2dplatformer12345678910 - Tumblr blog

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The end of the game / Evaluation

As the project is coming to an end, id like to show my final product, the ups, the downs and the things that I would have done if I had more time.

Things that went well :

The art, All of the art that I did, from not being a previously very good designer. but I suppose I have found not only a passion for doing 2d art, but also found out that with a bit of practice, I'm not actually half bad at it. I made my entire level by hand, from the ground you walk on to the background, crystals, rock the enemy ai and anything else you can see. The tile map I had originally found very awkward to work with, but like I said with a bit of practice I was able to make it work and eventually I was able to import it into unreal after a long time and start building the level I have now. When I was making my squid enemy, I had originally thought I had failed with the sprite sheet, this is because the squid's tentacles were too far out, meaning that they would not fit into the grid. But as of today with some help I have fixed it and it has been added to the game making it a better experience and also slightly more challenging.

Coding / Functions, all of my functions surprising went very well considering this was my first project, of course I finished them with a lot of help but nevertheless I'm surprised most if not all of my coding worked! the most recent thing I did being - making the enemy ai so when the plyer hits the collision box of the ai it will teleport back to the start of the level, this is done by having an event start, then check that the collision was between the ai and the character, and if it is true, teleport it back to the beginning. I did the same thing will death boxes on the ground in the pits that you fall in. Something else that I did which I was very proud of was making a Triger which will but down 2 doors in different areas at the same time, so the player is unable to go back the way that they came to get more coins. This is done by : setting the trigger as untouched, this means that when touched, it wont be able to trigger again. then, when the player collides with it, the trigger checks that that it was a player who collided with it, then it goes through a timeline to make the door go down or, (because I did it in two different ways) the other door will translate up 450 pixels and from there, they cant be changed or can go back, meaning you cant completely shut yourself out.

This that could be improved or added for next time -

Audio, I was unable to add audio because I spent too much time on the game itself, building it, coding etc. I didn't end up having enough time to add it. I feel as if the game is slightly a let down without it and I wish I had the chance to add it now. I was going to add a some kind of remix of the subnautica start menu music, this is because it is a beautiful kind of ominous.

Death animation, Unfortunately while making the animations, i had completely forgotten about the death animation and it went right over my head. This means that I had never actually made it. Although, with the way that you die in the game, I don't think that it would have been seen, I may have been able to add a delay to the teleportation, but it may have looked strange.

Animations, Personally I think that the animations looked slightly rushed or just bad in general, the jump animation was unfinished but became the final product because of the time restraint. the idle animation wasn't the best it could be. I think that all of the animations could have been heavily improved.

Overall everything ended up going great! I really enjoyed making the project, it really helped me learn a bunch of new things that I most likely would not have known before. As-well as this I cannot wait for the next project being an FPS.

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HUDs

Game 1 - Dead space

Dead space's HUD looks astronomical. It is incredibly unique and almost looks like a holographic board which you can interact with. With other things being like the health meter being a line on his back, something that I have never seen before in a game, as-well as a stastis meter on the right of the health meter, although I am unsure of what it does because I have never played the game before, it looked fantastic and really high tech. My game can relate ever so slightly, this being the fact that there is such a little about of HUD that can be seen, the only HUD you can see in my game is the coin and counter, but I most likely won't be able to reflect anything else from this game because not only is the game 3d, it is also way out of my skill level.

Game 2 - Persona 5

Opposite of dead space, persona 5 seems as if the HUD is everywhere. It's constantly up in your face almost like its going to fly out of the screen. yes, the HUD does look incredible it's very bright, colourful and very cool looking, yet it is defiantly a bit much as it can obstruct gameplay, this meaning that players may not be able to see certain things while trying to battle someone/something. I will most definitely not be using any kind of prompts for this game, the HUD is way to much for my game. Although persona 5 may be beautiful, it wouldn't fit my underwater themed game.

game 3 - mirrors edge

As Dead space, the HUD shown in the image looks almost holographic, being able to hold it in your hand. It's very interesting. the pause menu looks similar to the playstation exclusive game Spiderman : miles morales or the first game, as the maps are both drained of colour yet look like grand citys. Although i think this is good, I also don't think it will help my game become any better as i am in no need for holographic or colourless images.

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playtesting 2

The second and final set of playtesting has finished, I has another 4 people play my game and here are the responses. (may have to click on the photos to be able to see the charts better). Overall I think that the feedback that I have received was fairly positive and mainly had people complimenting the game, there were a few suggestions such as checkpoints and maybe the squid should chase you, yet these are good ideas I will not be able to add them, even though I most definitely would have. There was someone saying the game was hard, unfortunately. 100% of people said that they thought the art style was good, I was particularly worried about this because of the glitching I had with the level design, I thought that it may interfere with what the art looks like. But, thankfully it may not have. The average rating for the game was a 7, this is the mean of 5,7,8,8. I am very pleased with this as I did not expect the game to get such a high ranking like it did.

Another thing that was severely liked was the squids, there was a few times it was mentioned as good, or they loved it. I also think that the squids was a fantastic addition. Despite this, someone informed me with a very valid point saying "there's a lot of filler areas" meaning there wasn't anything to do but walk. I plan to do this less in the future as I had noticed it personally before I read this feedback.

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Gameplay!

