Platformer Engine

I did a little googling to find an engine. There are a few candidates, but nothing super-high quality.
I'm not sure that you're going to find anything great for VB, it's simply not a common language for game development.

If you know any C# or Java, you'll have a lot more luck.
C++ is the language of choice, but there's a steep learning curve and you probably are more interested in learning games,
not languages.

Unity and Unreal are really good engines with intuitive interfaces and solid documentation.

Yeah, I guessed that i'd probably have to end up going over to C++. I guess it's worth the time
Unity and Unreal are the two engines i've looked at, but that's all 3D work; so i'll use that when I want to make a 3D game.
Does anyone know of any 2D platformer engines? Preferably ones with good slope tolerance code etc. I would be willing to learn C++ for it, but all up it's not a complicated game idea.

You could always incorporate tile editor and engine (Tiled), a 2d physics engine (chipmunk-physics) and use a standard multimedia API set (SFML).

The 2d physics engine will handle all your collisions, slope-handling, movements, and anything else you would need to move and re-act in your world.

SFML would handle all your window, input, graphics, and audio handling for you.
Tiled would give you an editor to create your maps, and a library to read your maps into your game.

Just a thought. My old blog (in my sig) details using SFML and chipmunk-physics

C++ is the language of choice, but there's a steep learning curve and you probably are more interested in learning games,

This is wrongly formatted and really depends on what you actually want to accomplish. So i add to it, C++ is the language of choice to develop AAA titles at major developers. By the looks of your first post this should be changed too "C++ is the language of choice to not come in contact with for a long long while".

I pretty much come from where you are at now, "created some simple games and want more". I chose C# to be my language which is a pretty easy language and you should get allong with it very quickly since you have experience with VB. I use C# and XNA to develop games and it's great. You have a very user friendly language with XNA to get into game design right away. It has all the freedom you need to create anything you want. You have plenty tutorials for it and you have animated sprited roaming your screen in a matter of hours.

If you are looking for something without much coding but significantly less freedom you should have a look at Game Maker, but i don't have any experience with that. I believe you won't have to code anything and create sidescrollers with it.

Thank you BeerNutts i'll be sure to look into that series of programs as an option.

Menyo, I am very much interested in learning a language but at this moment I can just about grip VB without bringing in something else. In saying that I am going to learn C++, just not right now; so I agree with you. I originally used GameMaker for the prototype of the game and I loved using it, unfortunately it didn't do quite what I needed it to do.

Either way, i'll give the programs a go BeerNutts and thanks for everyones help!

If your serious about game programming drop VB, like already said it's not a common language to create games in.

If you scale yourself in as a beginning programmer you should really leave C++ and go C# first, like i said, with XNA you will have something happening that looks like a game within a couple of hours. If your going to mess with C++ and SFML make that days if not weeks. To add to this, VB uses the same basic .net libraries as C# so you should get allong with the language pretty quick. Yes C++ is more powerfull and versatile in it's core, but you can only use this as an advantage if you have a lot of experience. XNA provides you with a full game librarie thats very well supported and has a huge community, you are free to develop for PC and have to pay regular Xbox live fee to release for the Xbox or win phone.

I thought I'd hate C# but as far as being able to create simple games quickly, it can really excel. I'd never switch over to it primarily, but it's a fantastic language to learn game concepts with! Java is also perfect for this, with the added benefit that I actually feel Eclipse is better than Visual Studio.

I originally learned with VB and I'm so glad I left it behind. Even back then, when it was still supported, it was simple but terrible at the same time.

In summary...

• Visual Basic (VB) -> RUN AWAY!!
  
• C# or Java -> Time to make some gamez!
  
• C++ -> Time to hit the books for a few weeks!
  

If you're still a beginner, I'd recommend GameMaker. You can download it for free and it's great for prototyping ideas without being an expert programmer.

Does anyone know of any 2D platformer engines? Preferably ones with good slope tolerance code etc.

I'm going to predict that doing anything with Tiled and slopes will make you sad.

You can do 2D games with Unity, and their physics system will handle slopes nicely... You'll have to jump through some hoops to make their 3D engine look 2D. Also, the scripting can be done in Javascript or C#, which is nice.

When you get some more skills, This game is open source (if the whole android thing isn't a dealbreaker). Even if you don't use it, it would be good to see how somebody else does things.

Thank you so much everyone! It's great to see such an amazing community, something really hard to find these days!
I'm going to take a look into C# and hopefully that will allow me to create better games, understand programming better and give me a wider range of game engines! Hopefully I can come back soon and say 'Hey everyone! Look what I made!'