Posts

Interface Sounds

The interface sounds were at the same time, easy but also took some time for me to think. It has to be something that is.. catchy? As long as it’s not annoying and indicates the player that they are moving and selecting something.

This is the sound I went for when moving through options:

Then the sound when you select an option:

Finally, the game over sequence:

I wanted to go for a dreading kind of theme, but also soothing. Well, you died. So you can’t exactly feel anything. Your nerves shut down, you feel nothing; almost peaceful. At the same time, dreading cause you probably left someone you love behind. That kind of feeling. I should improve it though.

Rewards/Items Art

I had a bunch of ideas to what rewards the player would receive in my RPG game, but first I drew out the basics.

A typical chest to start off. Some equipment, items.. the kind of stuff a player would need in an RPG. Hell, if they look deeper, these chests can have some better items.. maybe.

A star.. that I want to rework eventually. To give some context, my characters learn magic/ harness energy through their souls. This star is like an magic/energy boost, which grants the player a new ability to learn that will help them in their quest.

Throughout my game, there could be some health that can help them recover after they survived some combat scenarios. These could be lying around after you defeated an enemy.

Of course when you grab it, it should indicate that its been grabbed or used. So I went with a simple animation for the heart to disappear and recover the character’s HP. Maybe I’ll create something more stylish in the future, but this is pretty fine.

Published
Categorized as Rewards

Level Design – Leighton

Here is a walkthrough of my level design:

You spawn in falling into a line of shards. Not only does it make it obvious that you will be collecting those, but also that they will guide your way.
The first gap is a jump test and is wide enough to cross with a single jump. It should get the player familiar with how far a single jump is.
Here, boxes block your way, and the player must figure out that these boxes can be destroyed by their gun. Also, it’s set up so that it’s difficult to shoot the boxes without shooting one of the torches. So, if the player hadn’t already figured it out, they would learn here that the torches are destructible and drop items.
This is another jump test, but it can only be crossed with a double-jump. this is to teach the player how far a double-jump in this game goes.
Now having the knowledge that they can destroy boxes, the player is given opportunities to exercise. Most obviously by shooting to the boxes to exit, but also to access the shards in the upper left. The player with also have to shoot boxes if they fall down the gap, in order to free themselves.
There are hints at a splitting path here, as there are inaccessible items both above and below. This is to have the player on the lookout for how to access these other paths. This will also teach players that they can shoot through platforms, if they choose to shoot at the enemies above.
Here we see the way to the top path: the platform to the left. But, there is also the more subtle entrance to the lower path. The torches are meant to imply to the player that the pit is not a deadly one, and they will be rewarded with the health and shard pickups shown earlier. That is, after defeating the more aggressive enemies that lie below.
The enemies in this winding section are still until you jump up to their level. The player only has to deal with one first, but there is an additional enemy added each level, so the difficulty ramps up as you go.
As this is the final challenge of this level, these enemies are also the more aggressive variants. I hope to alter their color or design in the future to indicate this.
After that is the end of the level. Who knows what awaits you there…

Programming

At one point I knew how to code something. Then it decided to fly out of my head.

Although I’m pretty sure I’ve managed for this intro. Coding was slowly getting back to me.

Slow and steady progress, but I’ll eventually get the hang of it soon.

Scene Manager

Aka, I seriously have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a lost cause for programming/coding things and its something that I REALLY need to relearn again. I think I managed to handle the scene manager..? I tried to follow the video, buut.. I still got lost. I have a feeling I’m missing stuff.

I suck at programming.

Sound Effects

Now, I’m still insanely new to doing this kind of thing, Sound effects are something I love if its done right. I can really improve here with the quick sound effects I created for my RPG game. It’s something I’ll either rework with some of these effects or further improve.

This is the jump sound effect:

Then the land effect:

The hit effect (which will most likely get reworked. I don’t really like it, I want something more flashy sounding for different attacks, but I need to practice more for it):

The item pickup effect, but for small items (a bigger item would have a more grand theme):

And finally, the save/checkpoint effect:

It was sorta weird to learn, since I’m mainly an artist/animator guy, but this was nice to pick up nonetheless and another skill to improve later on.