Games Pixel Hero WIP

So I started with this little project a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to show a bit of my work (maybe looking for motivation)? So here it goes.

The idea of the game is a fantasy, 2d side-scroller, where the hero must face waves of enemies. I wanted to keep it as simple as posible because I tend to add stuff and making a big mess without ever finishing anything.

The sprites I'm using are from another project (unfinished, of course):

A basic human:


A basic orc:


Of course I have different types of units for each race (like warrior, archer, berserker, etc.), and different races (like elfs, dwarfs, stone golems, goblins, hobbits, owl-like creatures, etc).

For the animation, I decided to go for free-transform (like rigging) instead of frame by frame pixel animation. I think it's more flexible, even more considering the size of the sprites.

Here's a screenshot of the game as it is right now:


The UI elements were made by me, and by no means are final.

Next in my list TODO is adding knockback when hitting enemies, and maybe start with ranged combat.

Here is a sneak peak of gameplay.

I plan to update soon, any comments are welcome

 

Very cool start I like the animations

 

Time for an update!
There are not a lot of visible changes, but this is what I did this couple of days:

- Added jump button. Made the middle part of all buttons transparent (I think it makes them blend better with the rest of the scene, tell me what you think).
- Implemented knockback and knockback animation, for the player to interrupt enemies attacks.
- Changed the ground to be thinner, I think it looks better know.
- Made death animations with particle effects. They look kinda dull but hey, there's room for change, tell me what you think.
- Organised my Animators, and thought about the best way to implement modular animators and animations for future units. (AnimatorOverrideControllers will be my friends).

Next I will create enemy stats ScriptableObjects and link them with my animations (right now they are all kinda hardcoded).
And will add this guys to the game:




(New races reveal soon).

Also, I created my Instagram page, will upload stuff there as well, so check that out
https://www.instagram.com/fromlethargy/

Any feedback is welcome!

 

sometimes it is hard to appreciate pixel art, but this is very well execute!

 

List of things I´ve been working on since last uptdate:

- Worked with projectiles. Now I have a new unity, the orc archer, who uses a very simple algorithm to shoot arrows. I decided that the closer the target, the archer would shoot more upwards in order to give the player a chance to see the projectile and react. What do you think of this?

- Worked with environment. Added a nice background colour, with mountains. Created a tree asset, with a subtle animation, and falling leaves particle. And clouds, with a cloud manager which spawns random clouds at random positions.

- Added little effects like a dust effect on land for the main character, and arrow trails for visibility.

Here's what it all looks like:

Next in the list is introducing combos, to give the player a better feeling when hitting enemies. Right now is kinda stiff and slow.

Also I would like to work on game feeling, maybe with on hit effects (which I'm not sure what I'm going to do), score, and more stuff. Any suggestions in this regard, are welcome.

 

Super Cool!

 

This is really promising!

 

Well, I haven't posted in a while, so here's an update:

-First of all, I didn't know what to do in regards to movement and attacking. I felt that blocking movement during an attack animation was ok, but having the opportunity to be running and slashing in the middle of hordes of enemies was better.
So what I did was separate layers for the player animator, one for movement and other stuff (death animation, idle, etc.), and one for the player attack. Now the player can move and attack independently. This of course has it's consequences in the attacks' animations (I don't have so much freedom to move body parts), but I feel that the change is overall positive.

-Combos! I introduced combos for the player. They are not only visual sugar (they definetely feel better), but also each attack now can have customized damage, range and knockback multipliers, to make the attacks feel more autentic.

-Sword! The main character now has a sword to hit enemies with, instead of his bare hands! (he apreciates the update).
Also, the sword has different tiers. But for the moment they don't change the attack values. I will introduce it later tho.

-Made a few changes to the environment like parallax, and updated the ground and bush sprites. They feel better imo.

-In regards to UI, I iterated over the main buttons. They are basically the same, but a little bit more clean and refined. I'm still not sure about the health bar, may change that in the future. There's also a score counter with an animation, which, for now, simply counts enemies killed.

-For game feel, the enemies now spawn a hit effect, and there's a little camera freeze, in addition to the camera shake that was already taking place. I added cinemachine, so now the camera follows the player like a paparazzi! There's a custom animation for when the player dies, with slowmo, camera zoom, and a menu popping up with a restart button.

-Enemies now have tiers and abilities. For the moment the only ones I have are soldiers and archers (both with 3 tiers). Soldiers have a shield ability which increases protection (I added damage reduction calculation), while archers throw more than one arrow at once. For the tier 3 archers, I want to do fire arrows, which may leave some fire on the ground or dot damage.

Here's a little showcase:

 

Beautiful!
I really like the combo! How it is done the sword traces animation? It's a sprite animation or some sort of vfx?

 

Thank you! It's simply a trail renderer inside the sword, and I enable and disable the "emitting" property in the animation.