Laying down the foundational game elements

Progress made!

  • Player character
    • Move character
    • Swing sword
    • Take damage
  • Crab enemies
    • Move towards player
    • Deal damage to player on contact
    • Take damage and perish
  • Island (arena)
    • Limit player at edge
    • Spawn crabs
  • Game ends when player takes too much damage

Player character

I gave the player character a collision box and gave him simple movement in the four cardinal directions. Getting the sword swing right was tricky. I knew I wanted it to follow the mouse cursor, but what does that mean specifically?

  1. The sword needs to rotate on its axis so it points to the cursor.
  2. The sword needs to extend a certain distance from the player in the direction of the cursor as if it’s being held by an arm.

One difficulty I had was finding a balance for the speed of the sword swing. If the sword movement was instant, the game would be too easy because you could do fast circles around the character and have constant coverage. If the sword moved too slow it felt like it didn’t have a satisfying swoosh. Here’s what I ended up with:

Enemies

I wanted to start with the crab enemies because they would have simple behavior. They face the player and move directly forward. If they make contact with the player they deal damage. However, the crabs are destroyed when the sword makes contact with them.

Discover as you build

It’s hard to account for everything when designing a game and I certainly made some assumptions. That’s no problem! With modern game development you get instant feedback for how things are coming along. When testing a feature, I would often realize that I am missing some other piece of the puzzle. Here’s some examples:

  • There needs to be some way to prevent the player character from taking too much damage at once.
    • At first, the enemy would come in contact with the player and continually deal damage. There needs to be an invulnerability period where the player gets a chance to stave off more damage.
  • Camera
    • I knew I wanted an bird’s eye perspective but there is still lots of possibilities with the camera. Would it be static? Would it follow the player? Can the player move the camera?
    • I chose to have the camera follow the player since the gameplay revolves around surviving and protecting the player.
  • Movement and collisions
    • Do the characters move with physics? Or just translate?
    • What happens when they collide?
    • I had to experiment with the game engine until I got what I was expecting.

It’s not easy!

Turning your ideas into something playable takes a lot of work. Take it step-by-step and focus on one issue at a time. Analyze what you’re struggling with and lay out some potential solutions. Keep experimenting until you are satisfied!