd program a shader to create a realistic water effect.

I'm also working on the restaurant world, another one that'll be in the demo version.

Also planned and thought of is game world map. I can vision the city being on the left side and the later worlds being toward the right.

Footnotes:
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