A Hotline Miami-inspired top-down shooter.
Version of GCC used: 7.3.0 MinGW
Extract to wherever you like, then add the bin folder to PATH. See the "Prerequisites" part of this article for instructions.. Skip STEP 3.
This version of GCC properly works with SFML, so it's strongly recommended to do this even if you already have GCC installed.
Version of SFML Used: 2.5.1
Direct Link to SFML. This version is specifically built for the version of GCC provided above.
Extract the ZIP, and copy the contents of lib and bin to the appropriate directories in the project folder.
To build, simply run mingw32-make in the root directory of this project. To run the application, navigate to the bin folder, and run main.exe.
You can also open this project in Visual Studio Code, and Press Ctrl+Shift+B to build and run.
To launch the INJECTED! Level Editor, open the compiled main.exe by passing -editor argument.
Command: main.exe -editor
Default Level Directory: assets/editor_default_level/
Optionally, you can specify the level you wish to create/modify by passing the path to level folder.
Command: main.exe -editor assets/levels/test_level_1/.
The / at the end is compulsory.
DO NOT USE SPACES IN THE NAME OF YOUR LEVEL FOLDER
Moving around the view is done using the WASD keys. Hold Shift to speed up the movement. Use the scroll-wheel to adjust the zoom level.
Press the ~ Key (Tilde Key) to switch to Input mode. In this mode, you can choose which Tile Map you want to modify.
Press T or L to switch to Level Tile Map.
Press W to switch to Walls Tile Map.
Then, enter the tile number of the texture you want to use. Finally, press Enter to confirm your changes. You can always press Esc to cancel any ongoing input.
Now, you can Left-click on the map to paint the tiles. To paint other tiles, you can use the input mode again. Alternatively, pressing Alt and scrolling with the mouse will allow you to cycle through the tile numbers. To delete tiles, you have two options:
- Set tile number to 0 (corresponds to an empty tile) or,
Right-clickon existing tiles
You can also middle-click on any existing tile to choose that specific tile's number as the current tile number.
Press D while in the input mode to switch to Decorations editing.
Decorations are sprite objects on the level that can optionally have collision enabled on them. They can be placed anywhere on the map (even outside the tilemap boundaries).
In the editor, they are shown as a preview. Left-click to place the decoration, and Right-click to delete a decoration.
Press C to toggle collisions. You can hold Q at anytime to dim decorations that have collisions disabled.
Holding Alt and scrolling the mouse wheel will cycle through all the available decorations.
Similarly, Holding Ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel will rotate the decoration.
Hold Shift while doing this to have much finer control over the rotation.
You can press R to reset the rotation if needed.
There are a few things to be mindful of when doing fine rotations:
-
Bounding boxes in SFML are always axis-aligned (always a rectangle with sides parallel to the x and y axes). This means rotations like 45° will have very large bounding boxes and feel janky for the player to navigate around.
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Only 90° rotations will rotate the bounding boxes properly. Other rotations will grow the bounding box in weird ways.
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Keep rotations for collidable decorations at multiples of 90° (and around ± 5°) for the best player experience.
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Rotations have no additional impact on the rendering of decorations. Feel free do any rotations with non-collidable decorations!
Press H while in input mode to switch to Consumable Hearts editing. Left-click to place the heart, and Right-click to delete a heart.
A heart will heal the player 1 health when the player touches it.
Make sure to place the heart in places that the player can navigate to! The heart's bounding box is 15 x 13.
The player spawn position is represented by a special texture in the editor:
Press P while in input mode to switch to Player Spawn editing. Simply press Left-click to move the player spawn.
By default, the player spawn is located outside the tilemap boundaries, at -32, -32.
The player bounding box is always 16 x 16, which is also the size of the special texture (see above). Use the red boundaries of the texture to help perfectly align your player spawn, if desired.
Important:
- The game automatically generates a boundary for all levels 64 pixels outside the tilemap boundary. The player spawn must be within this boundary or the player will be unable to move.
- No collision checks are done by the editor for invalid positions. Make sure to playtest your map after changing the player spawn position!
The enemy spawn positions are represented by a special texture in the editor:
The blue arrow specifies the direction faced by the enemy.
