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What is a Sprite-sheet?

Sprite-sheets are a compilation of a characters animations and states laid out evenly for a game engine to interpret and transform into proper gameplay animations.

(here's a bigger one to compensate for my rather small and unfinished sprite-sheet.)

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Health Systems

Owlboy has a very simple graphic to represent the health the player has, being just a bar with lines to separate the health into thirds (I imagine this is done to encourage fleeing or healing if it goes below 1/3 of your health or something like that.) Some items will also increase your maximum health which increases the size of the health bar.

In Hollow Knight, health is dictated by the masks in the top left corner of the screen, if you get hit once you lose a mask and your health goes down, if you lose all of your masks its game over. There are 2 ways to increase health: use a feature called "focus" to gain masks or use mask shards which are found all around the game to restore masks.

In Kirby games, the players health is seen through a health-bar that, when depleted, gives a game over or a restart to the player. Upon being hit by an enemy or object, Kirby will fall back and the health bar will deplete, with different amounts of damage being dealt depending on the enemy or stage hazard.

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Other Health Example

(Finally, I get to talk about Ultrakill :D)

In Ultrakill, health is determined by a health bar which also displays a number for current health as well a grey bar to represent the amount of Hard Damage the player has (hard damage prevents the player from healing completely.)

You can also turn on a health bar that appears around the players crosshair to check it at a quick glance, which you'll find yourself needing to do a lot in this game.

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5 Examples of collectables

Here are 5 examples of collectables that all fit within the styles of the games they belong to: Rings from Sonic, Strawberry from Celeste, Red Orbs from Devil May Cry, Ammo from Half-Life and the Secret Coin from Geometry Dash.

These collectables are used in different ways, whether it be as a life system, an item that contributes towards an ending, a currency or something that's consumed by a weapon. They also fit in the games they're in by following their art-style whether that be; Pixel-art, Hyper-Realism or Cartoon.

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Studying the Mega-Man walk cycles

Here we have both the Mega-Man 1 and 8 walk cycles. Immediately one notices the difference in resolution, detail and framerate of both animations and I think a lot of people would assume that the Mega-Man 8 walk cycle is the better one because of its technological superiority, however I can't help but say the Mega-Man 1 animation does it better for me, but why?

It mostly has to do with how I prefer my game feel, being how I like snappy and instant locomotion because its more responsive and makes the player feel like they're in control of the character as well as the Mega-Man 8 animation feeling slow and almost slippery for some reason that I can't seem to pin down.

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ArtStation Inspiration

Here are 3 examples of Pixel art from ArtStation that inspire me for my game.

This piece is called Grilles and Ruins - Interior by Jesús Campos, I love this piece because it perfectly encapsulates the general feel I would like my game to follow; dark, dingy, decrepit and run-down. I love the dark greens and faded blues in the background and will attempt my own spin on it in my game.

This piece is called PunkAnt created by Jorge Dias and upon first looking at it the thing that struck me most was how effective the background is at conveying a claustrophobic surrounding whilst remaining incredibly simple in design. I feel it's necessary to learn how to produce such simple yet effective textures in order to convey what I want to convey in my game.

This piece is called Piocher dans la réserve made by Guillaume Boizanté and when I first saw this I thought "wow this slaps". I adore the sense of scale in this artwork and how it makes the character in the piece feel insignificant and small by not focusing the camera on it. While I do not think I am skilled enough yet to replicate the feeling of immense size in the way this piece does, I really want to incorporate something similar into my game.

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Mega Man 11 & Celeste Level Design Study

In this post I look at how Celeste and Mega-Man 11 create their level design in a way that introduces the player to the games mechanics and subsequently tests the player on those mechanics.

In this video Maddy Thorston goes over how she introduces game mechanics to the player and how the player is then tested in those mechanics to reinforce player skill levels. She also mentions how level design can tell a "story" of sorts by using environmental interactions like a falling block to convey how the player is supposed to interact with their surroundings.

This video explains how Mega-Man 11 makes use of its level entities and environmental interactions to help the player pre-plan how they will go about completing the level. They also go over how newly introduced mechanics can work with other mechanics and environmental storytelling to create a challenging and memorable level.

After watching these videos I've come to understand that environmental storytelling and mechanic introductions are integral to the player being engaged with my game (and so the game isn't, y'know, really boring.) and I intend to introduce many interesting mechanics and environmental interactions to all of my future games.

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Fonts for Game Over/Win screen

In order to create a win and lose screen, I need a unique font, to do this I went to a website called DaFont - Download fonts, and found 5 fonts I may want to use.

VCR OSD Mono

DePixel

Eas VHS

I pixel u

Pixel Game Font

In the end I picked VCR OSD Mono because I felt it fit the overall vibe of my game more and was more readable than the others.

