This week in the production of Tumbleweed Troubles I added an extensive amount to the game, this includes an animated sprite for the player along with an array of textures for the background and level blocking.

 I managed to find an amazing asset pack on itch.io which included an eight-way movement sprite sheet which I utilised for the player sprite. This included an animation for shooting as well, which I implemented along with a script for player shooting which I took from a previous unity tutorial assignment.  From this same texture pack, I also used some textures for rocks to create the bounds of the map and to add some obstacles in the area.

 The overall world bounds of the game is quite simple as I want to keep the game as open as possible with limited obstacles to retain the focus on the hordes of enemies and enhance the fighting gameplay as opposed to making it too maze like. The few obstacles that are seen in the game include the rocks as previously mentioned, along with some raised bits of ground which I have turned into a combination of different shapes including a u-shaped alley in the bottom right of the scene. I created the sprites for the raised ground on the website: pixilart.com, which I have found to be a great tool in creating assets that easily transfer into unity.

 Speaking of pixilart.com I also created the sprites for the enemies on there, these being a dancing purple cactus, a tumbleweed and a static green cactus. These enemy types will all have different unique characteristics and will be randomly spawned into the world space. This is a contributing factor as to why I have created a reasonably large map (approximately six times the size of the camera) with a fair bit of open space. As to accommodate for the random spawning of enemies which will hopefully give the game a slightly different gameplay feel every round.

 Peer reviews:

 The peer reviews I got this week during class were that the game looked aesthetically appealing and runs well, however, there could be a bit more in the environment as it felt quite barren. This is something that I will modify when I have some working spawners for the enemies and can play around with the world a bit more to figure out the optimal layout for a fun and challenging play through each time.

 What was challenging and what wasn’t:

 The most challenging part of this week’s additions was implementing the animations for the sprites that needed it as I had only done this once prior, hence it was extremely time consuming to get done.

 Creating a tile map and tile set was surprisingly quite easy and enjoyable, because of this I will most likely progressively add more pixel art which I create myself. This includes making a different border as I would like it to have a bit more character in the final game. Because the tile maps are so easy to use and modify, it will make it simple to modify the map and potentially add different map options with their own unique obstacle layouts.

 References:

 Website used to create ground sand tiles, raised sand environment objects, cacti and tumbleweed. Pixilart.com (https://www.pixilart.com/draw?ref=home-page) accessed 29/04/24-04/05/24

Asset pack for player and all other environmental objects:

‘Generic Old West Pack’

Artists; bakudas, _DeuTilt, _sofarama, itsarfo

Published by Vaca Roxa (06/11/20)

https://bakudas.itch.io/generic-oldwest-pack (Accessed: 29/04/24)