The Hero's Journey - A Sidescrolling Swordfighter!

You did, oops, I feel stupid now. One question, why are you using your own 2D system, why didn't you just get a 2D Framework like ex2D Or 2D Toolkit, It cuts down on stuff a lot.

 

Mostly pride. Also I (originally) felt that those systems were overpriced for what I wanted to do. Hindsight is, I might just be buying them to speed things up. I really want to focus more on level design, sprites, sound, and music, and less on these low-level programming objectives; my time is already at a premium. So, I'm thinking about it.

 

well I did the same, but once the game become more complex, I literal had to upgrade to 2D Toolkit for 2 reasons, the first, draw cells, so I spawned like 100 Planes (they were the sprites) and it become unplayable, so when I got 2D Toolkit, it was only a minor frame-rate drop (like 170 to 155, I have a terrible low preforming computer as well). The second reason, I had very limited access to the animation component, for example, I could trigger animations but I could not check if animation is already playing or something like animation pause.

 

That convinced me; I'm not the only one encountering these issues! Right now, my world map scene is composed of two things: cubes, and planes. Even with Unity 4's built-in batching, I still see potential places to improve performance, which is going to be critical for Android devices and possibly OUYA.

 

seriously, these games just have a special place in my gaming heart. this is very good stuff and i'd love to see this finished man!

how much of an RPG is this? what are the "new" things u can do to avoid looking like simular games? im curious because i like gamedesign ideas, and this game seems like it could hold quite a few!

Im gonna paint fanart for this game man, not even kidding. that knight is going in phothsop,posterstyle.

 

and WHEEERE is my avatar gone again......wtf unity forums....sort this crap.

 

A lot of the RPG gameplay in this is Zelda-style gameplay. You find new capabilities by exploring, though often the monsters inhabiting the deep dark places of Aylea will take issue with your efforts to explore. Additionally, I do have linear, J-RPG style text to both direct the player towards where I want them to go, and provide flavor for the world they are living in.

What this game is going to bring to the table is unprecedented exploration, for a Unity Short. The realm of Aylea might seem small, but the plan is to have a lot of places for you to go, and secrets to find (and, the story at points will ask you to find them. If you attempt the 100% Completion achievement, I will make you work your buttocks off for it. Fair warning.

On the subject of achievements, I am also avoiding the class of achievements known to some as 'Unavoidable Achievements' that you obtain by playing the game 'normally' - which, I consider downright lazy design, much like the Extra Creditz crew. In fact, the point of achievements as asserted by Extra Credits, and as agreed on by myself, is that Achievements are most effective when they encourage the player to attempt to play the game a different way (or, Inspiring Achievements, to use the EC classifications.) This game is a Unity Short - I plan for the core game, with a standard gameplay style (not 100% achievement) to be about two hours.

Another thing this game will bring, is story. We all know the JRPG tropes by heart at this point (and, just in case you don't, others have kindly catalogued them for you.) In the course of The Hero's Journey, I will be providing some deconstructions, lampshading, and even some subversions of various console RPG tropes. I love the stories of many JRPGs, but I've also always wanted to tell a fundamentally different story. The Hero's Journey has just the hero to do that in the form of Tim the Knight, an outsider to the realm of Aylea. But, I really don't want to ruin any details of the infant, unfinished plot. I know you hate to hear this when I take such time to talk about how the story will be a point of difference from the competition, but...have patience. All will be revealed soon enough.

Finally, the ultimate plan, and point where The Hero's Journey will be different from the pack, is to build a scoreboard and community that encourages replayability of The Hero's Journey and achievement-hunting. Among achievements planned are pacifist runs, speed runs, and default health runs. Creation of the achievements will not be the challenging part - building the community will. I want players to jump all over this game, and compete against this single-player game. And, I want gamers to beat the crap out of it, and even criticise my efforts (which, I know they will), and ultimately, help me learn to create a better class of action-RPG.

YES! I can't wait to see it bro!

 

Week 7

So, I've started to build content
After working out some irritating bugs, I've gotten started working on the core game progression! I use a monolithic Sequence Trigger system to determine various things like NPC text or the visibility of Evil Castles. You can see more of this in the Dev Webplayer I've put up!

