Supporting Documentation

Concept devlog comparison:

With the game now in its final state, comparisons can now be drawn to the original concept outlined in the concept devlog.  A number of components have been accurately implemented from the initial concept. Firstly, the PlayStation controller optimization has been implemented, with bullets reflecting each button being pressed. The designs of the player, enemies, bullets, and level designs all exist roughly as I expected them to and fit the overall concept that was initially created.

One area of the game that hasn’t been implemented that I planned to was the directional shooting. Initially, I planned for the player to have the capacity to shoot in eight directions, governed by some sort of control for each direction. With the three different projectiles needing to be shot, and the desire to have each bullet be fired simply by pressing a single button, it made it difficult to implement on mouse and keyboard. This would have been possible to implement on controller, given the other joystick, but difficult to make sense of on keyboard, given that if I used the mouse, the left click and right click could be used to shoot, but then the third shot would have had to be something else, making it feel strange in my opinion. As a result of this reasoning, I did not attempt to add it to the game.

In the concept devlog, I referenced Super Meat Boy as a general reflection of what the movement in the game would look like. The final game is quite different to this, with movement being far slower and with less of a focus on momentum, but I feel that the movement controls in this game are well suited the game, as the shooting component of the game would have had less prominence in the game if the player moved at such a rate.

Feedback summary:

Upon completion of the testing session, a number of observations were made by players regarding the state of the game. General feedback questions were asked around the difficulty of the platforming and shooting elements of this game. The average difficulty rating of the platforming in this game was 6/10, which seems reasonable to me, given that some players felt it was easy, others thought it was reasonably hard. The average difficulty rating of the shooting components was 5.2/10, which, suggests a similar rating as the platforming.

A number of positive pieces of feedback were recorded by users. The main strength testers saw in the game was the movement of the character, with tester mentioning that the movement was “very fluid and smooth” and that the “double jump and dash are fun to use”. Other positive feedback suggested that the style, aminations and music choice fit the genre and made the game enjoyable.

Several observations were made during the game for potential changes that would improve the game in some way. One of the overarching points of feedback from the testing session was that the colour coded enemies were not particularly intuitive and required a few attempts to understand. As a result of this, I have created an instructional element to the second level when the player first discovers an enemy, altering them to the different types of weapons.

Players also thought that the enemies had slightly too much health, making it too difficult to get past them. Enemies started with 5 health, which was reduced by one each time they are hit with the correct bullet type. Upon this feedback, I have reduced the enemy starting health to 3.

Another piece of feedback for this game was that the camera was too close to the player and needed to be slightly zoomed out. This change has now been implemented in the game, giving the player a greater understanding of their surroundings.

Another piece of feedback resulting form the testing session was that the game would benefit from a keyboard button that restarts the level, so that players don’t have to use a mouse when playing the game. I have implemented this feature, so that players can hit ‘r’ on the keyboard, or the ‘options’ button on the controller. Additionally, player noticed that music did not correctly stop when returning to the title screen. This has now been fixed. One player also noticed that the square and circle bullet inputs were reversed on level 2. This has now been fixed so that these bullets correctly correspond to the buttons being pressed.

From my own observations of the testing session, I noticed that a number of players failed to notice the pit falls in different levels. There are a couple of reasons for this issue. Firstly, the camera does not properly display below the player, making it difficult to gauge whether or not a drop is dangerous. Secondly, there is no indication of whether a gap is a pit jump or a fall to another platform area. As previously mentioned, I have zoomed out the camera, providing the player with a greater understanding of their surroundings. I have also added some decoration items such as danger signs to properly display the pit jumps in the game.

Assets:

• Tile map: used for implementing the design for each level of the game. This was created by ExceptRea.[1]
• Player sprites: art for representing the player in the game. These sprites are compiled­ for creating different animations. These include an idle, running, shooting, jumping, and falling animation.
• These sprites are based on the sprite templates created by Pi,[2] from which I made some alterations to suit the style of the game. I created the shooting template as it was not provided in the initial pack.
• Enemy sprites: art for representing the enemies in the game. These sprites consist of 3 templates, these being an idle, walking, and hit. These templates are also based on the same template as the player, created by Pi, but these have also been altered to create a hazmat suit like outfit with the addition of a gun. 
• Heart sprite: the blue heart sprite has been used to represent the players health in the UI. These hearts were created by Unreached Lands.[3]
• Enemy bullet sprite: used to represent the bullets enemies shoot in the game. This sprite was created by me.
• Player bullets: Consisting of triangle, square and circle sprites. These were created by me.
• Death block: used to detect the player falling into a pit.
• Title art: art in the background of the title screen. This image was drawn by me.
• Font: used in a number of areas in the game, these being the title, pause menu, restart screen, win screen, level select, and shooting instructions in level 2. This font is known as Karmatic Arcade, created by Vic Fieger.[4]
• Music: used as an underlying audio source covering the entirety of the playable levels. This audio was created by Alperomeresin.[5]

Script assets:

• PlayerMovement: controls basic sideways movement, jumping, double jumping, dashing, and controls the animations.
• playerShooting: controls the shooting mechanics,
• PlayerHealth: sets players health and tracks damage.
• Enemy movement: controls enemy movement towards player.
• EnemyShooting: used to spawn a bullet and direct it towards the player.
• UIfunctions: Play, level select, quit, restart, and exit to title functions.
• PauseMenu: pause, resume, exit to title, and quit functions.
• HealthManger: controls UI hearts
• DestroyAfterSeconds: used to destroy bullets after 1 second.
• DestroyOnCollision: used to destroy bullets after hitting a collider and instantiate particles.
• DoNotDestroy: used for continuing an audio source across multiple scenes.
• GreenHealth, RedHealth, PinkHealth: used to manage health and collisions with bullets for each enemy.
• GroundInFront: used to check if there is a ground in front of an enemy to prevent them from walking of ledges.
• LevelSelect: functions for buttons in the level select menu.
• MainStory: used to trigger level load in the story scene timeline.
• MusicDestroyer: used to destroy music on title scene.
• Restart: reloads level if player hits button.
• ShowInstructions: sets instruction gameObject to active.

[1] ExceptRea (2023). Laboratory Tileset Revamped LITE. Available at: https://exceptrea.itch.io/laboratory-tileset-revamped-lite

[2] Pi (2022). Platformer Template. Available at: https://pifn.itch.io/platformer-templates

[3] Unleashed Lands (2020). Lifebar Pixelart sprites 16x16. Available at: https://unreached-lands.itch.io/lifebar-pixelart-sprites-16x16

[4] Fieger, Vic. Karmatic Arcade. Available at: https://www.1001freefonts.com/karmatic-arcade.font

[5] Alperomeresin, (2023). The Final Boss Battle. Available at: https://pixabay.com/music/upbeat-the-final-boss-battle-158700/