I decided to launch myself back into games design this week after looking at some past projects that gave me a kick of insipiration to start creating again. There was a certain proejct (Djinn & Tonic) that gave me the idea to create a 2D Side-Scroller.
During my time away from making games I decided to revisit 3D modelling and had been working on recreating a project from college with the wealth of knowledge that I've gained in my 4 years of university. One of the original things I had wanted to do with this project was to create a cel-shaded look and I decided to use the shader I made for that project for my side-scroller to give it a different look to my previous projects.
The first thing I did was to sit down and do some brainstorming for the mechanics I wished to include in this project, in Djinn & Tonic I originally had ladders; however as I intended to use animations for this I decided against them. To fix this problem I landed on creating Launchpads that the player could use to travel vertically within my game worlds. I also decided that I wanted to lock off the end of the level until the player had found a key to unlock it so as to make the player explore the level a bit instead of just rushing through, After I had decided on the core mechanics of the game I opened Photoshop and started planning out the levels.
After I had created these basic designs I opened Unreal Engine and began to work on the game I used the Third Person Template as a base for the game as it already had the basic functionality I required. I then changed the camera perspective and made it so that the player could move left and right. I then also used the signpost tutorial idea from Djinn & Tonic as a way of implementing a tutorial that was more Diagetic than just popping up on the HUD. I then implented an Asset Pack that I purchased from a previous project to give the game its Medieval aesthetic. Heres a video of the first three levels:
I hope to work on this some more over the coming weeks and share that process with you.
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