Reflection

It's been a long semester. Aside from all the struggles, from corruptions to game breaks to broken animations, I was able to deal with it all to put together a playable game. Sure, there's the issue with being unable to package it, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I put a lot of time and work into making this game. I made all the assets myself, I watched and posted constantly about different tutorials, and I built the world. That's still something worth being proud of, I'd say.


I went from working off of provided assets,

To building a world of my own vision.

Game developers tell us all the time that making games is hard, but you truly don't understand how exactly hard until you start making games yourself. There is so much work that goes behind it, and you need to be someone with good time management skills and patience to handle it. But making a game on my own has been an experience I needed to have and I'm glad I did. It had it's ups and downs, but I learned so much from it and I feel like I can put a lot of what I've learned into future projects.

Close to the Finish Line

Everything's coming together!

Visual asset completion at 90%. For background art, I'm borrowing the long forest bg I made for my thesis, it will work just fine. Start/Restart buttons are all set:

They just need to be coded into the beginning and end of the game. In terms of music, I'm using a track provided by the lovely bensound.com.

For the final cutscene (which is just a slideshow of images detailing the end), I've sketched out the images in Photoshop and I'll be finishing them up in Clip Studio Paint which will then be all exported and put together in Premiere. There, I'll send the video file back to Unreal and set it so when you reach that tilemap with the skull, the game will end.

The white and orange images in the back of the tilemaps are a BG test to make sure the background will work with the platforms.

The square on the bottom that reads "INSTANT DEATH" will be a trigger for when Mimi falls through the cracks, she will lost all her health instantly and the restart button will appear.

From here, once the cutscene is complete, all I have to do is input the remaining visual assets, wrap up a few coding issues and this game will be ready to show!

Major Triumph: April 14th

Turns out the weird damage thing from last week was just a simple fix. But boy, was looking for the solution a huge stressful event.

But everything's coming together! Collisions are fixed, projectiles work (a little bug in terms of projectiles hitting enemies but I'm sure I'll figure it out), and now my list of things left to do is even smaller! It's mostly last minute visual work like the background and such.

Coding is almost done, all that's left to do is to fix the small bug with the enemies being attacked, make sure the death animation is properly fixed, and trigger the finale cutscene (a slideshow).

Also, the program crashed again today.

So beautiful, yet so frustrating. 

To-Do List:

1. Wrap up coding

2. Background Art

3. Start/Restart buttons

4. Music

5. Final Cutscene

A Reason But Not A Solution: April 12th

Well, I got good news and bad news.

The good news is, my damage system is working again!

The bad news is, it's all wonky.

When I hit play and enter the area, my character immediately takes three hits of damage with no explanation whatsoever. She's nowhere near the crab enemy, so I have no idea as to why this is. On top of that, I tried to go back into working on the health item sprite, and from there I realized what the core issue is.

My character is not responding properly to collisions.

I'm going to have to get a lot of help the next time I work on this, because I've scoured google and youtube for answers but have found nothing. I really hope I don't have to redo the entire character coding, but since it's definitely my character that's causing issues, I'm really worried that that's going to be the case.

The Braid tutorial I've been watching was good, but it's level of helpfulness ran its course and I looked for another one.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4vARnfO6MOjqrK5YMI1EwYcZSR7ycD9h

This one is alright, the narrator is rather clumsy at times but they've helped me fix the damage system so I think it's worth a shot.

Nice Enemies: Thursday, April 7th

Enemy AI is all set! I got the crab enemies to move back and forth on their own. I'm still working on how to get the damage collision assets to work again, but I'm glad to get that big part out of the way. This tutorial I found that uses assets from the game Braid has been really helpful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydcukgaeUFc&list=PLTfMG1EpxB2di3vuPRuZ7KAJPEvrrV9AU










The A and B markers in the editor mark the paths of the crab enemies. Enemy AI turned out to be a lot easier than I thought.

Updated list of things left to do:

1. Background art
2. Final cutscene
3. Start and Restart buttons
4. Music
5. Healing Item
6. Fix hit collisions

Enemy AI Studies: Thursday, March 31st

Today's main focus was enemy AI. I learned that there's a class called Character that is normally used for NPC and enemy movement, but trying to figure out how the class works has been a doozy.

