E: Undecided 2D action platformer

RickyGC

Updated with playable level, please feel free to give suggestions. I still need an idea where to go with this, but its my first game, so that is good enough for RIGHT now :P

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/135013282/Desktop.html

I know the graphics are glitchy. I just need to get it out... :D



This my first attempt at making a game and I seem to be running into a lot of "well-what-now" questions.

So I decided to post my entry and ask the questions here, since they'll all most likely be regarding my build.

I don't have a completed prototype yet, because I'm still making the level. Being a 2D platformer, I don't think it would be much help posing a bunch of bricks, rays and collisions to play with...

My game idea is a basic 2D action platformer. Begin to end under 5 minutes. You'll run, jump and gun from start to finish. Working in power-ups and "puzzles" (not really sure if that is what it'll be, more of an obstacle...) just need to figure out how to fit the brief and make it fun to play.

Here is my character design so far. Doodled instead of studying and then took it into photoshop for hours of fun :P



To-do:
[list=]Finish character design
Animate Sprites & code them in
Bullets
Enemies
Level layout and design
Background design
Music[/list]

Tuism

Art is not fun.

Find the fun first!

Make a game first!

Not screenshots!

RickyGC

I am working on that. Just see it in perspective. Easy to doodle while working, studying, at varsity etc... I can't just code everywhere and test.

I'm putting it together right now. Designing a level with the different elements in to test.

Just

stomp

on

me @Tuism :P

RickyGC

I spent most of the night reading up on what makes an action platformer "fun" and coding in my double jump. It feels like I'm going so slow

FanieG

@RickyGC - relax mate, don't think Tuism was stomping on you, just nudging you in the right direction. Tone is always hard to interpret in mails, but people here are giving positive critisism and you should see it as such. Anyway...good luck with your test. Hope you got some studying done :)

also Character looks good

RickyGC

I didn't take it in a funny way :) I appreciate the crit everyone gives. That's how I am going to learn... I'm just kidding wrt stomping on me :| I know I need to get a game out first and then the rest

Tuism

Art is fun to work on, but it doesn't give you a game :) Especially for our short comps - the main point is to get a playable game going, and if you have time to art, GREAT. But if you arted first, you'll likely not have time to game. Then you'll be making screenshots and not a game :P

I drone on about this a lot :P

RickyGC

Anyone else using Unity... whenever I make adjustments in the inspector to public variables they remain adjusted even if I go top right > reset. Am I missing something, because its stuffing me around so much!

I nearly have all the game elements done. Just need to finish moving platforms and then my level is ready :D

Got so much coded last night. Took so long to figure out how to actually get the XBOX controller to work and when I figured it out it was just pure facepalm.

FanieG

@RiCkyGC - if you don't want them to change permanently you should only change their values during play mode (while play testing). After you hit stop playing they will automatically revert to the default values (like before you play tested). If you change them while not play testing the values will be permanently changed, until you change them back yourself. If I am wrong about this will someone else please correct me.

Rigormortis

@FanieG, you're right. That's the way it's supposed to work.

@RickyGC, as far as I know the reset button will reset the values of the current instance of an object back to the prefab values of that object. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this excludes transform position.

RickyGC

Updated with playable level, please feel free to give suggestions. I still need an idea where to go with this, but its my first game, so that is good enough for RIGHT now :P

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/135013282/Desktop.html

I know the graphics are glitchy. I just need to get it out... :D

Thanks @Tuism for the bear :D

RickyGC

btw if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix those glitchy white lines on my sprites, please let me know

Rigormortis

@RickyGC, well done with this. :)

The controls feel good, except with jumping from a ledge. [url = http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips-for-making-a-fun-platformer/]Check out point number 4 in this article[/url]. I didn't manage to reach the end because I kept falling of edges, because I would jump too late :/ but all in all I like it. :)

Tuism

Wow dude that's pretty damn well done! :D Love where it is, great in terms of proto, I would love to see what kind of mechanics you have imagined for it :)

RickyGC

Rigormortis said:

@RickyGC, well done with this. :)

The controls feel good, except with jumping from a ledge. [url = http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips-for-making-a-fun-platformer/]Check out point number 4 in this article[/url]. I didn't manage to reach the end because I kept falling of edges, because I would jump too late :/ but all in all I like it. :)

Thanks!

I really spent time working on the double jump. It works when over ground, but once you go over a gap it doesn't work. It must be inside a loop I might need to rethink.

Tuism said:

Wow dude that's pretty damn well done! :D Love where it is, great in terms of proto, I would love to see what kind of mechanics you have imagined for it :)

Thanks :D I envision a lot of things, but once I start implementing them I run into issues, so there is still lots to come.

RickyGC

@Rigormortis, regarding that article :D I actually went through that when I was reading up what makes a good platformer. I might have to check everything once again. I ran into issues when compiling the web build, so I'll go through it tonight. I made provision for the edges on the big jumps. They should have bigger collision boxes...

But I think I might have a problem with my player controller jump script :)

FanieG

@RickyGC - BWHahahah it was so cool to see a chuck bear with wings. I HOSED MYSELF. For a first game this was amazing. Here is my crit on it so far (lots of things I'm sure you have planned to get to anyway. The double jump could do with a seperate animation. The game for me with the best double jumps are from the Jax and Daxter series. Why is dangerous stuff green? Also I got a sticky button warning after pressing my shoot key 5 times. I only needed to click OK to ignore this, but still. Most platformers allow you kill enemies by jumping on their heads. I want to STOMP BEARS!!! Keep up the good work.