But be warned; that is a really preliminary, and in-development version. There are some nasty bugs. For instance, if I were you, I would not try to go into a cave. It won't end well.

But, if you've come for pretty pictures...


There's plenty to be found in the webplayer.

Oh no, where is my webplayer!?
It's linked above. TL;DR? Here

I've really got to stop adding 'where's my webplayer!?' segments to my weekly updates...

 

The camera on the map needs adjustment, mybe be higher and isometric. The mountains blocked my view completely so i think that will fix the issue. It will also let the mountains seem less like 2d images on a plane like they are now.

Other than that i cant wait to try this game, looks very charming

 

Hey Kelde, thanks for the feedback! I'll have a word with the world map's camera, and see what I can do about making it look better.

In the meantime, I'm working on content, which means the entirety of the first act of the game (up to the defeat of the Evil Lord Garlan.) Stay tuned, loyal fans and fellow devs!

 

Hitting your head when jumping still doesn't stop momentum. (this means if you jump and move around the corner of the block, you magically float up still)

This is simple to fix by just doing a collides above check (extremely easy with character controller, look up collisionflags if you don't know how to do it), and if you collide, set the jump to finished, and set your y value to gravity. That will make it to when you jump into something, you start to fall again instantly.

In the second city, I found that leaving a building always brings you back to the left side of the map. Kind of annoying.

Lastly... T_T Cave leads to constant blackness.... is scary..... T_T Hold me?

 

Yeah...I didn't think to bash Tim the Knight's head on stuff! (Though, I did give him a helmet.) Good suggestion, I'll get it in tonight!

As to the town bug, that has already been fixed, but will appear in my next exposition build.

And...you just had to go into the cave, didn't you? Next time I'm going to put a bug - yes, a bug, not a Shototo - in there. It will be big and nasty. You'll have to fight it. There may be some slimes, too. We'll see how you like caves next time, mister... grumble...grumble...

 

Cool game : D

Few comments:
As already noted, camera needs to be more top-down.

Controls feels really unresponsive, when going side to up/down its quick but going up/down to side is really slow.

Pretty please add up key as jump when in "side mode" : )

 

Hey Virror! Thanks for the feedback. I'm actually looking at ways to easily extend my control scheme, above and beyond Unity's Input class - since iOS and Android have gone free, and I intend to publish to OUYA, I'm looking into ways to customize controls for a given platform.

 

I think to customize controls for such different platforms, you may need completely different control scripts. Controlling with touch is going to be too different I think to keep everything in on script and keep it clean. I would do somethiong like two classes call TouchInput and ControllerInput or something, that way controller input can still use unity's input manager, and touch input can go ahead and use something completely different.

 

That makes sense. Additionally, from the research I've done on OUYA's controllers, I'll wind up needing a class for those too. Thank goodness for Abstract Base Classes and/or Interfaces...

 

Why's that? You can't use unity's input manager for their controllers?

 

Fair point - I was wrong. I found this, which apparently points out that there's an asset that contains Input Manager settings for the OUYA controller. Good times!

 

Well once you know the button mapping for the controller, if you wanted to do the extra work you could set all of the up in the Input Manager. So for example, let's say you're planning for OUYA and XBox controllers. In the Input Manager you could have OUYA Jump, XBox Jump, OUYA Attack, XBox Attack, OUYA Block, XBox Block, etc. And when the game starts, do a check (if this is even possible) for the type of controller plugged in and assign some prefix variable the correct string. So when your input is doing it's work, it would do something like if

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. (Input.GetButton(PREFIX + " Jump"))
3. {
4. // Do something
5. }

 

Oh, it's very possible. What's more, I have an 'Ambassador' game object that lives across scenes that acts as a persistent cache of game state, transition data, and some other things. By tweaking the first Ambassador that gets loaded - on the Title screen, in fact - I can easily tell my builds what type of control schema to use.

Phones/Tablet will be more interesting for the virtual controller...but that won't be so bad.

 

Hey Virror - no can do on this one. The reason is because if you've learned the Overthrust ability, when you jump pressing Up will cause the upward stab. Sorry about that one bro - that one's actually a behavior taken straight from Zelda 2.

Since you express interest in having up perform jump - which, when I tried it just now, felt very good, thanks for the good suggestion - I'll keep playing with my control scheme, within reason. I agree with you this would be good to have, but for now isn't feasible.

 

No problems, just felt more natural that way, keep up the good work : )

 

Week 8

So, this weekend (Memorial Day in the United States) I was sick. So, none of my weekend development happened. Boo!

However, this week I spent a good bit of time working on adding additional things to the dialogue system, particularly conveyance of skills, overriding BGM, and sound effects, as well as designing a new enemy for select maps, the Spyder. The Spyder will be a real game-changer from the original Zelda 2 formula, because the webbing they drop prior to taking a chomp out of you affects your enemies as well! I'm hinging on creative applications of this enemy to create some interesting puzzles, particularly for those attempting a Pacifist Run (no sword damage dealt to any enemy. And, I pre-emptively wish you luck. You'll need it.)

Other Stuff



I've been working with the critiques I have been given up to this point, particularly the World Map camera, and the Jumping controls. I'm making incremental updates to the camera, though I still want to keep the angle a little flat - so far, my tests at 30 degrees of elevation have produced favorable results, as well as rethinking some of the mountain ranges that were really inhibiting player view on the map of Aylea.

As for the jumping controls, I have only this to say: I love character controls. Seriously! I've even written them a poem:

I hate character controls,
Character controls hate me;
Every time a hero rolls
It makes me want to pee.

In all seriousness, though, thanks to Caliber Mengsk for doing what no one - not even I - would, and testing the integrity of Tim the Knight's helmet against various hard objects.

Finally...I'm still creating content! I've got about half of the first arc complete, and am building an appropriate dungeon leading up to the first Evil Castle. My next demo will take the player through the first arc of the game, culminating in the defeat of the Dark Knight, Garlan, the 'meanest' of the Evil Lords...though, important to the plot as you'll see.

Until next week! And, hope that I don't get sick again. I hate being sick.

 

To fix the floating when hitting your head thing, if you are using a character controller, you can simply look for a collides above collision flag.
It's fairly simple to do a collision flag check. It should be as simple as

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.  if (controller.collisionFlags  CollisionFlags.Above)
3. {
4. //set up movement to either 0, or gravity.
5. }
6.  

Not hard at all if you know it's there.

EDIT:
**NOTE controller is the character controller.

OH! and the other method, if you aren't using a character controller, is a simple sphere or capsule cast upward.

 

Funny thing is that's exactly the method I'm doing to test for whether the entity should stop jumping.

What's actually happening is that, the player jumps, hits its head on whatever, then stays there, even though I've told the collider to let go and succumb to gravity.

 

Sticky helmet : p
Looking forward to test some actual gameplay : )

 

This is one of those situations that I can't really help without seeing any code. If using my example above, remember to set the y speed equal to a decent -number value. If you set it to 0, it can get stuck sometimes due to still seeing an above collision, so it sets it to 0 again before physics are applied the next frame. So make sure you aren't setting it to 0, but something like -2 on the y.

O-o Don't know if that makes any sense.

EDIT:
I've gotten fairly good at movement systems like this.

 

Indeed you have. That one fixed the issue without a given line of source code! Thanks bro.

 

Glad to be of use.

 

I couldn't resist. I just couldn't. (refers to me)

 

O-o Can't tell if you are saying I'm a pope.... or an evil warlord bent on taking over the known universe.

 

I'm referring to myself as the Emperor.

I have trolling techniques that some consider...unnatural. But enough of that, back to work with me!

EDIT: Upon thinking on it, you have great ability to divine info about movement systems...in my book, that makes you Pope-worthy!

 

Haha, always ok to troll in your own thread : D
Great image though : p

 

Well, to atone for my (poor, awful, sub-standard, lackadaiscal, even bad) trolling attempt...how about a picture of something I'm working on?



You'll be able to solve this puzzle, A) in part, when you learn Underthrust, B) when I create my breakable block, and C) when you get the item that allows your sword to break breakable blocks. Hmmm...

Also, there are 'secrets' like this to be scattered all over Aylea. Some have monsters; some (like this one) have challenges that when you're first capable of finding them, you just won't have the abilities to overcome. Some have both. Some have completely original things going on that you'll find in few other secrets. In any case, it's up to the player to figure out. Have fun!

 

Wow this is really coming along!

I really like the world map style

 

man cant wait, really like where this is going! Personally i like when u have trees and such hiding things from the camera, only makes the player play more cautiously if u ask me. Blurred or not, baddies should be able to hide alittle i think.

PS: ur Knight has been sketched out, i'll send him in PM when he's fully rendered

 

So you would think. However, bear in mind this is a side-scrolling swordfighter. Your ability to overcome opponents will come from being able to read their moves or understand their patterns. If I take that away from the player, they will die or at the very least take high amounts of 'unfair' damage. 'Unfair' damage is one of the problems that plagued Zelda 2, though in different ways, so it's something I've got to be mindful of.

Part of properly implementing what this game could be involves ensuring that the challenge is fair, which is to say not artificial. Artificial challenge is not difficulty.

Challenge/Difficulty revolves around the relative ease a player is expected to grasp a particular mechanic, and integrate it into their play style. Something like using Underthrust to find secrets presents low challenge (as in this scene), but having to use Underthrust to find some secret while simultaneously fending off monsters presents a higher challenge, as it combines two conflicting objectives to the player that they must use their skill to balance. Combine that with some clever counter-play from enemy abilties (e.g. the Spyder's webbing, which can halt anything it touches, friend or foe), and you're doing what a good game does: providing choices in pursuit of a clear and compelling goal.

TL;DR: Challenge is giving a player hard, but beatable choices.

Artificial Challenge means creating hostile conditions for the player that the player has no means of mitigating or overcoming short of either blind luck or playing in a way unintended for in my design. An example would be doing something mean like hiding a Shototo behind each tree. Yeah, you'd kill them with your sword sooner or later, but you'd take a LOT of damage while doing that, because you'd be unable to read their high/low shot behavior. This is undesirable to players, because it breaks the primary mechanic of this style of game, which revolves around the high/low mechanic of attack and defense. Hidden enemies still play by this rule, but they have an advantage the player now does not.

TL;DR: Artificial challenge is when you make things really really tough for the player in an unfair way.

For overlaying objects, the rule of my level design is: anything that overlays the player A) works hand-in-hand with natural boundaries to keep enemies presented to the player, and/or B) acts as 'framing' for the level, forming a 'player box' that the player knows combat, or exploration, should be waged within.

 

Good point. Some enemy concepts for my involves them beeing able to hive and look like things u see on the ground. First time u might walk straight into one and learn the hard way. This teaches the player to look at these things agian and see if they can spot that something is off, it might be moving slightly or the color is alittle off compared to the other objects.

Another things is letting the player have a stealth ability so that enemies will walk right past u so u can suprise attack them if the tactic suits the situation. Then its a metter of learning what enemies can sense u are there even tho ur trying to hide.

The main character in Flourish is very fragile, but he has magic attacks very powerful so i guess u can call him a glasscannon. He has abilities that enables him to avoid damage once the player learn where they should all be used.

Im planning on both, hopefully they will work.

 

I built the breakable blocks. Forest Secret 1 is complete, and will make it into the next build.

 

love it nice!

ur trees...the texture for the leafy parts, is it invredicly stretched and blurred? also noticed its actual geometry, but i guess that works better for this game rather than planes.

 

It's not something I can do a lot about. I paid $25 for those trees from the Asset Store.

 

$25 for those looks seriously overpriced : p

 

I lied. I went back and checked my purchases. The trees were $5. The blocks I used (with the exception of blocks created for this project) were $25. Sorry about that!

 

I can fix up those trees if you have a .obj for them. Pm if you'd like.

 

Oh u bought em! I would get em fixed if u can man, not a huge issue to fix as they kinda cheapen the whole scene. The leaf is the problem, i would paimt u new textures if i could, maybe i have something u can use. I can also help u if u got the obj file, i know some modeling and uv mapping and texturing

 

Week 9
Nine weeks in already! It's a good thing I'm making some headway on the project!

