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Final changes to Ninja Speedrun!

As per the last blog, many things needed to be changed to allow the player to understand and better enjoy the experience of playing Ninja Speedrun. The game now features a total of 9 levels with certain hazards and such to make the challenge hard for players attempting to beat this game.

World map, more levels, audio, etc were added in and the game feels much more playable. The only thing that is keeping the game from being publishable is a few more important features such as title screen and story and way more levels.

Onto the overall conclusion, this unit has taught me the basics of how important the documenting part of game development is. Looking forward to creating games in a more proper and complete manner in the near future!

[rhyslodding3]

Ninja Speedrun Revamped! (Assignment 3)

For our 2nd assignment, we were tasked with forming a group and selecting a game out of what we created during the unit to be our game we work on more thoroughly. Ninja speedrun was chosen out of my group and so we began to revamp the design.

Firstly, the art style was drastically improved thanks to the work of our artist. The character and area is way less blocky and more pixel art and cool!

Next the movement. The movement in the previous iteration was, again, blocky and rigid. We added a proper player movement script to the ninja and his motion is much more fluid and natural, including a proper double jump and dash for the ninja asthetic.

There’s still a fair amount to do, such as the background and a few of the screens need to be done and changed from our temporary look, such as the star screen and world map:

Speaking of the world map, we replaced the boring level select with a more interactable world map, reminiscent of Super Mario World and such. This allows players to feel like they are progressing through a world rather than beating challenges.

There’s a bit to add, such as sound and replacing of the templates. Once that’s done, the game can be considered complete!

[rhyslodding3]

For those who wanna see what I meant by wacky movement in my previous post:

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Lone Fighter Dev Log + Postmortem

Dev Log:

I didn’t have a lot of time to develop this project. There are a lot of things I wanted to add but I was definitely too busy. However, the game that has been developed is a semi-working prototype and is playable.

The player movement was easy. Simple WASD for moving up, left, down, and right. Left-Click to shoot since it’s more natural than using any other button. As I was thinking of this game I decided that being confined to a small space that just loops around felt too confined for space. So, I made the background repeat itself infinitely while the player could have free movement, as if to experience the openness of space while fighting enemies. The enemies were unfortunately underdeveloped but there was a neat bug that occurred. I wanted the enemies to be forever chasing the player and so they should rotate towards the direction of the player. When I tried to implement this feature, the enemy ships turned into spinning sawblades of death. As well as applying the physics engine and accidentally giving them way too much force, I realise that it was probably be more fun if the enemies were wacky. I first toned down the ungodly speed of the enemies so that the player could outrun them but with the physics engine, the enemies could now bounce off each other and propel themselves towards the player. I found this hilarious and would probably make it quite a fun game.

Postmortem:

Overall, I believe the only way to improve my game is to make it more interesting with more mechanics and variation to give players more enjoyment and variety. If I had spent more time on this game, there would be way more to talk about but as of now I think the game was on the right path in terms of being a good game.

[rhyslodding3]

Lone Fighter - Asteroid Game

Name: Lone Fighter Description: You are a lone spaceship pilot, lost in space and unable to contact home base. Even worse, you are surrounded by the alien forces. They want you hunted and destroyed. Luckily, you own one of Earth’s coolest ships, able to teleport and destroy armadas of aliens. How long will you be able to survive? Selling points:     - Asteroids look alike     - Unique features and powerups to enhance the experience     - Enemy AI that try and hunt the player down

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Ninja Speedrun Postmortem

Ninja Speedrun is a decently designed game. More thought, time, and effort could have definitely been integrated. However, it's a game that I would continue to create and publish as a polished and fun game for players.

In respect to Ninja Speedrun, the design was perfect for a Singleplayer vs Game structure and the goals and accomplishments were suitable. The relation to the Speedrun community would've been popular as it's quick and simple, fast, and time based: all aspects that speedrunners like when playing a game. It's also quite easy to master this game because of how simple it is, letting players be able to feel good about learning the mechanics and gameplay early on.

The things I would definitely have to improve would be the variety of gameplay mechanics. It's too simple for prolonged consumer use and would most likely lose interest of players very quickly. It's unreplayable unless the player is attempting to challenge themselves, however even then it's greatly boring and simplistic. There would need to be a considerable increase of engaging mechanics and design to keep users playing and enjoying the game.

