Game Development: Fairy Of the Year, Online Platformer

Duration: 25/9/2024 - 8/1/2025 (15 weeks)
Project: Develop an online platformer game
Project type: University Project

Table of Contents:

  1. Overview
  2. The Process
  3. Pre-Production
  4. Production
  5. Post-Production
  6. Final Work
  7. Reflection

Overview

During my fifth semester of university, I had the opportunity to develop an online platformer game from scratch. The project's goal was to allow us to explore gameplay mechanics and user interfaces that help improve the player's experience.

Some of the things I had done in this game were:
  • Game design document compilation
  • Assets creation
  • Animating assets
  • Sound sourcing
  • Developing the game
Programs used:

The process

The game development process can be split into 3 stages, pre-production, production and post-production. Due to time constraints, the game was never tested with any beta testers. 

Figure 1.1 The process

Pre-Production

This stage can be split into 2 phases, the game idea phase and the idea refinement phase. 

Game Idea

I initially had 2 ideas for a game, one being about a tooth fairy and the other being about a cat finding its way home. 
Game ideas by Janice Eng

After getting my ideas approved by the lecturer, I decided to focus on one idea which was the 'Fairy of the Year' idea. My reference for the game was those platform games made by Cartoon Network or Disney XD for their cartoons. Additionally, my visual reference for the game was mainly based on the cartoon 'Fairly OddParents'.

Figure 1.2 Visual Reference for the Game Design

Moreover, for my visual reference for the main character designs, I was mainly inspired by Kirby and the Tooth Fairy from 'Fairly Oddparents'.

Figure 1.3 Visual Reference for the main character design

Refining the Idea

After exploring some free platformer games, I got to refine my game idea. Some things I worked on refining were the:
  • Storyflow
  • User Skills
  • Enemy Skills
  • Level Design
Figure 1.4 Initial Game Design Document

Production

Moving onto the production phase, which can be split into 2 sections:
  • Design 
  • Development

Design

This section involves identifying what assets were needed for the game and producing them.

All the assets have been compiled into the final game design document. But I will show some of the assets made.

Main Character: Floss

Figure 1.5 Floss Initial Design

Figure 1.6 (from left) Floss hurt animation, Floss Idle animation and Floss walking animation  all with normal cell shading



Figure 1.7 (from top left) Flos Dies and Floss Hurt animation(updated) and Floss Jump Animation

Main Anatagonist: Bristle

Figure 1.8 Bristle Normal Stills
Figure 1.9(from left) Bristle Dies, Bristle Hurt and Bristle Idle Animation

Background

Figure 1.10 (from top) Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 background looped

Art Asset Document

Development

Developing the game involves bringing all the assets into Unity. I will go over some of the things I did in Unity. 

Traps

Projectile Launcher 

For this one, I followed this video tutorial on how to make a launcher that spawns and launches the projectile at intervals.

Figure 1.12 Projectile Launcher

Spikes and DeathSpikes

I have 2 types of spikes:
  • The normal spikes will take away 20% of the player's HP
  • The death spike will insta kill the player
Figure 1.13 Code used for normal spikes and death spikes

Springboard

I made a springboard that can help boost the player high up. I followed this video to make it. It worked out fine. 

Figure 1.14 From left, death spikes, springboard and normal spikes

Enemy AI

Enemy patroling
My enemies will be walking at a fixed distance.
  • For the mom, her patrol area will be larger as she has short-range attack and having a larger patrol area can increase her hit zone.
  • For the dad, his patrol area will be smaller than the mom's by a lot as he is a long range attacker. His lack of patrol area can be made up by his longer range.
For the patroling code, I followed this video tutorial.

Figure 1.15 Final Outcome of enemy patrolling

Enemy Attacks
There will be 2 types of enemy attacks:
  • Hit by a butterfly net, a short-range attack, done by the mother
  • Hit by a bullet, a long-range attack, was done by the father.
Figure 1.16 (Left) Dad Attack (right) Mom attack

UI Screens
Figure 1.17 Pause Menu Screen

Figure 1.18 Game Over Screen

Scenes
My current scene list looks like this:
  • Main Menu
  • Level 1
  • Level 2
  • Boss Level, dialogue scene
  • Boss Level, fight scene
My plan for navigating between menu and level scenes:
  • Make use of the button on click function
My plan for navigation between different levels:
  • Make use of the on trigger enter go to another scene.
Figure 1.19 Main Menu Scene 

Figure 1.20 Level 1 Scene 

Figure 1.21 Level 2 Scene

Figure 1.22 Boss Level, fight scene

Sound sourcing
 
  Sounds by Janice Eng

Post Production

The post-production phase typically involves beta testing. But as mentioned, due to time constraints the game was not tested. So this phase only consisted of me uploading my files to Netlify.

Final Work

Game Design Document

Figure 1.23 Final Completed Game Design Document (13/1/25)

Game Walkthrough

Game (please view in full screen)

Game Website(theres something wrong with the hp bar for lvl1 and 2, its fill amount wont change. Kill yourself at the start to reset the hp bar and allow the bar to properly track your health):

Figure 1.24 Fairy of the Year

Reflection

I enjoyed coming up with the game concept and storyline for this project. However, the development part, especially the coding and using Unity was really hard on me. All the troubleshooting really led to a lot of sleepless nights. I still feel like my game mechanics or level design could be more refined and thought out, as they currently seem very easy to beat.

However, I do feel like this project is very interesting and I learnt a lot from it. If given the chance to work on a game in the future, I would take up that chance.

Comments

Post a Comment