Evaluation

Final Major Project - Evaluation

Overall, I am happy with this project. I spent a lot more time on this one than any other, and not just because it is a bigger unit. This unit was the size of 2 units together, but I did more than double the normal amount of work, which shows that I was driven and happy to work.

At the start, it was all going well with my proposal. After I wrote it, I easily did the weekly progress that I set for myself. For example, the first week was research. I did this for the whole week and got a solid week's worth of research, instead of just spending one day on it as I might have in a previous project. The rest of the weekly work was going well until the point where I actually started scripting. I was fine with modelling, research, animating the character and writing the story. The only problems came with scripting, which was a whole 6 weeks in. As I was over halfway already by then, I did not get discouraged as I expected to encounter troubles far sooner than this; the fact that it took this long meant I was doing well.

With the scripting, the problems I had were because of my character controller. As I was forced to use a certain one, a lot of other scripts that relied on the default character controller did not work, so I had to redo those. This was a lengthy process, taking up what precious time I had. As week 6, 7, 8 and 9 were pretty much continuation and virtually the same as each other, it was easy to get back into it every week. Most of the script I used, I had to find online as I needed references. A good place for references besides Youtube is the Unity Wiki, http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Main_Page. Using this, I found many helpful scripts for free.

I think I worked at a good pace in this project and put in a high amount of effort. I believe I could not have done much better even if I spent every single day working on this, so I am very happy with the results. I think my game definitely takes influences from old platformers and side scrollers, but in the end it turned out less of a carbon copy and more of a tribute. This is something I planned on not from the start, but a few weeks in. I decided to instead put my own originality in there wherever I could so that I was not just taking elements and leaving them unchanged. My game definitely draws from these influences, I will not deny this. Fans of the old games I took inspiration from can enjoy this fact, while people who are not fans may not see the influences, and enjoy it as a game in its own right. This is exactly what I wanted from the unit, so I am pleased.

Given more time, I don't think I could have added much more besides possibly a health bar instead of a single-hit death system, but I think the single-hit death is a good thing as it adds to the retro style of the game. I think a health bar would only help in a side-scrolling game sometimes, like in Mega Man and Castlevania, but would be worse in a game like Sonic or Mario.

Proposal

Final Major Project Proposal EDEXCEL Level 3 BTEC Extended Diploma in Interactive Media with Game Design
Learner Name: Elliot Fenton
City of Bristol College School Media & Art College Green Centre, St Georges Road Bristol BS1 5UA
Specialist Area: Interactive Media/Game Design
Date: 13th March 2013
Section 1 Working title: To be decided based upon completion of storyboard and characters Ideally, a working game will be the final product. This game should be under the genre of ‘2d sidescrolling platformer’. By this I mean fully functional, not a complete few-hour-long game to professional standards, but to a high standard nonetheless. I could base it upon Arcade and oldschool console classics like Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country games. Hopefully I will be able to make an original, unique game that can stand out, despite taking influences from these and more. I will use Unity as it is the engine I know the most about. I also feel that its dedicated 2D plane of working would be beneficial here: I would like my fighting game to be 2-dimensional and this particular engine would make this a lot easier to implement. My inspirations will include the games I mentioned above, but will also include games like the recent popular Arcade releases on Xbox and Playstation, for example, Supermeatboy, Scott Pilgrim, etc. These games proved that retro-style games can be, and are fun without being graphically impressive, or even too complex. With this in mind I plan on making a game that really focuses on gameplay; I do personally believe that with big budget games of recent, the main focal point has been graphical complexity – I definitely do not think this should be their priority, merely a nice addition for ‘bonus points’.
Section 2 I will try to take a lot of influence with my project, and make sure that my project only takes the best parts of each influence. For example, I will take inspiration from the platforming nature of old Mario games, or even newer Mario games (although between the two, there are virtually no differences). Overall, the game will be a side-scrolling platformer in 2D and I hope that the inspirations are seen through the final piece – I want mine to be compared to some of the greats, if possible. I am going to use the basis of old, nostalgia-inducing graphics and art styles as my general feel for the game as this is my preferred style when I personally play games. Effectively, this is me taking an influence from my own experience – using what I know to influence my choices.   My sources will include books and websites. I will mostly use websites, as they are the easiest to access for me. I will try to stay away from Wikipedia and non-official-looking websites as I can never trust what is written to be the truth. Therefore if I DO use websites, I will make sure they are legitimate, such as articles, news sites, etc. Overall I believe it is best to find the research and examples in a physical copy, but these days this seems to be harder to do. Regardless, I will try my best to find them, unless it is not possible; for example, if the research were playing through a game, I would have to use the medium the game was created on. For an Xbox arcade title, I would need to use the Xbox to get the research.
Section 3 I will be using Unity to create my game. Within Unity, there are many techniques to use, all of which are obviously digital techniques and processes, as Unity is software. My non-digital techniques or processes will be drawings, rough sketches I imagine. This is because I am not too confident in my drawing skills as it is but I will definitely need to portray what I want to end up with, in a physical copy, so a quick drawing would count as this. I would also need to draw for a storyboard, which is another thing I may need to make. In Unity I will have to use scripting, terrain creation, assets and prefabs. I will need to use Cinema 4D if I want to create prefabs, which are 3d rendered images, to a high standard.       Week 1: Research successful games of a similar genre Week 2: Create title screen and story Week 3: Draw characters and level on paper Week 4: Create level prefabs in Cinema 4D and level music in Garage Band (may carry over to week 5) Week 5: Create 3d characters in Cinema 4D and anything not finished from last week Week 6: Import characters to level, start final game Week 7: More working on final game level, script writing Week 8: Should be halfway through game by now Week 9: Finish game Week 10: Build, evaluate, hand in
Section 4 I will document my evaluation with a Word document. Within this, I will write about what went well, what didn’t go as well as planned, and what I would like to do differently if given another chance. Obviously I do not know what went well or not just yet, I will not know until it is done. So until then, I can only hope everything goes well. If all goes to plan, I will have a complete level of a side-scrolling, maybe platform-style game upon completion of this unit. This, I hope, will channel old greats of this type like Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, and more, which will be major influences.

Story

Story – Mega Bario Siblings

Our hero, Bario Squeegee, is a retired handyman. He spent his whole life as a handyman, as it was all he could do. Now, he lives life thinking of what could have been, but little does he know that his own life is about become much more exciting…

Bario is out for a walk and sees an odd sewer pipe near his house, which he does not recognise. He had lived in his home for 30 years and had never seen this pipe, and it seemed to show up overnight.

He goes to investigate, and is sucked in; when he finally regains control of his movement, he notices something different.

This world is solely 2-dimensional! And along with this, he sees strange colourful blocks seemingly hovering above the ground, weird-looking creatures and more.

This starts off his journey into this fantastic unnamed world.

Research

This is the Research task set in the Brief. I aim to look at games of similar style, genre, or overall feel in this task. I will also look at methods of creating what I want to achieve.


The first game I looked at and analysed was the first ever game to feature the iconic Nintendo mascot, Mario. Many believe Mario's first appearance was in Mario Bros. from 1983, but it was in fact the game Donkey Kong from 1981, created for games arcades and only being available at such. It was made by Nintendo who, back then, were not well very known in the gaming industry. As they seemed to be among few creating games at this early era of gaming, they made the most of the fact that it was a new thing and they strived to be the best at it. And nobody can really argue with that.

As I had no arcade cabinet, I had to find the game online on a website. I played it on a site called classicgamesarcade.com. As expected due to its time of creation, the game was very simple, but by no means easy. This is quite an important aspect, actually: The idea that a game can be simple but still a challenge. Sometimes, there is no need to be mindbogglingly complex to a point where it's hard because you just do not know what's going on, but hard because of required skill, timing, etc.
Looking at the aesthetics, the hardware limitations were a huge part of just what could go into the game. I believe that with limitations comes more creativity in a way, as if given no limits, a game can just have anything and everything thrown in 'because it can be' - a very bad idea. However, with such limitations as the early arcade cabinets, there isn't even space for creativity, so they had to make the background very basic (just a black screen with some red lines to be the platforms, actually), but I believe the sprites, particularly of Donkey Kong, are quite nice looking despite the limitations.

The style of this game seems to be quite cartoony, which is what I'd like mine to be. I don't know if this is cartoon-like on purpose, or if that's because of the limitations of that time. It's possible that both are true - perhaps the creators, Nintendo, knew of their restrictions and aimed to create a game whose style takes full advantage of this. For a game made in 1981, it does seem to have a nice, animated cartoon sort of style which makes it seem more of a family game, which is what it was released as.

Overall, I didn't play this game for too long as to me, it's a little bit boring. I can see how it was good at its time, but as games have evolved SO MUCH since then it's all a little underwhelming in this day and age. The mechanics are there, however, and the control scheme is tight enough that if you mess up, it's only your fault and not because of slow button reactions or things like this, which may have been a problem back then.

After this, I looked at what may well be Mario's most well-known outing, in Super Mario Bros. from 1985. Only 4 years after Donkey Kong, this game is a massive step up, thanks in part to the console the game was created for: The Nintendo Entertainment System (known as the Famicom, short for Family Computer, in Japan). With its superior hardware, the game had much more potential to look a lot nicer and become a lot deeper in terms of gameplay. It is another Nintendo game and as such has been hailed as one of the best games of its time, due in part to its great looking new graphics and what I can only describe as Nintendo's hard-working efforts; their hope to create the best games at the time.

Again, I did not own the console myself so could not play the game, but I instead looked at videos based upon the game, including this one: (youtube video)
I was already aware of how this game looked, played and felt as I had played sequels and remakes which are similar in gameplay. This game was likely one of the first solid platformers for a home console, and was something of a revolution at its time. As I wrote, this was only made 4 years after Donkey Kong, and aesthetically, there is a very big difference.
From what I could see, it was again not an easy game, but still fairly simple in gameplay. Simply jump onto/over enemies, over holes, and into blocks. One important feature was the powerups from these blocks, which would add another feature to the game: a projectile attack in the form of a fireball. A mechanic was put in place whereby on being touched by an enemy you would lose the powerup and not die straight away. This was somewhat more forgiving than the previous game as it was one touch, one death. So in this way, it was made more convenient.

Looking at it in this screenshot, I don't know if Mario's sprite really matches the overall artwork. If you look at the pipes, clouds, boxes etc. you can see these dark outlines, whereas on Mario and other moving sprites, there are none. Whether this was, again, done on purpose or because of limitations... I can't really say. What I can say, however, is that despite not matching, that doesn't mean it looks bad. In fact, the contrast is quite nice to look at and it definitely helps you see exactly where you are at any time, exactly where enemies are, and more.
In my own game, I was going to have my character look slightly different to everything else similar to how it is here. In the end, I didn't stick with that idea, but it would have been an homage to this style that we see in Super Mario Bros.

The next game I researched was a game called Super Meat Boy (produced by Team Meat in 2010). This was already mentioned in my brief, I wrote that it and some other downloadable arcade games on consoles "proved that retro-style games can be fun without being graphically impressive, or even too complex".  By this, I mean that the game itself is fairly basic and perhaps unpolished, (this is not to say the game didn't have time spent on it) while still looking quite nice. It does not need complex lighting, bloom effects, anti-aliasing and such, just (mostly) bright colours, black outlines and very smooth animation.
The game focuses on the tight, solid controls and you do have a very genuine sense of control in the game. When you jump, you control EXACTLY how high you jump by holding the jump button, and you can also control exactly where you land. With this in mind, the game is purely about skill: You learn when to do which kind of jump, how things pan out if you do it a certain way, and learn from failure. Apart from one boss in particular, it is all based on your skill, how you learn the levels, and how you control the character.

I've always loved cell-shaded graphics as they really add a cartoon-like feel to games, whilst still looking really nice. Personally, I believe cell-shaded graphics are timeless and games like Super Meat Boy and Mega Man X (more on that one below) hold up even against today's high-powered graphics just on their sheer artistic style alone. 
Even lower-budget games can look impressive with this style, as Super Meat Boy proves, and I would much rather see a game in this style than a realistic, 3d-rendered style.

This is a video by Egoraptor I watched on Youtube that was speaking about what can be right or wrong about video games. It is called 'Sequelitis' but the video is not just about sequels, more about general games.
He does say what Mega Man X (1993) did right as a sequel/remake/spiritual successor to Mega Man (1987) but he speaks about general ideas, not things that are only right in the context of these games. For example, he speaks about being shown a character that your character (or, you if you are immersed by then) strives to become, and the game promises that you WILL become like that character. This sense of purpose and sense that you want to do your best to become as good as the character that was shown is what may keep you going in the game - just keep at it and you will get better, ingame and in real life, too. By this, I mean the person playing will become so much better at the game by that time, that if they started out as the character that was shown at the beginning, they wouldn't know what to do with the skills and upgrades at the time.

The video also says quite a lot about teaching the player how to play through level design, you will never have to learn immediately how to do something, you are taught as you go. In his example, an enemy will throw its weapon before you can reach it, so by the time you reach this enemy you have already learnt how he throws it and how to dodge. There is so much in this video about what Mega Man X's first level does right to teach you how to play... All with no 'controls screen' telling you which button does what, you learn yourself, and I think that makes it so much better and so much more rewarding.

This game still looks great even today thanks to its art style.

Overall, my game is sort of like a parody or culmination of other games. While it does take the best features and gameplay elements from each, it does stand as its own thing. I did look at other parody-style games or games that do not take themselves too seriously, as mine doesn't. One example is Far Cry: Blood Dragon which was an arcade download released recently (sometime mid-2013). I really enjoyed how this game takes current and modern gaming regular features like the boring tutorials you have to read through or the paid downloadable content. In doing this it is both funny on its own, but also a slight dig at the games industry as it is at the moment.
In games where the story is one of the most important aspects, I prefer a more serious, realistic approach. In a game designed purely for fun and not too much emphasis on the story, I would much rather have a silly, cartoony art style as this just accentuates on the 'fun' in my opinion.

In the game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, there are both of these things at different times. The game is cell-shaded and made to look like a cartoon, with characters' faces and emotions portraying this perfectly. It is designed this way on purpose to show that it is not just an art style in this game, but it is the game's overall style and I really like how it works.
On the other hand, there are serious moments, for example the overall idea that one man is trying to abduct children, (this is a very simplified way of explaining) and this definitely counts as a serious theme in a not-so-serious game. The balance is good, in this way, and the characters in it really do act as if they were cartoons.

This is a screenshot from Wind Waker from 2003 on the Gamecube. Notice the cartoon expressions, the art style and the scale of the area.

This is a screenshot of the remake being made for the Wii U, expected to be released in late 2013. Notice it has been made more 3d and less cartoony, whilst still keeping the cartoon expressions that it had before. Also added is high quality lighting and shadows.

After having some people test my game and give their reactions, I have found a few things I must fix. I must fix how the character jumps, and how the character interacts with the moving platforms. I believe these can both be fixed by using the first person controller script, but this will be tough. I will have to re-do all script that is attached to the current controller, including animation, turning, audio playing and more. I should be able to do this, however, as I have some time still.

The videos are here: 

and here:                  

In my game, I had difficulty with the Character Controller script. The one I had to use is a script that cannot control how a character interacts with moving platforms, which is a big problem. My character falls through the floor when he stands on a moving platform and even if he didn't, he would be sliding on top of it like it is an ice-covered platform or something. While this could be a positive, with my level being snow-themed, it was overall too tough for most people who I asked to test it (see above for examples of people playing that part of the game and having trouble). I wanted my game to present a mild challenge, of course, but falling off or through the moving platforms is just an unfair challenge, rather than a fair test of skill.

Along with this, with that faulty character controller script, the jumping motion is not correct. Right now, you must run forward and Then hit the jump key (space) to actually go forward whilst jumping. If you want to jump from a still position, you won't go forward, so I had to fit the platforming aspects of the game around this. For example, I made it a little bit like a Sonic the Hedgehog game, whereby you must keep moving forward whilst jumping or attacking. Another example of a game like this is the recent Rayman Origins, where there are time trial-esque levels in which slowing down will get you killed. (link) This video shows that aspect well.

I should mention that this Control script I have on my character is not by choice. I did try to apply the First Person Controller scripts (from Standard Assets > Character Controllers) to my character, with the z-axis movement locked as it is a 2d game and the MouseLook script off, but this caused further implications as my character seems to have been imported incorrectly. I cannot remedy this as I used the correct import settings (and I did make sure of this) and it just seems to be an unfixable problem. Not only this, but I looked up sidescrolling tutorials like the tutorials from this user: (link). So in the end, I must make do with the only-when-moving-forward jump, and the lack of moving platforms. In the original Castlevania games, you were locked into a jump when you did it (could not alter the trajectory after you started the jump), so it is not too big of an issue, and moving platforms are, to me, an unnecessary platform type which I do not need.

Castlevania III, 1989-92.

While I set myself the task of creating a 2d platform game, mine has ended up as more of a 3d platformer locked into the 2d plane. By this, I mean all prefabs were created as 3d models and placed where I wanted them. There is a name for these games: 2.5 dimensional games.
The camera is not fully 2d, as to do this I could switch my camera to orthographic and make it completely flat, but I would not do this as it would detract from the toon style and the 3d models. See below for an example of why I would rather not switch to fully 2d (bar the models). As you will see, the game looks nicer as it is, than if it were in orthographic view, although there are a few minor graphical problems with how it is now. For example, the tree you can see in the corner looks stretched when you approach it, and only when you are next to it does it look how it should. This, I think, isn't too much of a problem as it is, like I say, minor.
Also, on another note, switching to orthographic makes the platforming slightly easier, which is a downside as my game is meant to be somewhat challenging.

Daily Progress

Day 1, 20th March: Finished the Proposal Form, but not to a good standard. However I still have tomorrow so I will fine-tune it then.

Day 2, 21st March: Went over the Proposal Form again and made minor grammatical changes. I also realised I did not have enough in the 9 week plan so I added a fair amount.

Day 3, 22nd March: Watched a video on good game design. Learned of conveyance and easing players into games using the first level as a tutorial of sorts, without the need for a huge amount of text teaching you how, or one of these:

Day 4, 23rd March: Thinking about what was learned yesterday, I wanted to come up with ideas of how I can let the player learn, themselves, what they need to do very early into the game. I will map the controls to common control-schemes (example, WASD to move) and at the very start make clear which way you'll need to travel (always to the right, I will start the first level with an impassable wall to the left) and something to jump over that, if failed, will NOT cause death, as it will be a learning curve. Perhaps several fails will equals death, but it must be somewhat forgiving at the start.

Day 5, 28th March: Started research on the games I'd like mine to be compared to/seen as culminations of the best parts of. Today, I played a little bit of Donkey Kong from 1981 and wrote about it on a different post in this blog.

Day 6, 29th March: After playing Mario's first game yesterday, I looked at his first major one as central character. I watched a play-through of Mario Bros. from 1985. I was surprised to find the date of this, the fact that it was only made a few years after Donkey Kong and yet looked so much more developed. I wrote more on the blog post.

Day 7, 30th March: Same again, watched a playthrough of Supermeatboy. Wrote more onto the post about its controls, looks and overall feel.

Day 8, 1st April: Realised I had not analysed the video I watched at the start, so I did that on the research blog today.

Day 9, 5th April: Today I thought of a name, story and title screen for the game. I wanted to do the name and title screen first, so I created a simple but effective background with some text for the name (I chose "Mega Bario Siblings"). This is that title screen.

Day 10, 6th April: Today I finally got around to writing the story. It is about a retired handyman who discovers a hidden world inside a sewer pipe outside his home - and this world seems to be entirely in 2d!

Day 11, 10th April: Drew the character in a few different forms. I drew a polygon-style form, detailed form and a small sprite-like one.

Day 12, 11th April: After drawing the character yesterday, I decided to design and draw a basic version of the level I am to be creating.

Day 13, 17th April: Today I created the music for the game's level. I already had an idea of the feel of the level: a mysterious, icy level so I tried to make the music match this. Sometime after, I changed it a bit by adding a drum beat - this made it become a little more fast paced and action-like and I believe this change is good.

Day 14, 18th April: Created quite a few prefabs to be imported into Unity later on, which are files with the .fbx extension exported using Cinema 4D. I made a rock, some floor tiles, spikes, a wall and a pressure panel.

Day 15, 23rd April: As my proposal was only on my hard drive, I decided to kill two birds with one stone today: I put the proposal onto blogger to both back it up, and to make it visible to be looked at, at any time.
I could not find a good way to upload it onto there, so it is a bit off, but should be readable.

Day 16, 24th April: Started making the character in Cinema 4D. It was not going great because I forgot how to model properly. As soon as I watched a couple of tutorials, I remembered and managed to model a few parts. By this time, however, I was almost finished and most of my character was just standard objects manipulated to join each other and shaped as I wanted them.

Day 17, 25th April: Today, I started rigging the character. This is necessary for any animation the character might do during the game, such as jumping, crouching, punching and of course a walk cycle. I used this tutorial for the basics on rigging.

Day 18, 26th April: Today fixed my rigging and was able to create the walk cycle, after some trouble. 

After this, I went on to make the other animations: the jump animation and the punch animation.

Day 19, 2nd May: The harder stuff has definitely come. Today, I imported my character into Unity and managed to get the walk cycle animation to animate only when the character moves. I also scripted a turn animation; when you press left, he turns left and when you press right he turns right. This was a small but important thing to get out of the way.

Day 20, 3rd May: Had trouble most of today. First, I didn't realise what the 'slope' feature did in the character's script, but only after a long time working around it, I realised it actually stops my character from walking up edges and slopes automatically and not just walking to them. I had accidentally set it to 0 so he got stuck on even the slightest elevation, which was very annoying. After fixing this, I did a small amount of level building. 

Day 21, 4th May: Continuing with the level building, I managed to make a snow effect so that I could have a constant particle effect going on in the foreground/background of my scene that looked like snow. This was a nice touch, I thought, and fits somewhat nicely with the music. I also created the panel which releases the boulder, but as of right now, I can't quite get the boulder right: It is easily pushed by the character, which is definitely not how it should be. I aim to make the boulder much heavier than the character so that if it hits the character, they will be dragged back by it, as a sort of penalty if you do not jump over the boulder properly. 

Day 22, 8th May: Continuing again to try and fix the problem I had, I finally managed to get it right. Using tags and variables, I set it up so that only the player can be affected by the boulder and I just made the boulder teleport player back to his spawn point. From here, I need to make the health bar work. 

Day 23, 9th May: Instead of the health bar, which I'm going to leave for now, I decided to make the rest of the level using the tile prefabs I had. I did this and by the end felt that what I had was not long enough, so now I want to add more to the level before I finish it. 

Day 24, 10th May: As I couldn't get it to work, and it would be a pain anyway, I've completely scrapped the health bar. What I'll be doing now is simply one-hit killing, but setting up a checkpoint or two within the game. To do this is simple, I just set any spikes/boulders after the 'checkpoint' to not send you back to the spawn empty I made earlier; you will be sent to a new empty which I will place on that checkpoint.

Along with this, I set up some gas below the 'pitfalls'. This is to show you that falling there WILL kill you, and a very subtle (and by very subtle, I mean I doubt anyone will even notice this) hint at where to go at one point. I'll speak of that point here anyway - there will come a time where there is nowhere to go besides falling down a hole, a leap of faith must be made. At this point, the ONE hole that has no gas below it will be the safe one. The others will kill you. I do hope people playing the game notice this as I believe it's an innovative way of giving the player a choice based on their own awareness of the game's design even that early into it.

Day 25, 12th May: While today I didn't do anything in the game, I did come up with a few things I need to implement soon. These are putting in the titleGUI and having it send you to the game or a help screen, and having an enemy or moving obstacle. As so far I only have a boulder that rolls towards you slowly and static spikes, I feel like I should add something like a painful obstacle that moves left and right at some pace that you must jump over at the right time. That, or I could have the obstacle move up and down so you must time it well not with jumping, but with running quickly underneath. I'll decide which is better when I get to it.

Another thing I could add is music for that titleGUI (or title scene, really) which plays while you are seeing it but stops as soon as you hit 'play'.

Day 26, 14th May: I decided the first thing I should do is quickly import my title and create a couple of scenes. One for the title screen and one for the help screen. So I did this and added some scripting to send you to the appropriate scene whenever certain buttons are clicked. This is all I did for now as I'll have to create some music for the title screen, and this will have to wait until I have the appropriate software.

Day 27, 15th May: Created a tree prefab as a sort of background graphic to make the game look nicer. I also applied the toon shader to things to give them that cartoon style I've been trying to achieve, and I think it looks great. Tomorrow, I should be able to finish the game level. I'll then make the title music, possibly record some sound effects, and then I'll be done. 