The capsule seen here cannot be resized for some reason, making it very difficult for me to work on collisions. I haven't inputted the TakeDamage coding yet, so right now in-game mechanics are like this.

It moves in place and if I jump on it, I just roll right off. So now, I have another issue to work with.

I looked up tutorials on using AI and blueprints in general so hopefully these three videos will give me some ideas.

(The tutorial with assets from Braid seems to be a hit with other Unreal users)

The Little Things: Tuesday, March 29th

It appears the damage collision on my spikes have mysteriously stopped working, so I spent all of class trying to figure out why that is. It could be the environment and not the spikes themselves because the settings for the spikes are as they should be.

I also began to work on the healing frog item; I just have to figure out how to make it disappear as soon as you collide with it. The coding should work as soon as I have that going.

The enemy AI seems a bit complicated, and since the official UE4 youtube page doesnt have a part 4 of the tutorial yet, this is something I'll have to figure out on my own. So far, it hasn't been easy.

Triumph: Thursday, March 24th

After a whole week of grueling technical issues, my computer's back in action and I'm closer to the finish line.

The last pieces of assets are completed and now it's time to put everything together onto the stage.

So far collisions seem to be working alright, so I began working on the full layout.






The game is short on purpose (since it's related to my senior thesis), but after playtesting this layout I think I'll stretch it out a bit more.

There is one block of land that has bones within the dirt, and that is the placeholder of when the game ends.




Next class, I'm going to look into how to trigger a cutscene based on where the character lands.

Things left to do are

1. Background art
2. Final cutscene
3. Start and Restart buttons
4. Music
5. Enemy AI
6. Healing Item
7. Fix projectile and hit collisions


Speaking of a healing item, the art asset for it is complete (seen below), I just have to add the proper coding.



(It's a coquí frog!)

Everything's coming together, let's hope I don't have anymore technical issues from here on out.

Dealing With More Technical Issues: Thursday, March 17th

On Tuesday, my computer had to be taken into CTS for repairs. The constant computer issues I keep having put a damper on my motivation, but I don't plan on giving up on working on this project altogether. So, for the meantime, I've stuck to working in my sketchbook to work on the last of my concepts.

[Will add pictures from sketchbook at a later time, Blogger doesn't allow me to upload images from my phone unless I download an app I don't particularly need]

Because there are currently no more 2D side scroller tutorials for now to watch from the official Unreal channel, it's time for me to do my own research on how to finish the rest of my game. I create a list of what else there is to do:

- Make healing items

- How to insert cutscenes and trigger them at the end of the game (I'll also need to make said cutscenes to begin with)

- Create text bubbles

- How to make the game restart upon completion

- How to insert a play button in the beginning

- Work on backgrounds and set them up for side scrolling

Computer Struggles: Tuesday, March 1st

Today the school computer is having a hard time cooperating with Unreal, so I was not able to do much in the program. The computer froze twice while I tried to fix new assets I just added, so I am unfortunately feeling quite defeated.

Well, at least I did get those assets done.

The animations run smoothly within Unreal, now if only the program would cooperate for more than two minutes.

Damage Control: Tuesday, February 23rd

Today was mostly about the player taking damage. the spikes sprite is temporary, and was used to figure out collisions. I made it so Mimi's sprite flickers when hit so players are aware of danger. The graph setup seemed way too complicated, so after looking through the comments on the video of the tutorial, somebody had provided a cleaner setup that was easy to read.

For some reason however, when Mimi lands in the position seen above she appears to be floating, so that is something I will need to fix next time. Everything else so far has been working just fine for me.

I left off on the tutorial at 40 minutes.

Coming Along: Thursday, February 18th

After a lot of fighting with Unreal, the Mimi sprites are coming together. The processor is running so so it's hard to get an accurate reading of how smoothly the game is playing, but what I'm getting so far is some pretty good results.

