2.5D beat em up - where to start?

[norton120]

I've played with Phaser for a little bit and I like the framework, I would really like to make a beat em up style sidescroller with a short z axis, a la Double Dragon, Streets of Rage etc. where the players can move up and down along a semi 3d plane. 

Question is, can this even be done with Phaser? Can anyone recommend a tutorial, or a Github project where I can check out the source code? I have been googling for hours and I don't know if I am missing the right keywords, or if there is just zero information on the web about this. 

Any direction would be a huge help. 

[drhayes]

Yes, Phaser could do this.

I don't know of any particular tutorials, but I would start by depth sorting your sprites like this example: http://phaser.io/examples/v2/groups/depth-sort

[norton120]

Cool, thank you for the lead. 

So far I've had some luck by setting the player's gravity to false when he overlaps with the ground sprites, and allowing him to move up / down within that sprite. Haven't quite figured out jumping yet, or ledges / platforms.. as I do, I'll share more for posterity.

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[mattstyles]

I'm not convinced that a game like Streets of Rage (man I battered that game in as a kid!) needs any concept of gravity does it?

The characters are basically projected flat, the only interesting bit is working out collisions so that if the Y component differs too much between entities, even though they collide, they will not actually collide and you have some illusion of depth. I guess the same is try for depth sorting which is actually controlled by the Y component again.

Characters never fall, they simply remain within a fixed bounds, i.e. not too high or not too low on the screen. I'd treat jump as a discrete, separate operation, so that, whilst you might have an upper bounds check on the screen (to stop players walking off the top) you simply ignore it for jumps. 

To do ledges I think you'd simply introduce hitboxes and check the position of the feet on an entity vs the size of the hitbox representing the ledge.