Day 28, 16th May: Today I tried changing the background. As my game is 2d, I could do this simply by creating and rotating a plane and applying a large sized material onto it. I did this but it didn't look as nice as I hoped, so I put the skybox back in. I also added sound effects to certain things, like the jump, when you fall for a trap, and when you get hit and respawn, along with the title screen's music which I used Garage Band to create.

Day 29, 17th May: Today I found a Youtube tutorial which helped me out massively in creating check points. I had originally placed in a mechanic that makes the character go to a different spawn point on death, but this didn't work as there were conflicting scripts. The video is below and it is what I used to make the spawn point, which was the same throughout and all scripts redirected to it, simply move to where the checkpoint object is. This, after testing, worked perfectly.

Day 30, 18th May: I realised, finally, what my game was missing: an end! So, I made a gui and an animated object to send you to a new scene which contains this end GUI. I used Unity's in-built animation option and made it spin erratically on the spot.

Day 31, 22nd May: I've added music to the end which is a nice little celebratory jingle. I believe this, with its 8-bit sound and its upbeat-ness, perfectly fits the end as you have just reached the end of the level in a game which is massively inspired upon those old games where 8 bits was a limitation. 

Day 32, 23rd May: More research on my 'research' blog. I added what the games' styles are, my opinion on this, and even added a few more games and wrote about these, too. I am happy with what I have there, now. 

Day 33, 24th May: Another addition to the blog. I wrote about some problems I was facing and how I overcame them. The main focus was with my control script, which did not allow me to use moving platforms and forced me to use jumps which you must commit to, whose trajectory you cannot alter after you press the jump button. Also updated the research a little more. 

Day 34, 25th May: After noting that moving platforms do not work well in my game, I removed the one I had in there. I replaced it with three separate platforms, over spikes, which I believe to be a small rhythmic challenge as you are forced to stay moving forward whilst jumping, it is all in the timing. 

Here are those platforms, originally intended to be trampolines but I could not get the script to work:

Day 35, 26th May: Today, I experimented with Parallax Scrolling. And it was a success, so I'll keep it in! I will go back and make the backgrounds look a lot nicer, but for now it looks like this: 

The first background goes in the opposite direction of the player, whereas the second background follows very slowly. To get this to work, I input this code, which I have noted.

#pragma strict

//variables to assign in the Inspector

private var X : float;

var offset : int;

var FollowCamera : boolean;

//tells where X is, in this case, Camera's x position

function Start () {

X = Camera.main.transform.position.x;

}

//If following the camera, which is either ticked or unticked in the Inspector

function Update () {

if(FollowCamera) {

transform.position.x = (Camera.main.transform.position.x) -X/offset;

//scroll either following player or going opposite depending on ticked/unticked

} else {

transform.position.x = (X - Camera.main.transform.position.x) /offset;

}

}

Day 36, 27th May: After more testing, I found the parallax scrolling to be buggy and worse-looking than the skybox, so I removed it. Sometimes, it seems, adding all this complex stuff isn't actually a good thing overall. But it was good to reflect upon this.

Day 37, 28th May: Changed my Skybox to a darker one I found in my files. I prefer the looks of this one, so I am keeping it. I also changed the particle effects from sparkles to snowflake-like particles. 

Day 38, 30th May: Today I added in an actual enemy. I based it on a Toad, but to make it unique, I gave it a Pope hat and sceptre. This is to appear at the end of the level and goes back and forth, so it is effectively another obstacle, but I think it passes as an enemy.

Day 39, 2nd June: Almost time to hand in the final project. Just looking over the game again, I played through it and changed the part where you have to drop down a certain hole. As it wasn't very straightforward, I simply added the words "Leap of faith" and made there only one hole, but I removed the wall so you do not know which 'leap of faith' to make; it is up to the player's own judgement there.

Day 40, 5th June: Time to build the game. In the build settings, I made sure that the build was designated for Mac and Windows, and I made it the highest possible quality. I imported all the scenes in the correct order (shown below) so that when you play the game, you go to the Title screen first.

Now all that's left is an evaluation, which will be on a separate blog.