Week 3/4 Development Post
Platformer development
So far in the development of the 2D platformer game, I have been trying to achieve to create a base level to play test, while keeping the themes of the elevator pitch. This mainly entailed testing out the player move speed and jump speeds. I also found an asset pack that suited the style of the game however some aspects of the art need to be altered as well as a new character model needs to be made.
https://www.gameart2d.com/free-sci-fi-platformer-tileset.html
Within the pipeline, I would say I am nearly finished with one playable level in the game.
Learnings
From this initial dev period, I learnt that researching games and truly understanding what the game needs is important. In doing so I think this initial period would have been a lot quicker, then I could have it play-tested earlier and refined the initial prototype.
One takeaway I took from the readings is from chapter 7 from ‘Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition’ where it talks about working fast and working economically. I agreed with this idea, where taking things one step at a time and developing smaller, more specific prototypes is important. I took this with heart when starting to make my prototype and made many smaller scaled scenes to test out specific mechanics and gameplay features. And then once happy I will compile them all into one.
Another reading that influenced my design ideas, was in chapter 8 of ‘Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition’. This inspired the design of the level to focus on giving the player a challenge by setting constraints in the game such as adding a ceiling to the game to limit jump height and placing moving enemies throughout the level to limit where the player can move/land.
“constraint define sensation … You should put in some kind of platforms or enemies, some kind of topology that will give the motion meaning.”
References: Readings ( CH 7-8, Book - ‘Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition )