So the game I made looks ready, but that’s just me. In order for me to have a solid game, I have to meet the needs of my audience, which is essentially the focus I am trying to lean towards. This meant on top of everything that I have added into the game, I also had to make sure I go back and fix some things to make it more engaging. For me to do this however, I had to release test builds of the game and allow the audience to playtest and provide the feedback. I created a new folder inside the game’s folder inside the C: Drive and called it Builds. This is where I store all of the prototypes and zip files.
I hopped onto Microsoft Teams and provided a link to the uploaded game on itch.io for others to play. I have done this step for the multiple draft builds I had made in the C: Drive. The image below is of an older build.
One of my personal concerns with the finished game is that the background is a solid dark green color with no features built into the background. I made sure to add some trees and leaves on top to act as scenery as the player traverses across the jungle.
I also made sure to include a second background asset. It’s purely the same but the trees are a bit longer to accommodate the level scale a bit more. I loaded the second background sprite into the scene and fit the appropriate scale so that the pixels wouldn’t be weird.
the background sprites scattered behind the level so that the player won’t be hidden by the trees. I also made another Post with a UI attached for the end of the level to display the end level text.
A requirement to filling out the scenery is how I sort these sprites into layers. This is to keep things organized and intentional for this game. In fact, any game has to have this organized layers for the same reason.
Finally, I’m going to add some sound effects into my game. I went onto Bfxr.net and made some sound effects for basic controls, like jumping and shooting a bullet.
I exported the sounds as WAV folders and saved them into the Audio section of my assets folder so I know where to find them. I brought them into Unity and created a new folder called Audio just for the files and I attached them to my player. Now I would have to find a way for the player to play the sound when he shoots from a bullet. That is simple to do. I opened up the script for the bullet and created a new variable which you see below.
I asked the script to fetch the Audio Source component inside of the script and asked it to play the sound upon pressing a specific key. For instance, I want it to sound as soon as the left mouse button is clicked so the weapon makes a noise when the trigger has been pulled. Now all I had to do was attach the Audio Source to the player for the sound effect to play when I shoot.
Now that’s all the features added, now I have to fix a few things. I had an issue where the player would get killed by the enemies, but the bullet would just go right through them and vice versa. I had to let the script know that to destroy both gameObjects upon colliding with the enemy, otherwise it wouldn’t be as engaging as thought out.
I also had to scale everything up for one of the scripts to work, presumably the change sprite script so that the sprite change would be consistent enough.
I thought to myself that this level might be a bit short, so I expanded the stage and placed a few more enemies and decor on the additional tiles and platforms to give it a feel of character and engage the player in exploration.
An issue I have encountered is that the player character wouldn’t always jump when I press the W key, so I did some digging on the internet and came across a forum which helped me. Allegedly, I had typed the GetKeyButtonDown method inside of the FixedUpdate() function. All I had to do was to move it to the Update() function and test the game again to a good result.
My next move was to ensure that the enemies patrolled the area they were in at a decent pace to avoid creating a difficulty curve. I hovered over to the enemies’ patrol script and changed the value of the speed to a more comfortable speed.
Evaluation:
My initial thoughts on making the game was difficult considering I don’t favor scripting as much as some people do. When I first started, I was concerned about following the individual development deadlines. I started making the sprites early on and probably got stuck with the coding, effectively rendering me meeting the deadlines obsolete. I just searched for any sources in my free time that could support me, and I came up with a substantial amount. From then on, the amount of knowledge needed to gain these Unity skills clicked. If I was able to do it again, I would find a way to implement the removed Health system within the game as I had to cut that out in a desperate attempt to get the spike damage script functioning properly. Another future idea is to add multiple levels as this one felt like one moderately sized level. I also uploaded an updated build of the game to ensure the development’s flow meets the audience’s needs.
Throughout the game’s development, I ensured myself that I playtested every feature I implemented in order for them to work as intended not just for me, but for the players who are willing to sit down and play the best gaming experience possible. Without the playtesting, the game would end up becoming riddled with glitches and be unplayable, so that’s why it was important for me to check through every implementation for the best result.
In the end, it was a challenging climb to the summit to learn something that I wouldn’t have normally enjoyed, but I gave it a shot and understood some things from it.
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