14-05-2020
Today, we received the new assignment for Building Playful Worlds 2. I decided to use the following pictures for my own environment:
The left image is the theme / atmosphere I want to use. The right image is the setting of my environment. I worked on a moodboard today to visualize my current idea. You can find the moodboard here.
My current idea is a retro style American diner, located in the desert. I would like to have an interior and an exterior for it, with the interior as a priority. The two versions of the environment would naturally be inside and outside, but if the outside is too much work, I want to do something with changing the look of the interior with switching songs on the jukebox of the diner. The game will be a 2D pixel art game. I decided to do this, because I’ve never done it before and would really like to try it out. I am also currently working on a 2D pixel art game for my second ISA project, so hopefully I can combine these two subjects a little and reuse some of the assets I make.
The most important assets in this environment would be: the main character, the diner (exterior view), a dining booth (diner interior), a bar, and a jukebox. Other important exterior assets include a sign (neon, maybe), a parking lot with maybe a truck or a car, and some desert plants (a cactus, a rolling tumbleweed). As I mentioned above, I’ll first be focusing on the interior of the diner, meaning I’ll probably start with the main character, diner booth, bar, and jukebox.
15-05-2020
I spent some time setting up all my stuff for this project today. I set up my Github, did some preparations for this blog, and created a Unity project. Because I’m working in 2D and pixel art, there’s several things that I needed to change in order for my art to work well. I set the screen resolution of the game to 1280×720. The PPU for my sprites is 16. The main camera’s orthographic size is set to 4,5 (camera size is 256×144, so 144 / PPU / 2 = 144 / 16 / 2 = 4,5).
It took me a while to get it all set up, but I think I should be ready to import some art now. Knowing myself (and knowing Unity) I’ll probably run into some more problems when I actually get to the importing part, but that’s a problem for future me. Right now, I’m feeling pretty good about how all of this is going so far. I would love to start working on the art this weekend, but I’m not sure if I’ll have time to get to it. If not, I’ll at least set up a main menu, a scene for the environment, and maybe already a way to get back to the main menu from there. I’m not sure whether I want both exterior and interior in the same scene or the two of them in separate scenes, but I’ll look into that in the weekend as well.
16-05-2020
Today, I tried out making some pixel art. I made a main character and a tile for sand. Both aren’t the official assets yet, I only used them to try out importing the assets into Unity and working with a tilemap for the first time. It went pretty smooth, so that’s good news.
For my pixel art, I’m using Pixel Studio. I haven’t worked with it before, so I’ll also have to figure out how it works. Because I made some art today, I’m already getting the hang of it, which is really nice.
Tomorrow, I’ll work on connecting the main menu to the environment level and vice versa. After the weekend, I’ll continue with the art.
17-05-2020
In order to speed things up a little, not only did I link my main menu to the level and vice versa, but I also already added a player movement script and a camera movement script. Now, the player can move around with WASD and the camera will follow the player’s position. This allows me to create a map bigger than the screen itself, so that the player can do some exploration.
I also made an asset list. This will help me keep a clear overview of what I still need to draw. Here’s the list:
I have already been working on the interior floor tiles and the sand. I also have two types of cacti and a patch of dry grass. During the week, I’ll try out painting on a tilemap in Unity.
18-05-2020
I worked on several things today. I made a floor plan and worked on some interior design, to see which colors work nicely together.
The kitchen is something I’ll be adding if I end up with extra time on my hands. Otherwise it will be there, but the door will be locked, so the player can’t go to that area. I also made a floor plan for the exterior.
It won’t be an extremely big map, but it’ll be big enough for some exploration.
19-05-2020
Today I finished the floor and wall tiles for the interior of the diner. I put them all together in an art program, to see if all the tiles line up and fit correctly.
It works a little clunky in the transition part between the two walls going up, but this is the best I could do- otherwise I’d have to work with halved tiles and that messed up the entire floor. I also already implemented it in Unity and it looks pretty cool so far.
The main character looks a little creepy, I know. It’s still a placeholder though, so don’t worry. The little white square in the upper right corner of the screen is the button that brings you back to the main menu.
I also added in colliders to make sure the player doesn’t leave the room. The collision also doesn’t work flawlessly, because the player sometimes randomly gets stuck while moving along the colliders. Luckily when the room is fully decorated, there’s not really an opportunity to fully move past all the colliders- so that fixes that issue.
20-05-2020
Today I created another scene for the exterior. I painted a background for it on the tilemap.
I also added in some “doorways” the character can collide with. These doorways will switch between the two scenes. The doorways aren’t painted on the tilemap, I made them into sprites. That was much easier.
I got very far this week. Most of the coding should be done right now. During next week, I would like to get a whole bunch of assets done, so that I can round up the actual environment itself as soon as possible. I would also like to build the kitchen if I can, and maybe do something (again) with a locked door and a key. Not as the core mechanic of the game this time, but just as a bonus to get an extra piece of environment to explore. I think that would be really cool.
I also want to get some work done on the actual character sprites. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish them in a week, because I’m very busy at the moment, but I’ll certainly try.
Building Playful Worlds 