Level Development Progress

With all of the progress being made on the newer levels, I thought it was about time to add some new screenshots!

Please note that these are early alpha screenshot so it may be lacking details, textures, and the layout is subject to change.

Besus: Journey for Vitality Development Blog – Volume 6

Finally after 4 long months, it is time for volume 6 of my video development blog series following development of Besus: Journey for Vitality!
Implementations and updates covered in this video include:

  • True analog controls
  • Jump height based on how long the jump button is held down
  • Special enemy abilities, respawns, and “death’s”
  • Preventing the player from continually running in to a wall
  • Crushers and spike traps
  • Player launcher (on a spline) and shooting from a cannon
  • New pickup to increase maximum (total) health
  • Level Two progress and the sidescroll area within
  • Overhaul of Kart racing mechanics and physics
  • New “ball rolling” side-game mechanics implemented

Speed Optimizations

You may or may not have noticed that there have been some speed improvements (approximately 50% faster) made to the site in the past couple days. I have done some removal of resource-intensive plugins and replaced them with less-resource intensive variations (or just eliminated them entirely) so you should notice that the site and its respective posts/pages will load much more quickly then before.

Retro Runner – Resurrection

Original GameMaker8 screenshot of Retro Runner.

As my familiarity of Unity continued to grow and with steady progress being made on my 3D platforming game: Besus: Journey for Vitality, one night the thought to resurrect my Retro Runner project in Unity popped in to my head. My only hesitation came from how I would go about porting a project I started in GameMaker 8 to Unity 3D. After exploring the 2D functionality offered in Unity, I knew it could be done with relative ease and decided to pursue this new endeavor.

In order to get started with 2D in Unity, I downloaded the “official” 2d platformer tutorial/asset from the asset store to familiarize myself with 2D rigidbodies and Vector2’s. After taking a look at how everything worked, I stripped away what I didn’t need and ended up just using the Rigidbody2D forces being applied for movement and jumping. Even then, I only needed to apply a constant force to the player as horizontal force would always be applied (with the exception of slowing down while sliding). With the movement established I created a simple camera script which set the camera transform to the equivalent of the player transform (with an adjustable x-axis offset). Now that the core mechanics were in place, I moved on to getting the graphics portion of the game ported over.

Continue reading

Besus: Journey for Vitality on IndieDB

I just finished updating my new IndieDB page for Besus: Journey for Vitality. Although it is still pending authorization, the page can be found here.

Major updates will likely be the only ones to be added to the IndieDB updates page, so for those looking for more in-depth information on the development continue to check this one!

Besus: Journey for Vitality

Besus: Journey for Vitality Development Blog – Volume 5

Time for volume 5 of my video development blog series following development of Besus: Journey for Vitality!
Updates focused-on in this volume include:

  • Texture-based footstep sounds
  • Improved/expanded dialog system
  • Scene-workflow and transition changes
  • New Firefighter powerup
  • Water-level control button

Expanding on the “Complete” Physics Platformer Kit

After discovering everything that the Complete Physics Platformer kit has to offer, I knew the time would come that I would have to emphasize the “starter kit” aspect of it and expand on its functionality. Although the kit offers the essentials such as movement, jumping, enemies with basic AI, health system, and a coin collectible all integrated with the physics system in Unity, any platforming game since the mid-90’s has offered more. Be it wall jumping, ground pounding, powerups, or even just swimming, these are all items that I eventually wanted to add to this starter kit.

Wall Kicks Will Work

I knew the logic behind how I wanted to approach this right from the start. Specifically I would use the ‘grab box’ already attached to the player (used to determine when the player can pick an item up) and if it was touching an object with the ‘Wall’ tag, it would let the player perform the wall jump. Being fairly new to C#, translating this logic to in to code proved to be quite intimidating at first. After combing through Google search results, most notably Unity Answers and forum posts, I dove in and began to implement the code. Line by line, the logic began to come together. The most difficult part was working with the rotation, specifically rotating the player 180 degrees after jumping off of the wall. Eventually I found the transform.RotateAround function which allowed me to do just that; rotating around the Vector3.up axis.

Continue reading

Besus: Journey for Vitality Development Blog – Volume 4

I present volume four of my video development blog series following development of my 3D Unity Platformer – Besus: Journey for Vitality!
Updates focused-on in this volume include:

  • Health Pickup
  • Save/Load System (with potential for infinite save slots)
  • Falling (timed) platforms
  • Level-specific Powerup Card Activation buttons
  • Dialog System
  • Fall Damage (varying amounts depending on height)
  • Differing level start points (if entering the level from a different location)
  • Level development progress