Easy Breather Video Game

Unresolved Issues

Character sprite animations still need work, not only for Samantha, but also for enemy characters.
I am developing better non-tiled backgrounds for all levels. I have found a cave entrance to place at the end of the fourth level — this may be two pieces of animated scenery, one behind Samantha and one in front of her.
How does one make a swimming hero in Power Game Factory? Currently, my aquatic level crashes PGF (black screen, no response to keyboard).
The human bosses, Mr. Miasma and Karman McKnockside, should be vulnerable to gravity after Samantha defeats them.

The badge on the left downloads the readme.doc file; the badge on the right downloads the actual game.
Here are some design notes for a video game featuring the Easy Breather, created with the Power Game Factory. I have been prototyping the game on a 400MHz single-processor G4 Power Mac, and recently acquired a Mac mini in order to refine the game. My readme.doc file at FileFront explains the keyboard controls in this game, for the benefit of players who do not use Power Game Factory.

The heroine, Samantha Dawn Lewis, is a tall, athletic, well-developed blonde with blue eyes, gleaming white teeth, powerful lungs and a soprano voice that is at once seductive and foreboding. Despite her excellent body image, Samantha is normally fully clothed. She eats sensibly, is highly intelligent, has never consumed tobacco and is reluctant to take another human life unjustly.
Samantha’s heroic goal is to rescue an innocent man from a powerful sorceress. Along the way she must not only defeat villains, but also rescue innocent people. On land she carries no physical weapons, using only her fists and her super breath to attack. Her baby-blue catsuit protects her from the cold and from most enemy projectiles. She can also stomp on enemy characters to destroy or weaken them.
Samantha is likely to encounter enemies such as the following:
- Robots equipped with flamethrowers, lasers, etc.
- Bat-winged gremlins that throw tobacco smoke bombs or exhale cigar smoke
- Aquatic predators: jellyfish, electric eels, etc.
- Boss villains that may or may not be human
- Non-sentient obstacles: rolling boulders, spiked pits, unstable platforms, etc.
Some powerup items (extra time, hit point recovery, etc.) are enclosed in crates, which are so brittle that the wood shatters when Samantha stomps on them. Our sexy heroine can also get powerups by releasing innocent people from dungeon cells or other restraints.
Samantha should not be shown as dying more than once in the game, as I consider “lives” to be a misleading term when used of video game heroes. Her health display should resemble that in Magic Sword: Vitality gauge overflow adds one to the life counter; underflow subtracts one from the life counter unless the life counter is already zero. If PGF does not allow that, then loss of a “life” should leave Samantha alive but stunned, as in Donkey Kong Country. She loses health when struck by an enemy, and recovers health by collecting first aid boxes and various kinds of food. Green oxygen globes replenish her supply for super breath.
In aquatic stages Samantha will, obviously, be unable to use her super breath underwater. If properly equipped, she can still attack foes and defend against attacks. Although I would like Samantha to swim nude for contrast with the water background, I am re-creating her swimming sprites with a yellow and blue bikini.
Here is a tentative sequence of levels for the game:
1. First outdoor winter level; snowmen throw snowballs at Samantha
2. Second outdoor winter level; gremlins throw smoke bombs at Samantha
3. First boss villain: Giant human-shaped robot armed with a laser
4. Inner-city winter level; robots shoot laser beams at Samantha
5. Granite cave level, possibly with lava pools and unstable platforms; robots shoot flames at Samantha
6. Second boss villain: Dragon exhaling tobacco smoke
7. Lake-surface level, with islands and ice floes
8. Underwater level in which Samantha swims nude or in a bikini à la Misty Hyman, armed with an underwater rifle
9. Third boss villain: Robot submarine armed with torpedoes, machine guns or both (currently a clone of the first robot, but with PGF grenades)
10. Cemetery level
11. Abandoned meat factory level
12. Fourth boss villain: Mr. Miasma (level includes an electric fan that, when activated by Samantha, deflects Mr. Miasma’s putrid breath)
13. Final showdown: Samantha vs. Karman McKnockside (Karman attacks Samantha with clouds of tobacco smoke)
A future version of Power Game Factory should allow the use of distinct sprites for partial hit point recovery, each such powerup returning a different amount of health to the player.

The picture on this page was made with DAZ Studio. The following sites provide useful content for game creation:
Female Anatomy for Artist: huge source of hi-res female pose photos

FindSounds.com has many links to categorized sound files in AIFF, AU and WAV formats. Some of those links are defunct, unfortunately.
The Freesound Project, based in Spain, solicits contributions from the public.
Game Sprite Archives: This site has hundreds of animated and static sprites from various video games. Check out the affiliates list for related sites.
Mario Fan Games Galaxy: This unofficial site features artwork, sounds and even a couple of TrueType fonts from Mario games.
Micro Heroes: You can use these low-resolution superhero templates in a graphics program that allows layering, or print them out for use with traditional art media. This site contains nudity (but no genitalia on the male figures).
Noodle Flix: Use this software to create talking-head animations for use between levels in your PGF project. If you like the demo, why not buy the full version?
The People’s Sprites has a variety of public-domain sprites and templates.
SpriteLib GPL: These royalty-free sprites have been used for both desktop and mobile games.
The Spriters’ Resource: Among all the sprite collections is a tutorial on making graphics in the style of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
The Video Game Atlas: This site has a large collection of level maps from many video games.

The following sites are maintained by other Power Game Factory users:

Angel Fires’ site
Big Gulp Games: The owner of this site was kind enough to provide a raft-like platform for my use as an ice floe.
Retro Palette: This site has free Automator scripts for Mac OS X 10.4, as well as PGF elements.