Based on my desired gameplay projections, I count needing about 26 playable scenes (not counting residences, which I plan to recycle like crazy)...of which, I already have about 9 or 10 in more-or-less complete, or at least working progress.

Can't See The Forest For the Trees
It's screenshot time!


Tim the Knight in a secret location in a forest, with a Heart Rune he just can't get to yet...


In a cave, Tim the Knight has a creeping feeling he's not seeing something...

This week, I've been working on breakable blocks, and a new enemy, the Spyder.

I Spy With My Little Eye...
The Spyder is an enemy I'm really excited about, even though it's similar to the Gohmas in Zelda 2. The reason I'm excited is because the Spyder injects a nice dose of counterplay into the combat.

Spyders behave similarly to their 1987 cousins - they move from side to side, until they sense a player. When a player passes under them, they drop a charge of some webbing to immobilize their prey, and shimmy down their webbing to take a quick bite. Of course, the webbing charge isn't as picky as the Spyder about what it wraps; enemies are restrained from moving for two seconds, just like the player. For players going for a pacifist run, this can be the difference between a Game Over, and successfully-evaded enemies. I just got the Spyder more-or-less working with only a few small bugs (pardon the pun) as of the time of this writing!

Stop, Block, and Roll
The other 'major' innovation on the game this week is the breakable blocks. They're not nearly as special or as complex as the Spyder - they're pretty much just a block with a health system and a death effect attached to them.

What is interesting about the breakable blocks is how I plan to use them. In Zelda 2 they had all sorts of potential. Link got the Power Glove in the Swamp Temple, which allowed him to break blocks, allowing him to excavate XP bags and keys, as well as dig through unstable temple passsages. However...it was never really leveraged as it could have been, to add additional exploration options, or better still, more counterplay.

Exploration options can consist of hiding things from Crystal Switches, to non-breakable platforms (which, I intend to include in one of the secrets.) I look forward to seeing how players dig their way through, around, or in spite of various enemies in pursuit of a mini-dungeon's goal.

Something I'm going to be working on this week is the dreaded Grey Stone block. This block if it falls on something other than a breakable block, will kill it. Yes, even you. If you get every Heart Rune in the game, you still won't be able to survive it. This is going to be very important to Pacifist runners who will need to kill something without being disqualified for the achievement, but will also open up some other tactical options, such as hemming in difficult foes.

This sounds like the Egg McMuffin of Side-Scrolling Swordfighters. Where's the Webplayer?
The game isn't ready for your loving caresses just yet, friends and fans. It's getting there, and will be released with a webplayer demo containing the fight against the Dark Valiant Garlan, the first Evil Lord. You'll see soon enough.



Asvarduil Responds to the Thread!
@Kelde/Peter Pies - I'll send y'all a PM. I fail at leaf textures, otherwise I would have already retouched it. That, and I don't feel that 2D trees would be appropriate for a side-scrolling environment. In side-scrolling mode, I stick to 3D environment pieces, and 2D doodads (like, sword racks, beds, etc.)

@virror - The leaf texture cheapens them a bit. If I weren't using a Toon Shader on them, they probably wouldn't look so bad, but I am. This one may - or may not - be my fault, exactly.

@FlaxSycle - Glad you're enjoying the game so far! You set a pretty high bar with Assault Android Cactus, though. If only full 3D came as naturally to me! (Additionally, if only I had enough free time to build/rig/texture models. I'm finding that pixel work is actually faster, if less reliable, than 3D.)

@Caliber Mengsk - You are definently the Pope.

 

Hello friends and fans! Here's a short, experimental webplayer of a digging cave. I would like some feedback on the level design.

Obviously, the easy way would be to dig through and kill the enemies, but I want to level a special challenge - try getting both treasures without killing a single monster. If it can be done, let me know.

For this webplayer, I have enabled Underthrust and Overthrust. In a real situation, if you enter the cave with one or the other, you'll be unable to get the complimentary treasure without the complimentary ability. But enough of that - I await your feedback!