Press E while in input mode to switch to Enemy Spawns editing. A preview (similar to Decorations) is shown when in this mode. Press Left-click to place an enemy spawn, and press Right-click to remove an enemy spawn.
The enemy bounding box is always 16 x 16, which is also the size of the special texture (see above). Use the red boundaries of the texture to help perfectly align your enemy spawn, if desired.
Hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse-wheel to rotate the enemy 90°.
Important:
- No collision checks are done by the editor for invalid positions. Make sure to playtest your map after changing the enemy spawn positions!
Closing the editor will automatically save the level.
level.png stores Level Tile Map data. Tile number data is stored in red channel of the pixels.
walls.png stores Walls Tile Map data. Tile number data is stored in red channel of the pixels.
decor.txt stores Decorations Data. Format:
<texture location> <x-coordinate> <y-coordinate> <rotation (in degrees)> <collision (0 or 1)>
player_spawn.txt stores Player Spawn Data. Format:
<x-coordinate> <y-coordinate>
enemy_spawns.txt stores Enemy Spawns Data. Format:
<x-coordinate> <y-coordinate> <rotation (in degrees)>
hearts.txt stores Consumable Hearts Data. Format:
<x-coordinate> <y-coordinate>
All rotations are clockwise.
Missions are the campaigns you can play in "INJECTED!". By default, the vanilla "INJECTED!" mission is included with every copy of the game.
The missions directory is assets/missions/. Placing a mission folder there will make it show up in the main menu, provided the required files exist.
Creating a custom mission or modifying an existing mission is very simple, as detailed below:
These files are used in the mission select screen in the main menu, when there is more than one mission present in the missions directory.
title.txt simply has the title for your mission. Keep it short!
thumbnail.png should be a image file of ratio 2:1. It is simply a thumbnail or icon for your mission.
description.txt should include a short description of your mission. Make sure to check how the text looks in the selection menu, as there is no code present for word wrapping.
The mission_details.txt file sets the outline for your mission. Each line in the file is a sequence of your mission. There are 5 types of supported sequences:
The specified image file will be loaded and shown to the user, until the user presses Left-click. The next sequence will be played after a 2 second fade. The image file should be of ratio 16:9. The idea is to use these transitions for storytelling.
Format: TRANSITION <image file path>
The specified music track will start playing (in a loop), until another MUSIC sequence is reached. Having multiple MUSIC sequences is handy if you want to use different music tracks for dialogue and gameplay, for example. Similarly, use this if you want different music tracks for each level.
This is the only way to get music working in INJECTED!, so you must have at least one MUSIC sequence (preferably at the start of the mission details file) if you want a track to be played during your mission.
Format: MUSIC <music file path>
Supported Files: ogg and wav formats
Very similar to MUSIC in the sense that a specified audio track will start playing. However, this one will not loop. It will automatically fade out during the next fade sequence. Use this for voiceover during transition or credits sequences. You can also use it to play a short audio clip at the beginning of a level.
Format: AUDIO <audio file path>
Supported Files: ogg and wav formats
A level will be loaded from the specified folder. The level will be playable until all enemies are killed, or until the player dies. If all enemies are killed, the next sequence will be played after a 2 second fade. If the player dies instead, the restart menu will show up, allowing the user to choose from 3 options:
- Restart level
- Return to main menu
- Quit the game
Format: LEVEL <level folder path>
Although named credits, this sequence type allows for any text file to be displayed until the user presses Left-click. This is similar to the TRANSITION sequence, except it simply needs a text file. Make sure to check how the text looks in-game, as there is no code present for word wrapping.
Format: CREDITS <text file path>
Important: All paths in the mission detail file are relative to the mission folder itself.
For a complete example of the mission_detail.txt file, please refer to the included "INJECTED!" mission.
Launching main.exe with the -debug parameter passed may be handy, as it enables a few test shortcuts:
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Press
Oto simulate victory (all enemies will be killed) Use this to check your mission structure without having to finish levels. -
Press
.to show hitboxes for enemies and the player Use this to check for collision issues. -
Press
Lto simulate defeat (restart screen will be shown) Not very useful except if you simply want to keep replaying the level for testing etc.
-debug parameter will also enable frametime spike logs in the console. Please ignore the warnings.