The Impossible Game (Windows, Linux)

The Impossible Game
Developer: Grip Games Publisher: FlukeDude Platforms: Windows, Linux Released internationally: May 8, 2014 This game has unused code. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a notes page

To do: Document hidden commandline arguments. Add debug strings and assert statements.

The Impossible Game is a music-based 2D platformer originally developed by Fluke Games (then known as FlukeDude). It was first released in 2009 for the Xbox 360 via the Xbox Live Arcade service, followed by ports to mobile phones, PSP, and PlayStation 3 a year later. The game was known for its simplistic-yet-challenging gameplay, and enjoyed a brief period of popularity before falling into relative obscurity.

The PC port (which was outsourced to Grip Studios, who made the earlier PSP port) is notable for being released a year after Geometry Dash, just as that game was beginning to take off in popularity. The amount of unused or incomplete features, the numerous bugs that this port suffers from (especially the Windows release), the fact that this is heavily based off of the PSP version, and the fact that there was only ever one update released, reveals the true nature of this port's existence: a rushed, unsuccessful, and forgotten bid to cash in on the success of Geometry Dash. It probably didn't help that this was Grip's first PC release, with pretty much all of their prior work being PSP and mobile games.

In yet another attempt to copycat Geometry Dash, it also includes a rather sorry excuse for a level editor, which is an external application written in Java.

Sub-Pages

Notes

Unused Code

Unused Custom Texture Loader

An inverted version of the normal background gradient, being loaded as a custom background

To do: This currently crashes the game, but strangely works fine in the editor. Figure out how to get this working in-game, if possible

The objects that control the color of the background have an unused parameter to call a specific texture instead of a color. When set to true, the game will attempt to read a string (instead of the usual color ID) from the following chunk of level data. Since the game has no way to dynamically load spritesheets, the selection of custom backgrounds is limited to textures that have already been loaded (which isn't much). If this feature had made it farther into development, it is possible that custom levels would have been able to include sprites and spritesheets bundled with them, but there is no known proof of this.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

XML Compiler

Within the game's level editor, in a file named "FragmentConvertor.java", is a small tool to compile a properly-formatted XML into the game's aforementioned atlas format. It is never called by the editor itself, since the editor just reads uncompiled XML files directly. It's possible that the inclusion of this tool means that the game would have been able to load an atlas from a level, if the custom texture loader had ever been properly finished.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Custom Level Format Version

Both the game and the editor read the first four bytes of any custom level file as an integer, which is then run through a switch statement. This value serves as an indicator for the file format version. At some point in development the game was meant to be able to have different subroutines to handle future formats; since the lifespan of this game was so short, the only version that was ever implemented was version 0. No code to load other versions exists in either the editor or the game itself, and the aforementioned switch statement only has one case.

Unlisted Objects in Editor

Despite having full support for processing them, the objects that control fade effects and camera effects are all unable to be viewed or placed within the editor.

Unused Levels

Download Unused Levels File: The Impossible Game - Unused Levels.zip (3.2 MB) (info)

There exist two byte-for-byte identical unused levels within "editor/levels/", named "doom.lvl" and "ěšřčěřžč řžčřžřřč.lvl". They are modified versions of the final level "Phazd", and were seemingly meant to test the custom level loader. They both contain objects (such as a trigger that vertically flips the camera) that are used ingame, but cannot be used within the level editor. Neither can be completed, and the latter will fail to load without renaming it first.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Oddities

Custom Level Jump Height

To do: Create a video comparison. Calculate an approximation of how much shorter the jump is.

The player jumps slightly lower when loaded into a custom level than when loaded into a main level. Phazd is the exception to this (see below).

Phazd Level Data

The fifth and final level of the game, Phazd, was remade from the ground up for the PC version. Located within the game's res folder is a folder named phazed, which unsurprisingly contains this level. The strange thing about this is that every other level is hardcoded into the game's executable; routines to load these levels just consist of function calls that generate objects. When the game attempts to load Phazd, it instead calls the routine normally used for loading a custom level and points it to this folder.

Leftovers from One Epic Game

The file "t_en.bin" located within the "res" folder is a leftover from one of Grip Games' earlier PSP titles, One Epic Game, where it was used to store strings related to dialogue and system messages. The copy present here is a byte-for-byte match with the copy in One Epic Game, and serves no purpose. The game will load it and proceed to do nothing with it, and the game still works fine if the file is dummied out.

Interestingly a modified version of this file is also present in the PSP version, where it is used, and stores the autosave warning text unique to that port. Bizzarely it still contains every string from One Epic Game, rendering most of the file unused.