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Ninja Speedrun Dev Log #2

So I decided to be extra and work on the saving system rather than the actual levels and such. I wanted to learn how to do something that I didn’t already know so I learned how to save and load information from files into the game. Currently, there is only one level that just tests the different functions of how a level will run. The timer part of levels is not functional at the moment but that will be next. 

I also found PARTICLE SYSTEMS! Particles systems are so fun and so I created one for the targets when they explode.

As you can also see, I’ve made a crosshair for where the ninja will throw their shurikens. I found that trying to time the height of the shuriken when firing it was very difficult so I decided to make it slightly easier by having a crosshair to guide the player. To combat this, I’ll need to design the levels to account the aiming by either making the targets move or by adding obstacles.

Another addition is the Jump Cloud. I wanted a way for players to essentially do a double jump at certain places and the Jump Cloud allows that to happen. This opens up a few new level possibilities that I will most definitely explore later in development

I have many planned levels but so far I only want to do 10. These are going to be the tutorial levels to show off all the different functions of the game. I want to add more levels later on and hopefully I’ll be able to.

The art is very basic, yes. This will most certainly be upgraded once all the features I want are implemented. There is no sounds as well but that will also be implemented later on. These two things are very simple to implement as well and I wish to get the harder parts of this project out of the way first.

[rhyslodding3]

Ninja Speedrun Dev Log #1

So after being a bit late to figuring out what I wanted to create and the criteria around my unit, I have limited myself to roughly 2 days of development for this game.  I decided to do what I already know and make a game that I’ve made before for a school assignment, using very similar mechanics. The mechanics are very similar to the popular platformer Super Meat Boy with an added objective of eliminating enemies along the way. These mechanics are very simple to implement but can make for a great game if done well. I’ve made plenty of platformers in my development practice so this shouldn’t be any different,

As for GDevelop (the software required to make this game), I’ve played around with it and helped friends use the software and it’s very similar to Game Maker, which is a program I used to make my previous game so it shouldn’t be hard at all to develop this game using this software. I’ve already taught myself the fundamentals of how I want the game to be but I hope to be able to add more expert level stuff like save files.

For this unit, we are given a textbook titled “Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition“ by Tracy Fullerton. Week 1 was assigned to Chapters 1 and 2, Role of Game Designer and the Structure of Games. Both of these subjects I already have knowledge in however there is some more insight in Game Journals. Very helpful.

Week 2, we read Chapters 7 & 8, Prototyping and Digital Prototyping, are similar in that I have prior knowledge on those fields. Thankfully, the style of game I am making is quite popular and I can gather what elements of those games are good and which are bad to help my designing decisions. 

Onto the actual development: I wanted to first start off with making a nice flowing player control system. Left, Right, Jump, and Attack. Easy enough, I’ve done this plenty of times. Turns out that GDevelop has an inbuilt system already for platformer movement so this became 10x easier. I tweaked the values though to make the ninja move more fast-paced and called it that for the movement. Enemies at the moment don’t move but I can introduce movement for enemies perhaps in later levels to up difficulty. Levels will definitely come tomorrow in Dev Log #2. Right now I need to polish up the movement and success criteria. Speaking of, I thought that perhaps each level can have a total of 3 stars that can be collected by finishing challenges, those being:     -Finish Level     -Finish Level within Time Limit     -Finish Level with all enemies dead This would give players the incentive to play the game as best as they can and ultimately achieve the “speedrunning” feeling I desire the players to feel. This all related to Chapter 2 of the textbook, in which I am laying out the objectives and giving players a challenge.

Tune in tomorrow for #Dev Log 2 :D

[rhyslodding3]

Week 2 Game - Platformer

Title: Ninja Speedrun Description: A simple fast-paced arcade platformer shooter that has a Ninja character race against the clock to get to the end of the level. Of course there are enemies in the way so the Ninja will have to dispose of the obstacles to get to the end as fast as possible. Selling points: 1) Encourages speedrunning and learning enemy placements and maps. 2) Character only has enough projectiles to deal with each enemy with non left over, so to get maximum points the player needs to use the projectiles sparingly. 3) Double Jump and Wall Jumps for added speed.