Possum


Possum: The Adventures of Skitch is an incomplete video game starring Skitch Possum. It was to feature over 100 levels. The game was being created by several members of the Jazz Jackrabbit community, but eventually work ground to a halt.

Origins

The game was conceived in a JMMB thread. There had been no suggestion at that time of a sequel to Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and members were discussing making their own. When it became apparent that legal issues would make this impossible, they decided to make an original game. A theme was decided on and a team formed.

Team Members

  • Blackman – Web designer
  • Bluez – Voice artist
  • Dino – Project lead, Designer, Sprite artist
  • Fquist – Web designer, Level designer
  • Gizmo – Graphics artist
  • MetalWarrior – Assistant programmer, later lead programmer
  • Noraa – Tileset artist
  • Roaster – Lead programmer, later networking programmer
  • Syntax – Level designer

Plot

Skitch Possum lives on Road Island, and must defeat Dweasle Purple Weasle. He is assisted in this task by a dog named Jagger.

Technical details

The game was based around the VersaTILE engine, which used 3D graphics acceleration to draw 2D graphics. The team called this “5D”. Like in Jazz Jackrabbit 2, the playing field was made up of graphical tiles, 32 pixels wide and 32 pixels high. Those tiles were grouped in tilesets. Tiles were placed on layers. There were two types of layers: array layers arranged the tiles in a grid, and Vector layers allowed tiles to be placed anywhere. Tiles also had alpha channels, allowing them to have varying levels of transparency.

External links