This blog will document the making of my 2D pixel art game.The blog will contain research, art, game engines and other elements crucial to the creation of my 2D game.
First Entry
I started the process of making my own 2D game by first creating a mood board that would present my ideas and current interests clearly.This motherboard shows that i had the initial idea of creating a 2D game that would revolve around the cyberpunk aesthetic by making use of many bright shades of pink and purples.
I also drew a quick sketch for some reason I drew the sketch in 3D. Similar to the images in the mood board the narrow street is covered in sign that would be glowing in the night and illuminating all the surroundings.
Second Entry
I created a very simple layout of out map using placeholder textures such as a green tile that says grass on it.This allowed me to get used to placing tiles and separating them to be used for different roles such as environment or collider.I also attempted to create my own wall texture in Photoshop, which i do not believe turned out as well as it could have because of the colours used did not go too well together.This caused me to decide not to create my walls until a later date and create them to a high enough standard that ill be able to use them in the finished product
Third Entry
During our lectures we were shown how to make seamless textures.For my task I was instructed to create a seamless sand texture, which I originally created using many lines to create the waves in desert sand.This method of creating the sand texture worked for others but caused me to fail time and time again by creating an ugly texture, after this i decided to create my sand texture using a single pixel brush to imitate the grains found in sand.I created this texture by using five different colours and scattering them almost randomly throughout my 32 x 32 texture, creating the illusion of many different grains of sand making up one texture.I made 3 different variations of this to avoid the texture repeating and not making all parts of the texture look the same when used.
At this point i decided to change the theme of my game from cyberpunk to wild west.I thought it would be best to make use of the textures that i had just created and save time by using this already made texture that would be all around my game world.
I also created my own wall textures that could be used throughout the game.As shown the texture tiles well, i did this by measuring the 32 x 32 texture space and doing some calculations so i could figure out how to fit 6 bricks on the texture space without filling up all 32 x 32 pixels of space.After creating the bricks i sectioned off the part of the texture that would represent the top of the wall and proceeded to add detail to the rest of the bricked wall.I achieved this by creating a pattern for the bricks and slowly lowering the brightness of the colours used as I got closer to the bottom of the texture space.This allowed me to create the effect of shadows forming at the bottom of the wall and creating more depth.
Fourth Entry
I was quickly able to construct a level using a tiled floor and many different wall textures I painted using photoshop. I also constructed a bridge and water textures to give my level some more variation.
Here I made use of the animator and the integer value player_state to make use of my idle and walk animation I had created by allowing them to switch between one another when it fit the character movement or lack thereof.
In this screenshot I was testing the health pickup vfx that I managed to get to work after lots of trial and error, I also managed to get the player health and health pickup to work here too.
Here I was creating a finish level tile to indicate to the player that they had reached the end of the game.I was able to create a main, level select and pause menu that kept to a blocky looking style.
At this point I was troubleshooting the game and making sure there were no problems with the build so that I didn’t make the same mistake that caused me to do this resit. After going through the game multiple times in the build I came to the conclusion that it had few if any bugs and was satisfied with what I had created.
Tyree Sealey Games 