Ball Game – Update

The most recent updates I have made to my ball game are creating more levels and texturing the platforms. The gif above shows gameplay from level 6 of my game. In the gameplay, you can already see the stone and word platforms on the various platforms. I have decided to make the main platforms stone and the secondary platforms to be wood. This is all building up to my final product idea.

My vision for the game is to make different style enemies with different attributes. I plan on making concept art for some of the ideas I already have for enemies. For example, I want to replace the standard enemies, that rotate, with cylindrical stone enemies with spikes. As well as this I would also like to add more levels and potentially add in a menu with different difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard). I am planning on making some concept designs, for what I want the menu to look like, soon.

Pixel Art Rabbit Animation

I decided that I would have some fun and experiment in making a small pixel art animation. I decided to make this fairly simple rabbit character, which I made in four different view points (front, back, left side view and right side view) using Adobe Photoshop. The Character only consists of seven different colours and follows a fairly simple colour pallet, as well as being of a reasonably small size.

To create this animation I simply started with the initial character design. From there I was able to add in guide lines to get the proportions correct for the other three views. Whereas the shading and highlights were done by eye, using my knowledge of perspective which I have from previous art experience I have from my love for art.

I am overall quite happy with the final product. I realise it is by no means a complex or impressive piece of work. However, I believe that it is good practice in animation and character design for games. It is even possible that I could use this character in a game further down the line or even just as a concept in a game before a specific character is created. I like being able to have a collection of assets (no matter what they may be) so that I have a big selection when it comes to creating games.

For my next artistic project I hope to make a stylised 2D character. I hope to make it in the style of which a character would be made for a platform game for example. I believe a generic character like this would also be good practice to create and would also be useful to keep with my other assets for potential further use.

 

Pachinko Machine Updated – Unity

Today I decided to change the look of my Pachinko Machine to make it more interesting. I have modified not only the level’s appearance but also the script of the game. I have adjusted the look of the level by adding in a lot more pegs per level (only level 1 is complete). I plan on increasing the number of pegs gradually either per level or per 5 levels (increasing level difficulty in increments). As well as changing my level appearance I have also modified the play of my game by adjusting the “Droball” script and adding in a “PachinoBall” script. By doing so, the player is now limited to only 20 balls per level,rather than infinite, however if they hit the goal they have 1 ball returned to them. In order to progress level, you have to eliminate a certain amount of the pegs – I plan to making this every peg to progress.

Overall, I am very happy with my game so far and I feel it is going very well for only learning programming for a few weeks now. I cant wait to learn more skills in the future to further improve my game. Personally the next steps for me, to improve my Pachinko Machine, is to begin laying out more levels, then making them look more appealing by adding in my own art work and hopefully bringing the game together.

After this, my target for the game is going to be to program and design a menu system game, possibly with different difficulties which link to different difficulty of level. I understand that this will be difficult but I believe it will really improve my game.

*There is a short gameplay of the first level above.

Level Concept Art – So far

This is the concept art I have created, so far, for my Pachinko Machine. I have used Photoshop accompanied with a graphics tablet to begin to create this level design. Before beginning to draw this concept art, I compiled a selection of reference images. For example: water towers, pipes, flags, rocks / earth, and oil drills.

So far this concept art is very basic, but I am overall pleased with it as I don’t have much experience using graphics tablets to draw with and I feel that this art is fair good so far. I like the simplicity of the main buildings and pipes and I intend on potentially redoing the earth aspect of the concept art to follow this kind of style more. As well as this I plan on adding basic colour and shading to the art to create a stylised final piece.

Ball Game Gameplay

I have spent some time adding extra features and improving my levels, for my ball game, today. I have added jump controls for my player, as well as (automatic) move and spin scripts for my enemies – making my levels harder and more complex. The short gif below highlights some gameplay of the first few levels. I plan to improve my assets in the near future by creating 3D models for the enemies and goal, to begin with, and possibly also introducing multiple kinds of enemies.

Ball Counter Script

Above is the ball count script (Ballcount.cs) for my Pachinko Machine game. This script allows for only 5 balls to be dropped per level in my game. The variable ‘5’ can be altered at any time to change the set limit for a number of balls per level.

Pachinko Machine – Foundations

All of the foundations for my Pachinko Machine have been set up. The player controls the ‘Player’ using either ‘A & D’ or a game controller, ‘Spacebar’ (on a keyboard) or ‘A button’ (on a controller) are used to drop a ball. The ball is said with a ‘bounce’ material, along with all the pegs, meaning the ball bounces as it works its way down. The goal, which moves side to side, progresses to the next level when hit by a ball. In the gif the first level shows this, however, in the second level balls are shown to go through the goal, this is only because there isn’t currently a level 3 for the player to progress to. Therefore this isn’t an issue at all.

In the near future I plan on building more levels, which are also more complex. As well as creating a script which sets a limit on the number balls that can be used per level. And finally I want to create nicer assets / prefabs to use in my game.

3D Ball Puzzle Game – Unity

Today I began laying down the basics for my ball puzzle game, in which you have to work your way through an obstacle course while avoiding enemies and aiming to reach the goal to progress to the next level.

In this level I wrote the script for; the ball control (controller by WASP, arrow keys and Xbox controller), goal control (advances the player to the next level), enemy control (reset the level if the play touches it), camera follow (camera follows the player as they move – rather than being fixed  in place).  As well as this I also created ‘prefabs’ making level creation faster and easier, as defaults are already set and don’t need to repeatedly be made from scratch. This also means that if any changes are made to: the player, goal, enemy, etc., it can easily be applied to every other player, goal, enemy etc., automatically. By doing all these things it has allowed me to lay down the foundations for me to expand my game in many ways and create many varieties of levels.

In this post are some screenshots of my game.

Pachinko Machine

The next game I will be creating, using Unity, will be a Pachinko Machine. Below is a mood bored I have created with the research I have found.

Pachinko is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gaming. A pachinko machine resembles a vertical pinball machine, but has no flippers and uses a large number of small balls.

3D modelling in Maya – Room Layout

Began planning out my own room layout today in James 3D modelling lesson. Above is the rough shape of the main furniture in my room (Bed, wardrobe, desk, shelving unit, draws). Beige box is representative of a human (to scale 170cm). From here I can begin making individual assets and changing them out for my rough shapes.