3D Platformer Starter Kit

This is a small, ready-to-play 3D platformer sample game made with Defold inspired by the Kenney 3D Platformer Starter Kit and using his assets.

It's MIT licensed, you can use it freely, e.g. as a starting point for your own game, or as a compact example and learning resource of how a 3D Defold project can be build.

What is included

• Responsive character movement controller with keyboard and mouse or gamepad input support
• Jumping, a mid-air (double) jump, and forgiving jump timing (buffering)
• A camera setup that smoothly follows the player and can be rotated around and zoomed
• Animated characters with additional simple squash, stretch, and 3D dust particles effects
• Collectible coins with billboarded particle effects and sounds
• Static and falling platforms
• A goal flag with win condition, and an automatic round reset
• Custom rendering pipeline with directional lighting, adaptive soft (PCF) shadows, and a custom sky gradient
• A small example level that is easy to edit

Run the project

1. Download and install Defold. This project currently requires Defold 1.13.1 or newer because it uses the Light component.
2. Start Defold and choose Open From Disk….
3. Select this project's game.project file and open the project.
4. In an opened editor select Project ▸ Build to build and run the game locally.

Play the example level

Collect 15 coins, then reach the flag. Five seconds after winning, the player and score reset so you can try again.

• Use WASD, a gamepad's left stick, or the D-pad to move the character relative to the camera.
• Press Space or a gamepad's south face button (e.g. A on Xbox controllers) to jump or double-jump.
• Move the mouse or use the arrow keys or a gamepad's right stick to rotate the camera around the character.
• Use the mouse wheel or gamepad shoulder buttons to change the camera distance (zoom).
• Press Escape to release the captured mouse input. Click inside the game window to capture it again and resume rotating the camera.

Click inside the game window to capture the mouse again.

A few useful Defold terms

If this is your first Defold project, these four terms will help when browsing the editor:

• A collection is a scene, level, or group of objects. game/game.collection is the main scene in this project.
• A game object is a container with a position, rotation, and scale.
• A component gives a game object behavior or content, such as a script, model, sound, camera, or collision object.
• A factory creates game objects while the game is running. This project uses factories for the player, character visuals, and dust effects.

The official Defold building blocks guide explains these concepts with editor examples.

More help is available in the Defold manuals.

Change the example

A good way to learn Defold is to change something in the sample projects, build it, and see what happens. These are some places to begin:

What you want to change	Where to look
Run speed, jump height, or gravity	Constants near the top of game/prefabs/player/player.script
Number of coins needed to win	MIN_COINS_TO_WIN in game/game.script
Coin respawn time	RESPAWN_DELAY in game/prefabs/coin/coin.script
Camera distance, smoothing, or sensitivity	Properties in game/camera_follow.script
Platform and coin placement	Open game/game.collection in the Scene Editor

After saving a change, select Project ▸ Build again. The Console and Build Errors tabs at the bottom of the editor are the first places to look if something goes wrong.

Read more details about the project structure and code responsibilities in the Platformer code tour.

Project layout

• game/game.collection is the main scene and example level.
• game/game.script spawns the player and controls the win/reset loop.
• game/prefabs/ contains reusable players, coins, platforms, effects, and environment objects.
• game/camera_follow.script controls the orbit camera.
• assets/ contains models, images, fonts, sounds, particles, and materials.
• shadow_mapping/ contains the custom lighting and shadow render pipeline.
• input/game.input_binding maps keyboard, mouse, and gamepad input.
• docs/ contains the ready-made HTML5 demo.

For a deeper explanation of how the gameplay systems connect, read Platformer code tour.

Object interpolation library

The project uses an external community library for Defold:

• Object Interpolation - smooths the player's visible movement between physics steps.

Its URL is stored in game.project.

Troubleshooting

• Resources are missing: select Project ▸ Fetch Libraries, wait for it to finish, and build again.
• The build fails: open Build Errors and start with the first reported error. Later errors are often caused by the first one.
• The game runs but does not respond to the mouse: click inside the game window. Press Escape when you want to release the mouse.
• You changed a value but nothing happened: save the file and rebuild the project.

If you spot any issue, or have troubles with some other things, write on the Defold forum.

License

The project code is available under the MIT License.

Credits

Assets used in the project by Kenney, based on Kenney 3D Platformer Starter Kit.