week 1
basic concepts=
(text reads along the lines of - [the character is] a creature that could control inanimate objects like a can or a paper aeroplane or other random items in order to solve puzzles. one puzzle that could be included is through the drink can transformation which limited your jumping abilities but let you place a platform anywhere you could reach. Or you could fill up the can so that it can push down buttons.
week 2
writing down what the game'll actually be.
The tutorial is going to be for a hypothetical 2d platformer metroidvania that’s in a simple pixel style. The tutorial’s going to be at the beginning of the game and then it naturally leads into the rest of a game. Because of this, the tutorials going to take place in a grassland. The idea is that the camera is going to be very focused on the character because once the tutorial gets completed, the camera is going to zoom out to reveal the metroidvania aspect.
Objects needed
The player character
The floor – going to be a grass top with dirt below
A can
Something like a waterfall object
A button
Basic decoration like trees or bushes
Background
The main gameplay mechanic here is that the player can take control of inanimate objects scattered around and is able to solve puzzles and platforming challenges from moving these objects around. The tutorial is going to teach this by having the player control a can. The can wont be able to jump but you can climb up on the can. You can also fill the can with water so that it can weigh down buttons on the floor. So, there’s going to be a part where you move a can in order to climb up to a higher area and there’s going to be another area where you have to fill a can and walk it over to a button to progress. Holding that button down is where the tutorial will end and the game opens up more.
week 3
level design
week 4:
We had a tilemap tutorial and as a part of that, I made an updated grass sprite which is quite a bit cleaner than the one I designed on week 1.
There was also a tutorial to put tile maps into unity so I also put the tile map in a unity scene.
Week 5:
Basic walking animation of a nondescript character. Mostly to be used as a placeholder but also as an exercise in making an animation with a reference from mixamo.
I also made a basic level made from the plan and the above tilemap. Assets I need to make include a grass slop and then other general decorations like a rock ceiling probably.
week 6: basically finished animations
these are basically the improved versions of the animation exercise from a few weeks back but with more frames and with a greater resemblance to the designed character. i tried to make him animated strangely. the idea with the animations is that i can replace the main body with whatever object i want and it'd still read well.
week 7- work on the game
I've added a bunch more textures and tile maps to help build out the level. I've also decided to scale back the game's scope a bit so that it can follow the specification better. for example the original idea ended up not having enough mechanics and instead only the single mechanic of changing form.
week 8 - parallax background
Iven added a multi-layered parallax background to the game that attempts to ad some sort of depth to the game. This was done with help from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zit45k6CUMk. The video tutorial required me to make a basic script that would follow the cameras x coordinate and also adding an offset to control how the background would follow the camera.
week 9 - coin system and start on ui
I have created a coin object using the moodle tutorial. i also made a spinning coin animation to accompany this. collecting the coin will add +1 to the coin counter on the top left of the screen. Another fix i made was with the character where i gave them a thin white border in order to help him stand out more from the grey backgrounds.
week 10 - misc additions
For the last weekly update for this project, i have implemented mechanics like sounds on jump, death and coin pickup, a death mechanic with gameover screen and a winscreen, touch control ui elements and moving platforms. Now all thats left is more cleanup with the tilesets and some layout edits and the video demonstration.