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Making a game over / victory screen

In order to make my victory screen I had to first learn about distorting my text and applying effects to it.

Here you can see me in the warp text menu and all of the warp effects you can apply to the text (however I didn't use any of these.)

After rasterizing my text I looked at the gradient overlay effect and seriously considered using it, however I decided against it because I wanted a basic and plain look for my win screen.

Next we looked at the stroke/outline effect, I could see places where this could be used but I decided against it for my win screen.

Finally I looked at the inner shadow effect, ill be honest I didn't like this one at all and it doesn't fit with what I was trying to do so (again) I decided against using it.

Here's my final screen, I made it by importing a few other images from the internet and my game.

I used 2 filters on the massive thumbs up; the mosaic filter and the noise filter.

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Game lose screens

The first game over screen that came to my mind was the Undertale game over screen, it gives the player encouragement to carry on and stay determined then respawns them where their last save point was.

I love the simplicity in this screen and its nice to get some encouraging messages too, I will probably make my game over screen give messages/tips in a similar way to this screen.

The iconic souls/elden ring death screen has an incredibly basic design, but has persisted through generations of games, being comprised of a fading black bar and dark red text that reads "you died". This death screen embodies the motto "short and sweet" for me, as it doesn't stay on screen for 10 gazillion years and it doesn't give you any messages whatsoever, it just lets the player know they died.

Finally, the Minecraft death screen is probably one of the most popular game over screens in gaming. Its made up of "you died!" text, a score counter, a respawn button and a main menu button. This is probably one of the best templates for game over screens ever created as it includes everything necessary to the player immediately after death. I intend to include buttons reminiscent on this in my game too.

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Animation basic principles

Here are a few videos going over animation fundamentals:

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Researching Win screens

Today was tasked to research some game win screens to see what I might incorporate into my game.

First we have the level completion screen from Geometry Dash, the screen congratulates the player and gives them options to replay the level or return to the main menu (it also shows various stats like the amount of attempts, jumps and the time it took to beat the level.) I like the idea of including miscellaneous stats in the level complete screen so I may include that in my game.

Next we have Sonic's original victory screen, it features text that confirms Sonic passed the act/level and gives a score based off of time taken to complete the level and the amount of rings sonic had when he passed the end goal, this score goes towards extra lives. End of level rewards like lives and powerups are something I think would be a decent idea to put into my game.

Finally we have a Mariokart victory screen. Putting aside how unintentionally hilarious this image looks it also is a very effective game win screen in the way it simply tells the player "congratulations!". Its simple and it serves its purpose (even though its kinda boring" in rewarding the player for completing the course/level.

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Animations and how they've evolved

Here are some videos showing how vital game animations have evolved over time and how newer technology has influenced the way these animations are created.

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What is a GIF?

A gif is a file format that can store singular or sequences of images in one file, often being used for simple logos or basic animation loops.

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Don Bluth

Don Bluth has worked on many film projects and games in his career, however I know him from work he did on a game called Dragons Lair that was released in 1983.

The makes use of it unique hardware (the laserdisc) to provide fully hand-drawn cutscenes reminiscent of Disney renaissance era movies like The Beauty and The Beast and Pinocchio. The problem with this way of presenting your game this way however, is that it greatly limits player control and freedom because you only have predetermined routes you can take.

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Character design research

To start my character design research I was tasked with researching Super Meat Boy.

Meat Boy's design is incredibly basic, being a simple red cube with limbs and a face (with other minor identifying details like a black eye or a bandage.). This design while being as basic as it is, manages to be both original, memorable and appealing with an air of goofy charm to it. I love designs like this and I will try to emulate this goofy charm in my design.

next the designs of the characters from castle crashers are a bit more complex than the design of Meat Boy. These designs make use of simple colour-to-emotion connotation that conveys a personality for each of the characters (red guy is angry, blue guy is chill etc.) They also have very limited but expressive facial features, only having eyes means you have to put in extra effort to convey emotions (I imagine the colours also help this aspect.) I will probably use similar design principles later on in my game for things such as enemies and bosses, but for my character I think I will simply stick to a basic colour palette.

And now we go to the exact opposite of the castle crashers design philosophy, Minit makes use of a simple black and white palette with an incredibly emotionless (yet still adorable) character design. Designs like this are often created to be a self-insert or a vessel for the player and can often be more relatable than designs with emotions on show (prime example of another character made like this is frisk from undertale.) I intend to implement some of the design philosophy into my character by making them show only innocent and naïve emotions (mostly to show that my character is just a little guy y'know.)

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Importing a Font

Lets face it the unreal engine default font is boring as hell, so i'm going to change it.

To do this I found a free font on DaFont - Download fonts, then I created a new font in my Content Drawer and found the font I had downloaded, selected it and applied it to all the text in my HUD.