Okay.
Let's talk about the game design for our project.
I always like to start with some sort of diagram.
I've got a 2D platform, so I've got platforms that I need and in here, okay, I need some ladders.
You can see I've just scratched in here some notes with some arrows.
I need some ladders, I need a start point and I need a finish point.
And the finish point should trigger the next level.
Need some enemies that I have to avoid.
Enemies that preferably move around.
That'd be great.
Some hazard.
So I've got these red things in here.
Maybe it's lava, maybe it's water.
Maybe we have some spikes in there.
Also, I've got in here orange to show the screen size to show that I want to wait for the camera to
follow the player around that we don't see the entire world at one point in time because then everything's
going to be too small on our screen.
So we want this kind of moving television, if you will, that moves around and follows the player.
So one of the cool things in this section of the course is we'll be using sprite sheets to make tile
based levels.
What is a sprite sheet?
Well, it's one image you can see here.
This is just one image that has a whole bunch of these little tiles that we can use, kind of like Lego
blocks to build out our level.
So this is a brick.
These are different sort of bricks.
This is an archway.
And we combine those together to make something that looks like this.
So this is Castlevania and this is the sprite sheet from Castlevania.
And back in ye olden days, when you were very limited by sizes of things, the amount of memory that
you had, you needed to squash as much information as you could onto a sprite sheet.
So then you could build all of this.
So you can see we're repeating this kind of what's this green vegetation on the wall?
That's that tile just there, I believe.
And it's just or maybe it's one of these here and it's just been repeated and placed in a way that makes
it look cool.
So with a limited amount of information, you can make a whole ton of different levels and other examples
here.
Megaman, you may have played back in the day and Spelunky is a little bit of a more recent interpretation
of using a tile based system.
So what I mean by tiles is each of these little squares in here is a tile, and then you go and place
them.
You build that and build that and build this.
And in here you could have a base tile.
It's a little bit hard to see, but you've got this base tile and then you can have another layer that
sits over the top.
We have this little bit of flavor, so this green gem thing here and these little rocks.
So you can have layers upon layers to give variation, but really you're just pulling from one or two
sprite sheets.
I mentioned before, back in the day, we needed to have sprite sheets to save on space.
Nowadays we've got a lot more room.
We don't really need to be as careful with how much information we put on our sprite sheet, but it's
still a great way to have one library of things that we then build a whole bunch of levels from.
What's the player experience?
We're going to be under pressure, so I want the player to feel I've got a rush, rush, rush to get
through the level.
The core mechanic is just running and jumping like most platformers and avoiding hazards and the core
game loop get from A to B by navigating platforms and avoiding traps and enemies.
And if we're talking about the theme, you might want to get a little bit of storytelling in here.
What's the theme?
For me?
It's going to be you're trying to escape.
You're a prisoner.
The clock is ticking.
Where are you?
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
But what we're saying to the player is, get out of here.
You've got to get all the way up to the top of the surface of the world.
That's the thing that we're going for.
And why do we come up with a theme?
Well, it helps us pick our art assets.
It helps us do our our coloration.
If we're going to do some tinting or whatever to our world, it helps us if we want to do some dialog
in there and also helps us say to the player, what are you trying to achieve?
And let's look at what are the core features we need to implement.
MVP stands for minimum viable product.
And basically that's a way of saying if we want our game to be playable, we need these minimum features
in here.
And anything else we put on top of that is gravy, it's bonus, it's awesomeness.
But we need to have character movement.
We need to be able to run and jump.
We need to have traps or obstacles like this water in here that if you touch it, it instantly kills
the player level loading.
So a way to finish the level and restart the next level or start into the next level to chain them together.
And we need to have some sort of timer or some sort of urgency.
This is probably not in the minimum viable product.
We could get away without this, but I'm saying let's get it in there so that the player's got some
sort of reason to push themselves and to jump quickly and maybe to make some mistakes because they're
under a little bit of time pressure.
And I might do this by having the water rising up to meet the player.
We might think of another way to do it when we're actually in there executing.
So I've got a challenge for you at the start here.
I want you to find your art assets.
Now, I will be providing you the basic sprite sheet assets for the world and for the character.
That's the stuff that you see in here.
I'll be giving you that kind of thing.
But I encourage you, if you're ready to be a little bit more advanced in what you're doing, is to
either flex your artistic muscles or to go find an asset pack from the asset store.
And there's tons of free stuff out there and tons of page stuff.
So find something that you do like a just needs to have sprite sheets for the world, tiles for the
character and for an enemy or for some enemies.
So there's your challenge.
Like I said, if you just want to use what I'm going to provide, then I'll be giving that to you in
the next lecture.
If you'd like to come up with your own artistic style or find your own assets.
So now's the time to do that.
And.
Once you are ready, jump into the next lecture and we will start the process of slicing up our assets.
Okay, so you're in the next lecture.