Our next assignment is to make your platform game into your very own. You’ll create (or acquire) assets to populate the world, define the action, and build a playable level of your own creation.
There are six required component parts and five optional components. Completing the required components will earn a grade of B, and completing the additional challenges will raise that accordingly.
For this assignment, you must build your own platform game, customizing it to your own design. This is your chance to express your creativity. This means defining the characters and their behaviors, building the world of the game, designing your demo level, and adding the little touches that make this specifically yours.
Required Items:
ITEM 1: Player Character – [REQUIRED]
Every good platformer needs a main character. You are responsible for providing the sprites and animations – these can be assets you create yourself, or things that you find online or on the Asset Store, but do not use pre-made animation sets. You should be responsible for setting up the animation controller for this.
At a minimum, your character should be able to stand idle, run, and jump, and have different animation clips for each. Additional states to consider would be walking, death animations, attacks, etc.
ITEM 2: Enemies – [REQUIRED]
Your game must have at least two types of enemies, which at a minimum should appear different from one another. You can decide what their behavior should be, and what danger the present to the player. (Do they kill the player? Hurt the player? Stun the player?)
These enemies must also be animated using sprites.
ITEM 3: Environment – [REQUIRED]
You must build out “Level 1-1” of your game. This means designing approximately 3-5 minutes of gameplay to successfully complete your level.
In addition to your platforms, your game must have other environmental objects, including artwork in the foreground (in front of player) and background (behind player).
ITEM 4: Sound – [REQUIRED]
Your game must have sounds to provide feedback to your player. At a minimum, sounds must play for player or enemy hits, and player deaths. Consider sounds for jumping, footsteps, attacks, enemy behaviors, powerups, etc.. Background music can add some thematic support to your design as well, but is not required.
ITEM 5: Falling Death – [REQUIRED]
If your character falls off of the world, they die / you lose a life. Make sure to communicate this somehow (visually or with sound, possibly UI based?)
ITEM 6: Multiple Lives / Attempts – [REQUIRED]
Your player should get multiple attempts to complete your level. You can decide if you would like to implement a “lives” system with a limited set of attempts, or simply restart the level after a failed attempt.
Optional Items
ITEM 7: Power-Ups – [OPTIONAL]
Create some bonus that the player can pick up to enhance their gameplay. This can be an extra life, something that heals damage, or alters the player character in some fashion – maybe for a period of time, maybe permanently. You get to decide.
ITEM 8: Keep Score – [OPTIONAL]
Keep track of and display a running score value. Scoring events could be from defeating enemies, picking up objects (such as coins or rings), or some other method. Again the decision is yours to design and implement.
ITEM 9: Timer – [OPTIONAL]
Set a countdown timer for your level. If the player does not complete the level in time, they lose a life and have to start again, or go back to the latest checkpoint.
ITEM 10: Checkpoints – [OPTIONAL]
Add a location along the progression of your level where your character can respawn if they are killed. This can be a location that you must reach and activate (like a flag with a trigger), or a point of progress in a level (if you have made it this far, you now start at this respawn point).
ITEM 11: Weapons – [OPTIONAL]
Why jump when you can attack? Design and implement some sort of weapon attack. This can be a melee, projectile, or something else entirely.
Grading
Assignment will be graded as follows:
All Required Items (Steps 1-6) : B
All Required + 1 Optional : B+
All Required + 2 Optional: A-
All Required + 3 Optional: A
All Required + 4 Optional: A+
The project is due by Tuesday (6/14) at class time. Create a compressed (zipped) folder of your project directory, and a compressed (zipped) version of your application or executable and support files. Submit these two items to the Assignment 4 folder on Box.