TigSource devlog here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=41836.msg1038365#msg1038365
SkullRush is my love song to multiplayer gaming. Multiplayer was always what it’s about for me. I mean, I like good story-driven games and whatnot, but nothing matches the feeling of blowing out your friends’ brains in a deathmatch.
If I had to sum up SkullRush, I’d say it’s a 2D online multiplayer platformer shooter. Yeah, it’s that cool.
The game is dead-simple: open the client, connect to a server, and blast stuff. That’s all I can guarantee, because mods are a big thing in this game, and they can change the game upside down. In short, the client acts as a canvas of sorts, and the server has almost complete control over the game’s graphics, sounds, and logic. This means that there’s out of the box support for custom game modes, custom maps, custom weapons, custom game entities, custom graphics (that can even override the default game graphics if you want) and much more.
In fact, the official game modes are written as mods, and since the game is open-source, the modding SDK is… the source code! Yeah, it’s not a joke; SkullRush is licensed under GPLv3 (some things it depends on are licensed otherwise, but yeah the source code is GPLv3).
Although it doesn’t have complete artwork yet, or crazy engine features, or anything of the sort, what it does have is fun. Indeed, in the couple of LAN sessions I’ve had with friends, we have discovered that SkullRush is thrilling despite its flaws. And don’t worry, I have tested the game on worse network conditions than LAN (it seems to do fine even at 80ms, can’t guarantee great smoothness beyond that).
Since I’m an honest dev, I’ll have you know that the game isn’t perfect (it’s not finished though). There are bugs that lead to crashes. Although I have set up a journaling system that sends me crash reports, it’s tough to catch ‘em all. Also, the game doesn’t look as polished as an AAA title. Finally, it’s Windows-only. I’ve tried running it on Linux with Wine, but I encountered several issues and concluded that it was probably not feasible. I would be glad to provide support for other operating systems, but the problem is that I don’t know how to compile my networking library for things other than Windows: https://github.com/Ohmnivore/HaxeNet [EDIT]: Thanks to Robochase6000 HaxeNet now works on Mac, but I don’t have a Mac so I can’t compile the game for it Sad
Links
- Homepage: https://ohmnivore.github.io
- GitHub repo: https://github.com/Ohmnivore/SkullRush
Controls
- A: Move left
- D: Move right
- W: Jump
- Q: Dash left
- E: Dash right
- S: Dash down
- Mouse: Aim
- Mouse click: Fire
Then there’s the concept of rocket jumping: While in the air, fire a rocket. If it explodes in a sufficiently close range, not only does it make you jump higher, but it also allows you to chose from one of four actions:
- W to double jump
- Q to dash to the left
- E to dash to the right
- S to dash down-ward. If you happen to collide with a player on your way down, you’re granted an insta-kill.
Wall jump: Once you leave the ground, you can wall-jump, but only once until you touch the ground again.