I was having issues with the playback where the sprite was very blurry, and I checked both Preferences and Project Settings to resolve the issue but had no luck. Eventually I remembered the regular Settings options on the main screen and found Engine Scalability which made my sprites crisp and clear as they should be. However, as I'm working I might have to leave the quality low due to the computer working slowly, and setting the resolution to the highest amount could cause the program to crash due to the computer's hardware limitations (and also the fact that the account I have to use in order to run Unreal is a shared one).

I also included the sprites for actions other than the basic running and jumping, so I'll be implementing those very soon. First I need to get back to Part 2 of the tutorial and made the rest of the assets.

I left off the tutorial at 13 minutes.

Working out the kinks: Thursday, February 11th

I finally completed Part One of the Side Scroller tutorial. I hit a few bumps along the way, but I was able to figure them out and have a functioning character as well as a health bar.

I started Part Two and hit another bump, however, because I am using a newer version of Unreal while the narrator is still using the last version, and there are some new features he hasn't covered because Part Two was released before Unreal 4. I'm trying to read the comments section as well as the Unreal forum to see if anyone else is facing the same dilemma, so I'm hoping that the newest feature in the Graph function I have an issue with will not hinder my progress.

Part Three of the tutorial was released on January 28th on this year, so hopefully the narrator is using the newer version of Unreal by now.

With how much progress I've made with the game, I think I will go back to my sprites to make sure the final versions will cooperate.

Character Animation: January 28th, 2016

I continued working on 2D character assets for the game. Today's focus was on the running animation, and I got pretty far.

There are still things I need to fix before it's complete (need hair movement, arm and shirt movement still too stiff, etc), but the leg movement is nice and smooth. 

Custom Sprites: Tuesday, January 26th

Today I started working on sprites for my 2D game. So far, I've created two complete animations; one idle animation and one sliding animation. I am doing these in Flash.

Normally this character has long hair, but because this game takes place before my senior thesis short does, I want to imply the passing of time. By the looks of the Idle gif, I'll have to slow down the framerate.

Next class I hope to tackle the running animation.

Working with Sprites: Thursday, January 21st

I made some pretty good progress with learning about making a 2D side scroller today. Following a video tutorial by an Epic Games employee (seen here), I learned about how to import sprite sheets and create animations. The video also included a link to a file of demo assets that I could use, but for the time being I used the demo assets as a template so I can test how my own sprites would look when I import them later on.

Creating animations in Unreal is pretty simple, tho sometimes the playback is a bit laggy, which will probably be a bit of an annoyance down the road. Still, I'm happy with how much I've learned.

I had to pause 20 minutes in due to class time, but it looks like I'll be delving into camera angles a little when I come back to this.

First Day of Unreal Engine: Tuesday, January 19th

Today I learned about how to operate a light fixture in the Blueprint setup of Unreal. I figured out how to also create an empty object in order to place said light in the inside and use blueprint tools to make it turn on and off whenever I either activate a trigger or leave the empty room.

On the side I began researching more tutorials on the 2D SideScroller builder, as well as basic tutorials on how to use Autodesk Maya. I think I will challenge myself for this independent study by learning how to use two programs at once. It would be nice to visit mixing 2D/3D assets again, as I did with Cinema4D awhile back.

Figuring Things Out: Thursday, January 14th 2016

Today the 3D class was visited by the well known Larry Harris and John Sutyak. Harris is famous for creating the Axis and Allies boardgame brand, and Sutyak, a friend of Harris, had been employed at Parker Brothers. The two men gave the class an insight on what game design is about, as well as their endeavors and experiences.


After the discussion, I went off on my own to learn about working with Unreal Engine. There is a 2D Side Scroller blueprint which should hopefully make it a little easier for me to work on this game, but I'll have to read up on tutorials to get myself going since the tutorials within the program are not exactly helpful (I prefer video tutorials so I can work as I learn).

First Day; January 12th, 2016

For my independent study I will be making a 2D side scroller version of my senior thesis, a story about a young child who wanders the forest by their home and comes across a house owned by witches.

I will be developing this game using the Unreal Engine, and will be creating 2D assets in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.

If time allows, I will also work on smaller projects, maybe with other classmates.