finleyjackson75

[finleyjackson75]

Gameplay Video

I have made a gameplay video for my game which shows the movement, shooting, environment, enemies and the start and end screens.

[finleyjackson75]

Finished map

I have finished the rest of what i was able to do for my 2D sidescroller. There are many imperfections and a lot of things that i didn't get to put in, but for a first project i don't think its too bad.

Here is an overview of my map from the tile map editor.

The yellow blocks are supposed to be the enemies. One thing that went wrong with this project was time management. I thought i'd have enough time to make an enemy, but i didn't, so i've had to settle for the yellow blocks. I've also found a bug with the win screen where the player HUD is still of the screen when the win screen plays, but this isn't a big problem.

Something i like about my game is that i accidentally put a bush on the front layer of my tilemap blocking my player when he spawns, and i decided to have him be completely obscured by the bush so it looks like he's coming out of the bush at the start of the game.

[finleyjackson75]

Directed Study Week 7: Enemies

The Volatile (Dying Light)

The Dying Light volatile is a terrifying enemy designed to Dying Light night time as scary as possible. They are much stronger and much faster that you are, even at the end of the game, and are very fast and can catch up to you in a short period of time.

From 0:45 - 1:00 shows you a scene from one of the first missions in the game, where you are told not to go out at night before hand, but then you get stuck outside at night. You get spotted by a volatile and then have to make a mad dash back to the safe area while being chased by multiple volatiles. The incredible sound design makes the volatile makes the volatile extremely scary to sneak around during the night, since that is your only option if you decide to go out at night time.

Sniper Jager (Sniper Elite 5)

The sniper jager in Sniper Elite 5 is a very unique enemy that can make the game much more tense and nerve racking. It doesn't behave like a normal enemy, mainly because it's controlled by an actual player. Someone can choose to invade someone else while they are playing through a campaign or DLC mission and try to track them down and kill them. While the invaded player has the advantage in terms of direct combat, in terms of being able to resupply on ammo while the sniper jager can't, and being able to use his focus ability to see enemies through walls, including the invader, the sniper jager has the upper hand in stealth, blending in, and using the other german soldiers to his advantage. And sometimes a lack of german soldiers in an area can tell the sniper jager that the other player has already been through that area.

The inclusion of this enemy creates a very unique experience that has never really been seen before in games.

Bile Titan (Helldivers 2)

The bile titan in Helldivers 2 is a huge enemy that has a long range bile spray that can devastate any helldiver caught in it, along with sharp points on the end of its legs that can instantly kill players if they're not paying attention. This enemy only starts spawning on missions on difficulty 4, in the form of a primary objective telling the players to kill it, but begins to spawn as normal enemies and in higher quantities on higher difficulties. They're relatively easy to get rid of with the correct equipment at hand, but without the correct equipment they are very intimidating and can be very hard to get rid of.

The Caretaker (Deep Rock Galactic)

The Caretaker in Deep Rock Galactic is a boss type enemy that only appears during the Industrial Sabotage mission type. You are tasked to hack two shield generator relays before being able to lower the caretaker's shield, which starts the fight itself. This fight requires much teamwork and planning to complete, as there are many parts to the caretaker fight and many things that it does to make the fight harder. There are three phases to the fight, each one starting with shooting the yellow areas on the top corners of the caretaker while it rotates, then running to one of the four random hatches that opens on the middle part of its body and shoot it to deplete its main health bar. While all of this is happening, the caretaker introduces a new complication with each phase, from sending out sniper turrets, sending out little drones that fly into you and hurt you, and even teleporting bombs to your current location. It has a very cool visual design and amazing sound design.

The Cloaker (Payday 2)

(Saving the best for last)

The cloaker from Payday 2 is a type of special enemy that will appear on some of the higher difficulties. It isn't supposed to be scary, but it is. A cloaker will spawn into the map from under a car or through an air vent or something along those line, then it will target a random player, sprint at them at full speed, making a high pitched and terrifying siren-like noise, and dropkicks the player in the face, downing them instantly. The cloaker then continues to hit the player, reducing their health little by little, until a team mate kills the cloaker and frees them.

Here is a video of a cloaker doing just that.

There is a slight whirring sound that emits from cloakers that tell you theres is one nearby, but most of the time you will not see them coming until they are actively dropkicking you. The sound they make when they are running at a player is the perfect sound to cause a fight or flight reaction, making them, unintentionally, one of the best enemy's to ever be designed.