Here is the final product, with all of the glitchy lines and weird end screen. Matter of fact I fixed the end screen issue and the squid issue where it would randomly add a second squid when I only put one down. I believe that from the time I had, I have accomplished not exactly what I desired but somewhere close to it. I originally wanted to add a boss fight, with a master kraken, but I didn't get enough time. In a previous post I mentioned about the things I didn't get to add and I won't reinstate them for you so you don't have to read the same thing twice. :)

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Art examples - inspiration

I have taken inspiration from this for the background of the game which is currently in development, these are from what I think ancient Roman ruins,

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Limbo - Game research

Limbo is a puzzleplatform game developed by Playdead Limbo is a 2D sidescroller, The player guides a boy through dangerous areas as he searches for his sister. Playdead called the style of play "trial and death", and used gory imagery for the boy's deaths to make the player move away from unworkable solutions. Thoughts game is good, it will also not make much of a difference to my game, a similarity may be the choose a side area, but it doesn't lead to uncertain death so maybe not. I would have take other things from the puzzle to maybe add into my game to raise the difficulty, yet I never got the chance. My personal thoughts of the game are that it is pretty nice looking, although its probably a game that I wouldn't play as it seems a little dark, good overall though.

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Castle Crashers - Game research

Castle Crashers is a 2D side scrolling hack and slash video game developed by The Behemoth. The game is set in a medieval time in which a dark wizard steals a mystical crystal and captures four princesses. Four knights are told by the king to rescue the princesses, gain possession of the crystal again, and kill the wizard. This game has a really cool story line and even better art and design. personally I would not use any of the aspects from this game, in mine as they are completely different art styles and game ideas. meaning that it would not be ideal for me to have something like a princess in my game... Overall I think that the game itself is great, but not great for my game.

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Super meat boy - Game research

Super Meat Boy is a 2010 platform game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refene. In the game, the player controls Meat Boy, a red cube shaped character as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl from the game's antagonist Dr. Fetus. The game WOULD seem slightly boring, but actually I believe that it looks really good and a funny take on super Mario bros. Personally I wouldn't take any of this into my game but it's a well developed game.

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Inside - Game research

inside is a 2d puzzle platform game developed by Playdead in 2016 for most devices. The player controls a boy in a dystopic world. Similarly to limbo, solving puzzles and trying not to die. A game like this yet again isn't something that I would be using for my game, same reasons as limbo, (may take some of the puzzles to raise the difficulty). The art style really nice, and the idea of the game isn't unseen, but a good choice as it is uncommon. Personally, this is close to my favourite game out of the ones I've seen.

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Hollow Knight - Game research

Hollow Knight is a 2017 metroidvania video game developed and published by a developer team cherry. In the game, the player controls the Knight, who explores Hallownest, a fallen kingdom plagued by a disease. The art style to this game is heavenly, looking incredible yet unique as-well, from personal experience I don't see any other games looking like this much. I don't think this game with make an impact with mine though, I'm not looking for a new specific art style or animation or anything of the such, this game just really sticks out as being a good example of a 2d platformer.

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BUG FIXING

I have found the main reason my game will crash. While moving around my death box, there is a chance that my game will crash, I'm not sure why this happens but I will attempt to figure it out. This crash has set me back a few times meaning that I have sometimes lost lot of progress to this extremely annoying bug that I cannot fix.

Something else that is bothering me about unreal is the fact that my application is constantly lagging/glitchy which I think is causing the game to freeze and everything else to be unbearably slow.

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I fixed up the door by also having it shut on the other side so you cant loop back around. I also finished the base level, and made a chest at the end of the level which makes the end screen show up with an ominous message. (ill finish later)

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play testing.

Today we did play testing, and i thoroughly enjoyed playing other peoples games getting inspiration for myself. I mostly wrote very positive feedback for other people as most of the other games i played were absolutely phenomenal. The main parts i needed improvement on was i needed less movement in the animations, personally i didn't think there was much movement but apparently there is, As-well as i need to make the performance of the game itself better as the game apparently was freezing at some points. Other than this i had mostly good feedback such as saying that they loved the multi-section or loved the underwater concept. I was nervous, but it went well. :)

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Development Update.

After several crashes, I've eventually been able to continue onwards. In these photos i showcase the updated level design, from the small cave, now being bigger, having a sand start where you enter the cave itself. Inside the cave, i made a multi-section part where you can choose a path, choosing a path and sticking to it will remove your access to the other path.

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SoundTrack

The background music for the game I know I want it to be a little bit muffled so the music also sounds like its underwater, or I just want it to be quieter. I might make my own soundtrack but if I don't, unsurprisingly I would want my soundtrack to be similar to subnautica because it has that suspenseful and suspicious yet satisfying music. And of course because I am in a cave at some point in the game, I want these to somewhat sound like the ambient Minecraft cave sounds (link).

sound tracks i made or founds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiJZkpEuecc (MC cave sounds)

The subnautica video is all of the sounds I think, but I'm only interested in the start game sounds. (not sure which one it is though).

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Fonts (da.font)

There are many different fonts that would be suitable for a game like mind, these could be : 'Marioakart', 'Lemon milk', etc. it's an underwater pixel game. Though there are fonts that make sense versus ones that don't as much. A pixel font like 'mariokart' would make more sense because its pixelated, but something like 'million harmony' wouldn't make as much sense because it looks very similar to cursive, if not the same. A bold font like 'minimal performance' would be okay, because it isn't too cursive but it looks good enough to fit in a game. Depending on if you have text conversations in your game (I don't) the font could make more sense being something a little more cursive, but in a game like mine where it is literally just a word to two and some numbers, you want it to match the game as much as possible.

links to everything I mentioned -

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I have spoken about subnautica before but personally think it has one of the most amazing creative aspects out of all of the underwater games. It may be the most popular, but I think it deserves that title. Every single corner of this game is polished (when you play with amazing graphics so you don't accidentally clip through the floor but apart from that) the game takes place on an alien planet and you need to find your way to escape it. From all of the creatures to landscapes, the style of the game is absolutely amazing. I researched this game because it is one of the main games I am taking inspiration from for my project, I am taking as many aspects from this incredible game as I can and move it to my own game in my own way.