Step One : Decide on the visual/level rules of the game.

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You know what's really weird. JNKPlat 2018 only used 39 tiles, horizontally, not 40.
I'm not really sure why I opted for that, but I'm guessing it had something to do with the 3DS's resolution.
Yet, the game scrolls, so it probably actually isn't that, is it..?
Curious.

Anyhoo, I decided it might be a good idea to make use of all those level files that already exist, and so I started off the project by grabbing a level string, popping it into the engine, and displaying the tiles on the screen.
.. That sounds like a really simple task, but let me assure you, it was an all-day job to get this far.



Which is lovely!
You can spot some issues, though, if you compare it to the 3DS edition.



Since I haven't yet properly loaded in the level data, and am just lazily flinging it onto the screen, there's a couple of quirks.
The spikes aren't attaching to nearby walls, nor are grippy hooks, and there's a bunch of bats where there should be flame throwers.

But other than that, it managed to load and display in a decent manner.
The display is currently "Full level", but I'm likely going to add a zoomed in camera at some point, which should help for smaller resolutions.

Today will be about finishing off the level loader, and getting things moving in a decent manner.
I also need to boot up my old-old windows laptop (and probably wait about 5 hours for it to do a hundred updates) and see how well it can cope with the speed of the engine.
I expect it won't be too bad, but .. you never know!

Music needs to be done, too. I think I'll do what I did with the SpikeDislike engine, and try to do some new JNKPlat MP3's. It's been a long, long time since I did ingame music like that.

And then, of course, coding Platdude.
.. Yep.. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be done for this one.

Don't expect it to show up on Platdude's birthday on Sunday!!
Really should've planned this out earlier on in the year!