Jump
Introduction
This week, we we’re given a task to create our own game. This is an individual assignment, that we will have 6 weeks to complete and another 6 weeks after that to perfect. The game I intend to make is a puzzle platformer game named ‘Jump’. This game will be intended for both PC and console devices. For this project I will be using Unreal Engine 5 to complete this task. This blog will document the process of the game making and the problems faced pre-production.
Week 1 - Beginning of Development
This week was the first week of development, this week was mainly about focusing on what our projects were and planning what aspects to include within the gameplay. The first thing I did was Open the Trello board and make myself a 'To Do List' of things I wanted to include, to do this I used my Game Design Document to remind myself of everything I would need to add to the game.
Each week I would take one of the cards from the Trello board and I would complete all the tasks that I had separated into manageable sections. The cards were broken up into three sections, To Do, In Progress and Done. To do is a list of everything to do, when I have started on a task it will be moved to the in progress channel and then when I have completed everything on that card I will move it to the Done channel.
In Unreal Engine
For this project I am using Unreal Engine 5.1.1. In week 1 I set up a project for my game, I chose to use an empty level set up.
As my game is a 2D Platformer and I was creating all the sprites myself, I chose to then start to make the animations for my player character. The first animation I made was the Idle animation, as I felt this was the easiest one for me to draw and implement into unreal, As I made the sprites in Photoshop, I had to teach myself the best way to make images into animations. I chose to use the timeline feature within photoshop to make the animations then I added the stills to another document to create the sprite sheets. I repeated this process for all the animations I created.
Overall I think this week was a good week as I had completed all my tasks from the Trello board and I was ready to start coding next week.
Week 2 - Making Movements and Jumps
I started off this week with the goal of adding in movements into my game.
In my Game Design Document, I had 4 different types of jumps I wanted to have in my game, this included, double jump, wall jump, jump down and the normal jumping mechanic.
Before I could start adding the movements I had to implement Paper ZD into my project, so that I could create a new blueprint for sprite characters. After this I chose to start on adding my sprite sheets into unreal Engine, I then extracted sprites and created Flip-books for each animation.
Week 3
This week I wanted to focus on implementing my characters Jumps into the game, I started to make the code for the regular jump. I found this pretty easy and it was a good start to ease me back into coding within Unreal Engine 5.
I chose to implement the double jump into unreal, this was a bit more difficult as it used a lot of code that I had never experimented with before this project, I was expecting to face some issues with this mechanic however it actually went smoothly and I was able to complete this mechanic with ease.
Slide Mechanic
As I was looking through my Game Design Document I realised that I forgot about a mechanic I wanted to have in my game, I wanted to have a slide mechanic in my game that would allow the player to slide under objects by shrinking the capsule collision.
The first thing I did for this was I went back to photoshop and I created the slide animation. this was easy enough however, as I had to keep my sprites consistent, with colours and size, this was challenging as I had to change the character's body shape, however I completed this task and I started to implement the code into Unreal Engine 5.
Week 4 - Adding Strength
This week I started by adding in the Strength bar, to do this I chose to create the widget, after I completed this This week I started by adding in the Strength bar, to do this I chose to create the widget, after I completed this I needed to code the strength bar to decrease when the character performed different jumps. This week wasn't the most productive week as I was ill.
After I implemented this to the double Jump and It was confirmed that it was working I choose to take the time to begin making the chest.
First of all I made the chests myself so I spent this week In photoshop making sprites for the chest and making animations for them in the timeline feature before adding them into Unreal.
Week 5 - Getting Everything Together
This week I mainly focused on Level design, I made all 6 levels for my game. I also created my slime enemy that would be the main enemy in my game.
I had to start by making the animations for the slime character. I made the characters idle animation, the walk/movement animation and I also made their attack animation.
I then created flipbooks and started to code the AI blueprints.
Week 6 - Presentation
This Week we gave presentations to show how our games were looking so far.
This was beneficial for me as it made me view my game from an outside perspective and gave me an idea of how to make my game better.
Week 7 - The Elements
I chose to add Narrative back into my game, When I was Under scoping my game to make sure it was doable for this assignment I took out the narrative aspects, I choose to add them back in as I thought it would be an achievable goal I had set for myself.
I choose which storyline I wanted to go for and I decided to implement it in. One of the factors I added in was a NPC who gives the player a book at the beginning to explain the plot of the story.
Week 8 - Widgets
This week I focused on making UI elements of my game as I had created them before hand however they don't do their job as efficiently as I would've liked, I also chose to change the design of them as I had downloaded different fonts I wanted to experiment with. Overall I think these were a good addition to the game and I feel they really brought it to life.
Week 9 - Playtesting
This week was the first week of play testing, through playtesting I noticed that my game wasn't as 'fun' as I had hoped it would be. I wanted this to change so I decided to implement in Narrative factors.
For this I started to research how to make pop ups on screen and I choose what I would like the story to be about.
I was also informed that the book widget I had was good for narrative, but It was also suggested to me that I could use it to on board the player.
Week 10 - Widgets and Narrative Signs
This week I decided to add more narrative aspects into the game, these included characters who had passed away, leaving journals for the player to leave.
Week 11 - Signs
I used these signs as a way to communicate to the player and as a way to make them aware of things in the levels and get them on board with controls and mechanics in the game.
They are also used to convey to the player that they have won the game, as well as the 'you died', 'Out of Strength', 'Pause' and 'You Win' widgets to convey information to the player.
Week 12 - Game Complete
This week as it was our final week it was a busy week. Just polishing everything off and there were a few issued with my game that needed to be fixed.
Unfortunately there were some issues I was unable to resolve, despite my attempts. The player respawn stopped working as it should and unfortunately I was unable to resolve.
However overall I am happy with how my project turned out.