Pitfall
Full run start to finish
About the Project
My first project at BUas, a recreation of the classic Atari game Pitfall built on top of a custom C++ engine.
Team: Solo
Duration: 8 weeks
Engine: Custom C++ engine
Overview
For this project I was given a bare-bones engine with a basic 2D renderer and debug drawing utilities. From there, everything else was mine to build, including a tile rendering system, a basic 2D camera, game states, and the full Pitfall gameplay on top of it.
It was only my second C++ project next to my intake and my first at BUas, so a lot of what I was doing was new territory. The source code is long gone, but the three recordings below give a good picture of where it ended up.
The Game
Early collision detection
Level traversal and ladder movement
By the end of the 8 weeks the game had most of the core Pitfall experience covered. The player could move through the level, climb ladders, and swing on ropes. Obstacles included tumbleweeds, snapping alligators, and the iconic pits that open and close over time. Scattered throughout were collectables to pick up, and the game had a proper start and end state bookending the whole run.
On the engine side, the level itself was built with the tile rendering system I put together, and collision was handled manually for each of the obstacle types.
This was only my second C++ project and my first at BUas, so a lot of what I built here I was doing for the first time: tile rendering, manual collision resolution, a scrolling 2D camera, game state management. It was also my first time using Perforce in a studio-style workflow. The source code is long gone, but looking at the recordings it’s a reasonable foundation for where everything that came after it started from.