[finleyjackson75]

Problems with the character rotation

I'm having issues with the characters rotation. Whenever i shoot, sometimes the character will rotate in his axis, making the map look distorted and the background look as if it has moved to the side. Jake doesn't know how to fix it, so it will have to stay for a while until we find the problem.

I discovered the problem with the character rotating. It was the shells that jake made for me. The shells that ejected from the character's gun after the shooting animation were getting caught on my character and rotating it on its axis, so i removed the shells from the code completely, as i didn't want them anymore.

[finleyjackson75]

Enemies and Projectiles

I have created a system for my enemies to walk back and forth between two patrol points.

To start, i created a character blueprint to be used as the enemy and an actor blueprint to be used as the patrol points.

I put a normal cube in the viewport of the enemy, since i don't have a sprite for my enemy yet, and a sphere for the viewpoint of my patrol point.

Here is the code for my enemy.

The top part of the code is essentially making the enemy change direction when it collides with the patrol point. The bottom part of the code gives the enemy a set movement speed and to make the enemy rotate the opposite direction when it comes in contact with a patrol point.

As for the projectiles, i created a new actor and called it Projectile. I added a sphere into the components menu and used it to override the default scene root so the collision would work properly.

I then made this small group of code in the projectile blueprint to allow the projectile itself to destroy itself after 3 seconds so that it won't stay on the stage and bog down performance.

I then made this small group of code in my third person character in the middle of my characters shooting line of code to make it so when my character presses left click to shoot, it now plays the animation, creates the muzzle flash effect, ejects the shell, and now launches the projectile forward at a set speed.

[finleyjackson75]

Directed Study 9th October

Sword and Sworcery

Sword and Sworcery uses a detailed art style, with a diverse colour palette and high quality designs of objects in the background, while still using a low pixel resolution for the enemies and player character. The colours used create a dark atmosphere in all areas of the game, even during the day, while also maintaining a constant theme of vegetation in all areas. Every area has some grass of a bush or a tree. I can take inspiration from the backgrounds used in the game, as they have a very calm feel to them.

Terraria

Terraria's art style is simple, with the use of bright colours for different items and biomes in the game. The game uses a low pixel resolution for the characters, meaning they are less detailed, but are still designed well enough to identify who they're supposed to be. Terraria uses a very wide colour palette, with a new unique colour in each different biome. For example, the surface fields are a moderate green with matching colour trees, while the jungle biome uses a brighter shade of green and differently designed trees, the desert biome has sand instead of grass and cacti instead of trees, and biomes such as the corruption is mostly purple and the crimson being mostly red. These colours make the areas feel more welcoming or more dangerous of potentially more mysterious.

Dave the Diver

The setting of Dave the Diver is almost entirely under the water, so the game mostly uses designs of underwater features of landmarks. The characters and the sushi restaurant are made purely with pixel art, but the background and the outcrops that you have to swim around is made with a pixel art design on a 3D model, making them look slightly more realistic than everything else in the game, and this is consistent across all underwater areas in the game. The light blue used in the areas closer to the surface give off a cool and calm vibe that makes the game relaxing to play, while the areas further below the surface are naturally darker and give of a more worrying feeling, but not quite to the point that invokes fear. As for the colour palette itself, most of the colours used for the 3D environment are essentially the same, but there is a variety of different colours used for things like plants and coral found in the ocean.

Eternal Castle

Eternal Castle uses a very unique art style, in the sense that its very simplistic and there are only 4 different colours being used at the same time, most of which being black, white, blue and pink, with other colours being present in different areas. The use of these colours, mainly black with some white for the chacarters and enemies and blue and pink for the lighting and background, creates a very dark atmosphere where everything seems to be shrouded in shadow. This makes it so there is not much detail in the environment and the only way you can identify what something is is through its shape.

Independent Research:

Risk of Rain Returns

Risk of Rain Returns is mainly what my 2D sidescroller project is based off of, with the movement, the items and how the character moves considerably slower during the shooting animation. The design of my items is also inspired by risk of rain in general. What appeals to me about risk of rain returns is the character design, level design, enemy design and the wide selection of different characters to play and items to unlock.

Wizard of Legend

Wizard of Legend is a game i have been playing recently. It is a pixel art sidescrolling roguelike that involves the use of a wide range of spells in fast paced combat. This game appeals to me because i love the idea of a roguelike which is set around wizards and uses magic in combat. I believe the dash mechanic would potentially work well in my game as it would be a way of avoiding taking damage from a hit.

