Levels one and two development

Here are the first two levels of the game, with the traps added. The first level is good, but might be a little too difficult because of the swinging boulders, the second level feels a bit bare in comparison. So I need to develop that further. I want the levels to feel like you progress in terms of the difficulty without it being unfair, especially when there aren't any checkpoints, I don't want the players to give up because they keep having to go back to the beginning of the level when they die.

This i just the levels with the backdrops and props added, there are quite a few things like the rocks, that I ended up not using but I may revisit the look of these levels once I've spoken with the rest of the team. The backgrounds are using a subtle parallax effect that I prototyped earlier in the project.

 

These are the backdrops as one image each, in Unity each layer is a separate png that I have copied across to fit the level.

Update: 12/04/16

I added some clouds to the second level to make it feel more complete, and I made them parallax as well.

Second level assets and initial layout

Because our game is making good progress we've decided to add a second level. I've recoloured some of the existing assets for the next level and once we've built it we can figure out if anything else needs making

To make these I just used an adjustment layer to change the colour of the base rocks and kept the shadows the same, I also removed the grass from a couple of things.

I quickly sketched a layout for the second level and then built it in Unity

I was aiming for something more difficult and reliant on delicate platforming, which I think I've managed but it still needs play-testing by other people and some of the traps need adding.

Traps

I added an animation to the wall, to start making the game feel more finished. I made the animations fine but ran into some trouble with scripting it, because I haven't scripted in so long that I'm a bit rusty. So I ended up getting some help, and got it working, it would possibly be better to use physics but I'm not sure where to start with that and this method got the job done quickly.

Then I made a falling boulder to flesh out the second level, it's just a new asset with a looping animation applied to it. Getting the timing right took a little fine-tweaking but it's looking good now.

Environment Development and Test

I made a level out of those initial four pieces, it's functional but needs a lot more variety. However I have not been able to play test it so I'm just focusing on the look for now.

I expanded the range of pieces and updated the level.

For putting these assets into Unity I imported the sprite and made a 2D polygon collider, which I then simplified because the automatically generated ones followed the contours of the sprite and were too complicated, then I made each piece into a prefab so that they were easier to work with. It looks better but the pieces don't fit together very well and the style is inconsistent with the other assets I've made. So I remade them and rebuilt the level, again.

I think this looks a lot more cohesive and the painting method I used was a lot quicker and easier to replicate. Putting these in was a lot faster as well, because I just edited the prefabs I already had instead of starting from scratch.

This is the layout after I play-tested and adjusted it to fit the constraints of the player's jump and glide abilities, and the lack of vertical camera movement. It's missing most of the traps/obstacles but still seems fun to play and I received positive peer feedback so I think I'm onto the right track with this. Now I need to make more of the assets so that we can get those extra traps and obstacles in game.

Background Elements

I started work on the environment assets to use in game, first I painted the mountains, grass and foreground on different layers so that I can export them separately.

Then I colour corrected the image to better match Luther's concept art. Some of this could do with further adjustment but overall I'm happy with the painting style I've established here.

After working out the the painting style I started on the individual props, the top two here are tests to work out how I was was going to approach the trees, the bottom six are the final assets. I really like how these turned out, although I might need to go back and edit them if they don't match the rest of the level.

This is just the trees with a soft light layer applied to fade them into the background, so that the same assets can be used on the different layers of the game environment.

For these rocks, broken walls and platforms I used the same workflow that I used for the trees. I think they look nicely painted but in hindsight they don't match the level as much as they could and I may need to edit them. However I have all the original files so that shouldn't be a problem.

After talking to a tutor earlier and receiving feedback we realised it would be easier to work with a modular set of level pieces. So I took that initial style test and split it into pieces, which I polished up a little, it's likely that I will need to make more of these but I'll use this for now to set up a level in Unity to see how it looks first.

So far this is a really fun project to work on, it's been interesting to work in a more angular style than normal because of the need to match Luther's concept work and it's a good opportunity to further practice my painting skills.

Environment

I started doing some environment samples in order to formulate a firm art style to proceed with. A style in particular i wanted to go for was that of Rayman Legends. Primarily this was due to its vibrant color pallet and other worldly look of its environments which i felt would be beneficial, particularly when creating an otherwise mythical world. 

This was the first test at establishing our art style but was ultimately rejected. The brush work was considered too soft and would prove problematic in distinguishing features on an object. Additionally it was not as aesthetically vibrant or pleasing. 

Instead a more hard brush, defined style was chosen with dark shades of colour being used in lifework to detail features. 

I mostly wanted to avoid outlines altogether and instead used darker shades of color to detail inside of objects and parts of the environment. Shading was usually done through either a darker blue or bright yellow, to avoid losing some of the vibrancy of the environment. 

This was a proposed design for the mountain regions which would combine a type of forest setting with plateaus and cliffs. It was designed as a friendly environment to begin the game and learn basics on. 

Parallax test

Before I started painting any backdrops or assets, I set up a unity project to test out how the parallaxing effect for the backdrops will work. I was following this tutorial

https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/2d/2d-overview.

I painted a quick greyscale example to use, and made sure I each part on a separate layer so that I could import it into Unity as multiple images.

I got it working as it turned out to be very simple, I just used the script provided in the example and made sure all the layers were set up correctly.

Update (03/03/16)

I made a new set of backdrops and tested the parallax again to  make sure I can place the props and have them move with the background. It turns out I can just nest the objects together and it works fine, so I should be able to easily apply this to the game. I might need to go back and add shadows around the base of the trees, but I’ll see how it looks in the actual game first.

Level Design

The above sketches are initial ideas for the layout and were also a way for me to practice drawing this kind of design. I haven't done a huge amount of level design before so I was trying to figure the process out. To help with that I read this post, which is a guide to designing platformer levels.

I then drew out a more detailed level map and was able to get feedback on things like the length and placement of hazards.

And this is pretty much the final design, obviously things will change slightly once it's in engine but this is about what we're going for. I'm very happy with it considering this entire process has been me learning how to design 2D levels, It could be more complex but it's a good first attempt.

I also did these sketches to get a feel for how the background/level will look, the bottom left is the closest to what we're going with style-wise