Special Controls:
Underthrust is activated by pressing Down while jumping.
Overthrust is activated by pressing Up while jumping

In a real game situation, you'd have already had half the game to have gained a basic working of these skills, thus the necessary exposition there.

 

Your attack is still messed up for one (reset the timer when not holding the key to attack... Trust me, will feel better), for two, you can't fit inside of one block size (hit detection a little smaller), even though it looks like you can. Lastly, your walk continues for a moment without slowing down, so it's fairly unpredictable.

I'm guessing that you are using the Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"). If so, I highly HIGHLY suggest you change it to GetAxisRaw("Horizontal"). GetAxis on it's own does a smoothing operation, which causes that lag. (I'm also guessing you are just checking if it's not equal to 0. Which causes the issue at hand when stopping, but not when starting. If you checked if it was equal to -1 or 1, then it would lag when starting to walk instead.) GetAxisRaw gets the data instantly, so if you press a key, it's instantly 1 instead of sloping up to it.

An alternative to getting the raw axis is that you can also multiply your x movement speed by the GetAxis, and it will smooth everything out and make you stop slowing instead of instantly.

I could not get through it without killing things in the short little play through I did. This was mainly due to the fact that I could not predict when the weapon would hit, as well, being forced to go in areas with two block tall caused issues. I like the fact that you have destructible blocks covering up the non-destructible ones. This makes it a little harder to get through it and requires some trial and error.

Just fix those few things, and it should be a ton better. You should never have to fight the controls to play a game. And I did notice I didn't get stuck to the ceiling.

EDIT:
Also, can I add that I think it might be worth it to test reseting the gravity, or at least lower it when breaking blocks below. It looks cool to just instantly break through them like that, and makes it feel fast but with the walk speed being so slow, it's oddly over fast IMO. Maybe increase the player speed a little instead?

 

On it - that was more information than I was counting on!

I'll make the chambers a little bigger, vertically and horizontally. In my own playthroughs, I thought the space seemed unnecessarily cramped, even for a cave setting. That'll be easy, and will allow me to do some more interesting things in there (though, this is one of those levels that I think should be small just to make the player re-evaluate the deadliness of the humble Slime. An insight from playing too many Zelda titles is that levels and enemies should interact to take what's a 'known' enemy and make them challenging in a different way, thus forcing the player to think about the enemy - and the level - a little differently.)

I'm glad you like the digging aspect of the dungeon! That's just the sort of response I was going for. One thing to note, is that just because you enter a chamber with an enemy, dosen't mean you need to kill it to proceed, especially with a Slime. This is something that, again, isn't well-conveyed in this demo setting because this is intended to be fully accessible by the late game - presumably, you'll have tangled with Slimes enough by this point to have a good barometer on the Slime AI. I expressly built this dungeon to be beatable without killing anything, and I've found that even in the present setup, it is; my challenge was not made in jest, it is possible, two ways in fact. Hint: check around your environment - I've kept the camera perspective for a reason...

I'm using g = -9.81 m/s/s, so some tuning is in the mix tonight. While the chain-Underthrust looks cool, giving the player more opportunity to lay off the Underthrust would help, especially for digging incomplete pits, which is part of what I have in mind with this mini-dungeon. The reason the enemies are all Slimes is expressly so the player can use their own AI against them. Though...they might also surprise you...just saying. Watch your back in this cave! Question: when you say 'speed the player up', do you mean vertically, horizontally, or both?

Finally, I'll double-check my player control system. I think the Jump axis is using GetAxisRaw(), but horizontal is probably still using GetAxis(). I wanted to preserve the momentum effect seen in Zelda 2, since it's helpful with the swordfighting aspect (which, is something I want to drop a small mini-demo of next week, if I can.) Also I never did mess with the Sprite system for the attack animations. I'll get on that too

Thanks for the input Caliber!

 

Nice demo, fun with a little more to play with : )

I agree that the controls are pretty har ib the aspect that the precision is very bad.
-Very hard to aim at certain blocks when jumping
-Very hard to dig to a certain deepth, very often dig to deep when i only want one block

Also i agree that the block size is a bit strange, i really thought that you could fit but you don't, so i think either make the payer fit or make the blocks just a little bit smaller (think this would be best)

Great work so far : D