RickyGC

@FanieG,

Thanks! I know it looks meh :| the glitchy graphics grind me, but I needed to get a proto out so I could get good crit going :)

The double jump animation will be added in due time.

With regard to controls. I will make the fire button 'CTRL' for the sticky button issue. How many guys play using gamepads, or xbox controllers? I just need to go back and add the inputs for the web build then that should be active.

I still need to decide on what direction the game is heading in story-wise. If its more shooting, then I don't think bear/enemy stomping will be added, but if I decide to add a puzzle twist to it I might add that :)

Nandrew

Heya, this is great progress and you must be learning a lot from your first attempt! Didn't expect it to be this far already.

I can suggest some minor tweaks here and there that you could probably implement quite quickly. First off, have you considered re-mapping the jump to "W" instead of space? Your fingers are already on the A and D keys so it feels quite a bit easier and more intuitive to just bind it to that.

Secondly, if we're looking at the constraints of the comp and you need a nice easy idea for a time limiter, there's always the idea of a gradually crumbling game world. I see you've got some Unity physics behaviours going with the crates, could you use those more frequently in the landscape itself to yield interesting mechanics?

There was something else. Which I forgot. I'm sure it'll come back to me. :P

RickyGC

Thanks @Nandrew :D

Unity is pretty "easy". I expected it to be hard, but we've been dropped in the deep end with Solidworks and Adams at varsity. So figuring stuff out is what I do...

W for jump makes so much sense :| haha
I sit with my hand all over the keyboard, so it never bothered me.

I like the idea of a dynamic landscape! Thanks :D I'll see what I can come up with!

RickyGC

Nothing much has happened with all the work I've had to get through for varsity except brainstorming a concept to fit the scope of the comp.

Is there anyone here willing to chat & give me advice on 3D character modeling and animation rigging? I have an idea for a core gameplay mechanic, but I don't know what goes into character rigging etc.

Pixel_Reaper

@RickyGC I'm not an artist, but I may be able to give some general advice. What do you want to achieve by modeling, rigging and animating a character? do you want to use the opportunity to learn these things? In which case I'm sure there are plenty of guys here on the forums that can help, though I imagine it will be quite a lengthy topic to learn if you have no background with it (I don't know, maybe you do have background and find it easy and fast :P) otherwise there are tonnes of tutorial videos and articles scattered around the interwebs, google shall help you. On the other hand if you just want a quick 3D character for your game to test with, have a look at the Unity asset store, there are plenty of models that come ready rigged and with animations.

Edit: might add a "free" in there with the unity asset store models ;)

RickyGC

Pixel_Reaper said:

@RickyGC I'm not an artist, but I may be able to give some general advice. What do you want to achieve by modeling, rigging and animating a character? do you want to use the opportunity to learn these things? In which case I'm sure there are plenty of guys here on the forums that can help, though I imagine it will be quite a lengthy topic to learn if you have no background with it (I don't know, maybe you do have background and find it easy and fast :P) otherwise there are tonnes of tutorial videos and articles scattered around the interwebs, google shall help you. On the other hand if you just want a quick 3D character for your game to test with, have a look at the Unity asset store, there are plenty of models that come ready rigged and with animations.

Thanks! I need some background knowledge to understand what the boundaries are... I can't try and create a concept that won't work in my current game.

Basically. The idea I have is to be able to grab onto things. The main idea was to be able to grab onto swinging "vines" that would allow me to clear gaps, or interact with objects etc. like grabbing a crate and dragging it.

Now in my mind a rigged character would allow me to easily make all these different situations a reality... or not?

I know I can check out the web, but I have 0 time to sift through content :(

Pixel_Reaper

Yes, If you have a rigged character you can work some magic, with the mecanim system, and with inverse kinematics (IK is a pro feature if I am not mistaken), you could also just make animations specifically for what you want to do,...or you can manipulate armature transforms manually (I tried this once, never again haha, I do not recommend this). Sounds that ideally you want IK, though that being pro could cause difficulty? There might be some IK plug-ins around somewhere for unity, but I don't know of any.

Elyaradine

RickyGC said:

Anyone else using Unity... whenever I make adjustments in the inspector to public variables they remain adjusted even if I go top right > reset. Am I missing something, because its stuffing me around so much!

I could be wrong, but when you reset a component, I believe it sets them to default values. If you haven't set any default values when you declared the variables, then it obviously won't change them back.

Alternatively, you can set the values you want on the component and save the GameObject as a prefab. You can then revert the component back to its prefab values too.

For hanging onto vines, you'd be using IK, yeah. But, frankly, if you're just testing whether the mechanic is fun, you can kind of ignore the visuals for now. A platformer prototype I made a while back for an old comp had a single frame for the character, but had things like ledge grabbing and wall-jumping, stomping, and other things I thought were fun.

bigbadwofl

To fix the glitchy graphics, find your player texture (for instance), change the texture type to Advanced. Change Non Power of Two to None, turn off Mipmap generation and change the filter mode to point. That should sort you out.

dislekcia

@bigbadwofl's advice is spot on. I actually have a bunch of asserts in my sprite texture loading code to warn if a texture is set up to have mipmaps. Not good if you want to have pixel-level accuracy. Dunno about the non-power of 2 stuff though, we just put everything on power of 2 textures and futz with UVs as needed when we build sprite meshes.

Also, a good sprite system should be able to handle all this for you. Look around on the Asset Store :)