[finleyjackson75]

Making the HUD

I started working on the HUD for my 2D sidescroller. To start with, i right clicked in the content drawer in unreal engine, selected user interface and selected widget blueprint.

To start with, i added the canvas panel, the green box, which acts as the boarder of the HUD and allows us to add other components.

Then i added a text box in the top left corner and put the word "health" in it. This is where my healthbar will eventually go.

And then i added an image to the bottom left of my HUD. I was told to put a funny picture in. This is me being really funny

And this is my HUD so far and what it looks like in my game.

A key component to making the HUD is putting anchors on the components within it. This is so that it stays in the same place on the screen and doesn't change position if the screen size changes or when the screen itself moves.

What we then did is implement a new font for the text in my HUD. I went to a website called dafont and got a free font and imported it into unreal engine. I downloaded the file, extracted it and then dragged it into the content drawer in unreal. Then i selected the font section of the details of my text box in my HUD and selected the imported font.

[finleyjackson75]

Character Shooting Animation and Particle Effects

I put my shooting animation for my character into unreal engine, and i created particle effects for the shooting and the shotgun shell.

This first part of the code causes the character to perform the shooting animation, but also slow down while he is doing it. This is so i don't have to go out of my way to design a shooting-and-walking or shooting-and-jumping flipbook or program it into my game.

This next part of the code makes it so the muzzle flash particles are played at the start of the shooting animation so it looks like they are coming out of the gun itself.

This single node stops the character from starting the shooting animation during the current one, making it not look weird.

This segment of code makes it so the character moves at normal speed again once the shoot animation is finished, to prevent him from moving really slow forever.

This bit of code spawns the shell after the shooting animation is finished and flies upward a little before dropping down again, spinning a little bit throughout. This makes it seem like a shell has actually been ejected from the shotguns chamber.

This final node makes it so the shotgun shell destroys itself after a certain amount of time, which will make the game run better.

[finleyjackson75]

Replaying the Jump Animation for my Character

I decided to loop my jumping animation for when i jump again in the air. I needed to do this because i am planning on giving my character multiple jumps and it would look weird if he didn't move while midair. I had to ask Jake, one of my teachers, to help me with this, but this is the end result.

Instead of making the jump animation play again when the jump keybind is pressed again, we had to create two new paper flipbooks, each with one frame of my jump animation. My jump animation only has two different frames in it, so we needed a new flipbook for each. The flipbook for the first frame is named "Jump_Rise" and the flipbook for the second animation is called "Jump_Fall". Then we made a target velocity node and selected "split struct pin" so that we could use the different axis' on their own.

This allows us to control the z axis, which is up and down. Then we added a "greater than" node and connected it to a branch. This group of code essentially makes it so that if the character exceeds 0 on the z axis, the Jump_Rise flipbook will play, and when it doesn't, the Jump_Fall flipbook will play.

[finleyjackson75]

Tile Map Importing

I've imported my tile map into unreal engine and getting it ready to use for my 2D map.

I made a lot of changes to my tilemap, and i will probably make some more before i have finished the project. There were things that i added, and things that didn't match any of the other tiles i had made, meaning i had to change pre existing tiles. Here is the updated version as of now.

Here is a picture of my 2D map so far. This is an early version of it and it will change.

I had trouble with the layers in my map. I wanted to have my character walk in front of some of the trees and bushes, and walk behind others. But he was walking in front of all of them. I found out that it was because my character in the 3D map was on the front layer. I have put him in the middle layer and the problem is fixed.

There is anther problem that i have and am still having. For some reason my character is running at 200mph and can jump as high as 5 story buildings. I'll have to ask Jake about this.

I asked Jake about the problem, and i discovered that i just had to lower the character move speed and jump height in the CharaterMovement component

[finleyjackson75]

Tile Maps

I started creating a tile map using a separate photoshop file and premade tiles that were given to me. Here is the result.

[finleyjackson75]

Animation Artists

Waneella

Waneella's art is very detailed, with some of his art works looking very natural and realistic, by using natural lighting bouncing off of surfaces, and other pieces of his art look more cartoon-ish with the use of black outlines for everything and a different, darker shade of colours. While it may make a very nice wallpaper, it would take too long for me to make an entire game world using this art style.

Paul Robertson

Paul Robertson uses very bright colours in his art work, with most of his pieces looking very retro. Most of his pieces have a lot going on in them, with many different characters and references to other pieces of media within the pictures, including Dodgeball (the film), Homer from The Simpsons, Ted, Plankton from SpongeBob and Peter Griffin. These are very interesting pieces of art, but they are also very detailed and would also take too long to create if i were to use it for my game.

