Junkers devlog, episode 00

That character on the home page in games.log is Asuka Muiyo. Junkers is a game about scavengers in a not-so-far-off future.

The plan, from my notes: a fast 2D parkour platformer. Smooth runner controls, a lot of technical movement (wall-jumps, dashes, ledge mantles, cat-passes), with the level design doing most of the work. There is a second mode bolted on too, a Descent-style 3D portal-rendered section for flying a drone around and hacking, closer to System Shock. The platformer is the main game and the drone mode is extra. It is all written from scratch in C11 on SDL3, no engine.

I am going to write this up as I go, roughly a week at a time, with the actual code that went in. Everything in these posts is real code from the repo. The art here is concept and work in progress. The game still draws the player as a plain rectangle for now.

junkers_title.png ─ □ ✕

Early concept art for the look and Asuka's design. A lot has changed since.

mockup_streetlevel.png ─ □ ✕

Concept art for a playable street-level area.

mockup_rooftop.png ─ □ ✕

Concept for the parallax city scrolling behind the action. Still very rough, the palette and detail work are not done.

all posts next: the loop and the arena →