Ivan Dixon

Ivan Dixon does more cartoon animations, but he also does some pixel art animations. In particular, the idle animations of character sprites. These animations are very bouncy, with very exaggerated movements that have a lot of moving parts. The art style, however, is very simple, and would not take too long to make, while still looking very good.

Pedro Medieros

Pedro Medieros has worked on games such as celeste and towerfall, and creates both drawings and primarily pixel art for other projects he is involved in. The top piece is a Mockup, which is a picture that he created to resemble something seen in a pixel art game. The other, smaller pieces below it are pictures of items from a side project pedro is working on called Scars. This art style is very cool and i can see myself taking great inspiration from these pieces for my project and any projects that i may do in the future.

[finleyjackson75]

Week 3: Incorporating Art into Engine

Mortal Kombat

The Mortal Kombat developers created the character sprites for their game by filming actors performing the moves seen in the game, as if they were creating a movie.

Limbo

The setting of Limbo is completely black and white, as if the character is constantly running in the dark. Because of this, not much detail needs to be put into the design of the characters, enemies or the environment since it's all essentially just a silhouette.

Backbone

Backbone uses something called Anthropomorphism, which is the attribution of human characteristics to gods, objects or, in this case, animals. The game uses different animals as the characters in the game, but they have been given a human form and act as if they are human. This gives the game a unique character design.

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight uses a very wide range of vibrant colours to make each character and location unique. They use blue for the main characters default armour and a range of other bright colours for unlockable armours. Different areas of the game have different colour palettes, with green and blue being used for the the forrest, bright blue and white for the snow area and dark blue and purple for night time.

[finleyjackson75]

Animated Sprites

I have animated the sprites that i am using for my game. For my items, i have just made them bob up and down.

For my player character, so far i have only made a walking animation, but i plan on making an idle animation, jumping animation and a death animation.

This walking animation of my character has gone through many changes. I tried to give him a walking animation for both when his legs are apart and for when they're crossed, but the crossed walk animation looked too weird and i didn't know how to fix it.

I have updated the walking animation of my character. I have found a way to make his legs cross over without it looking weird. I am very proud of this one.

I have now made an idle animation for my player character. I just shortened his legs and moved him down by one pixel on my canvas to make it look like he's bobbing up and down.

I have also made my shooting animation for my character for whenever he shoots his shotgun. I'm prouder of this than i am of the walking animation.

My jumping animation for my character is now complete. I struggled with it a little bit because i tried to make the bottom of his coat float up a little to give the effect that he's falling, but it looked too weird. I'm still happy with the result though.

Here is my animation (if you can even call it that) of my character taking damage.

And finally, i have made a death animation for when my character dies. This is very simple since i didn't want to change the character model too much.

[finleyjackson75]

Sprites in Unreal Engine

I imported my character sprite into unreal engine to use it for my player character.

In order to do this, i had to make the mesh of my character invisible, because a lot of code would have been deleted if i'd deleted the character mesh, and then created a paper sprite and import my character sprite into it and line up the player capsule with the size of my character.

I also had to set the rotation speed of the character really high so that it would look like the character was turning instantly from left to right instead of turning on an axis like a 3D character.

I also had to go into the event graph of my character and add some more code to the input mapping so that, when i start my game, my character will be facing the camera instead of being invisible until you move it.

[finleyjackson75]

Getting a Sprite Sheet Ready

I have created a sprite sheet for all of the sprites that i have made so far and imported it to unreal engine.

i created a separate photoshop file that was 32 pixels high (the height of my sprites) and 256 pixels wide (big enough to fit all 8 of my sprits onto the sheet).

I then imported it to unreal engine as a PNG.

When i opened the file in unreal engine, the pictures looked blurred, as if they were blended in with its background. To fix this, i had to right click the sprite sheet in the content drawer, select sprite actions and select "Apply 2D Texture Settings".

[finleyjackson75]

Week 2: Character Workshop

Don Bluth:

Don Bluth is an american animator that worked on video games and directed films in the 1970's.

He uses a hand drawn style of animation, where all the characters and environment appear to be hand drawn. An example of his work is Dragon's Lair, a video game released in 1983 that Don Bluth helped design characters for.

Mary Blair:

Mary Blair was an american artist and animator that worked on animations and designs for disney.

Her art and animations appeared as if they were painted, with no discerning outlines of any of the characters she created. She also worked on well known films such as Alice in Wonderland, Lady and the Tramp and Dumbo.