In Another Castle
I will be discussing the process I took for all my sprites as well as my level. I will also have tables with more information on each sprite.
Character Sprites
In the gallery you can see the character sprites I made for the paper 2D unreal project. There is a Idle, Running, Jumping and Attacking animation. I made my Idle animation first as it was the easiest place to start and continued to do the running, jumping and attacking animation. All the sprites were made in the software Piskel. I then continued to import them to the Unreal Engine. First I applied paper 2D texture settings to make them look more clear as well as extracting them into sprites and then I turned them into flipbooks. . Then I programmed it so the player could control the sprites as well as having the sprite change animations. The sizes of the Idle, Running and jumping sprites are all 64×64 however the Attacking sprite is 128×128. The reason for this is because when making the sprite the weapon in the sprite would not fit on a 64×64 so I change it to 128×128.
The Character Sprites Program
The first image is what lets the sprites change animations. The multiple branch’s make this possible. The second image has 3 bits of code. The first bit (called player movement) allows the player to move, as well as making the sprite turn around. The second bit (called select appropriate flipbook) makes it so the correct flipbook is chosen. The third bit allows the player sprite to connect to the UMG hud. There is also a piece that goes towards the attacking animation.
(The Sprites in the gallery represent the sprites in the table as well as the any embedded links)
Pickup’s
In the gallery you can see some pickup’s I have made. A Gem, a Heart and a Crossbow. I made all of these sprites in the software Piskel. The heart and the crossbow were made at the same time whereas the gem was taken from a online source which has been listed in my table below. After I made the pickup’s I put them into Unreal. I first applied paper 2D texture settings and I created the sprites. Then I programmed the Heart pickup and Gem pickup. I then implemented the assets into my level. The Gem is a collectable for the player to pickup similar to Mario’s coins or Crash bandicoot’s Wumpa Fruit. The Heart is a healing item that will recover some of the players HP. The Crossbow is a weapon that allows the player to deal damage to enemies. The Gem sprite was taken from a website (the URL is in the table below) therefore I couldn’t change the sprite size. Both the Heart sprite and the gem sprite have some code attached to them. The heart should let the player recover 25 health and the gem allows the player to pickup the item. I also turned the Gem and the Heart into a flipbook. Although the Gem doesn’t have any animations I had to do it if I wanted to make a blueprint of the Gem.
Heart Program
This piece of code allows the player to heal 25 HP. By using “cast to pixel” node the player can now effect with heart. The green nodes adds health to the player. The node at the end happens when the player picks up the heart. The node lets the heart disappear as soon as the player has picked it up.
Gem Program
These pieces of code allow the player to pickup Gems. The first image shows how the player can effect the Gem as well as enabling the counter to increase every time the player picks up a gem. The second image makes the Gem counter work. It also allows the players character to interact with the Gem counter.
(The Sprites in the gallery represent the sprites in the table as well as the any embedded links)
Environment/Hazards
In the gallery you can see the environment assets as well as a hazard asset. When importing these to unreal I first applied paper 2D texture settings and I created the sprites. I also made a flipbook for the spikes so I could make a blueprint. Then I created the castle walls so they have no collision as it is just a environment sprite that the player can not interact with, that also includes the door sprite. The stairs collision was changed so I could give a realistic feel to them. The spikes were the only sprite that has a blueprint as I wanted it to be able to kill the player. The door is the ending of the level. The tile set is the floor in which the player stands on. The tile set is 64×64 because it would not fit otherwise.
Spike Program
This image show the program for the Spikes. The Spikes kill the player, it does this by using a true or false node (Branch). If true then destroy actor, if false then do nothing. The cast node is connect to the destroy actor node, this makes it possible for the player to die.
(The Sprites in the gallery represent the sprites in the table as well as the any embedded links)
Platforms
In the gallery it shows 3 platforms used throughout the level. I first made them in Piskel, then I imported them into Unreal and applied paper 2D texture settings. I continued by creating sprites out of the 3 images. I then added them into my level. The first platform is used throughout the whole level. I wanted it to look a little like wooden scaffolding as well as having it look unstable. The second platform is for the enemies. The enemies in this game are supposed to be able to use the same power-ups as the player, the crossbow was one of the items that the enemies could use. These platforms act as snipper towers for the enemies to use. The third platform is used during the beginning of the level. I made the design of this platform look more stable.
(The Sprites in the gallery represent the sprites in the table as well as the any embedded links)
Miscellaneous Assets
In the gallery you can see some miscellaneous assets used at the start of the level. After these assets were made the first thing a did was apply 2D texture settings and then created sprites. All 3 of these assets share mostly the same purpose, be a box for the player to stand on. (Any extra purpose will be discussed in the table below).
(The Sprites in the gallery represent the sprites in the table as well as the any embedded links)
Level
This is my level, it is a castle themed level. This is supposed to be the first level of the game so the level is quite easy. The level starts off with a easy jump so the player can get used to the controls of the game. There also some gems at the bottom of this area (between the big boxes) the level then continues with platform challenges that will kill the player if they fail. The level continues mostly the same as the original concept however the crossbow power-up and enemies are unfortunately placeholders. (NOTE: There is a blueprint for the enemy however it does not work the way I would have liked it to work therefore I have just added a placeholder).
File management
My file management in unreal was very simple. All assets imported to unreal are in SuppliedAssets as well as any flipbooks, sprites and blueprints made with the imported assets. Each folder in organised, for example actor blueprints have there own folder.
I organised the world outliner so it is easy to understand. I also organised the level into 2 versions which can be seen in the files (image 3).
Errors
Some errors I encountered were:
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Unreal deleting my project 3 times.
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Some graphical glitches.
File Types
All the file types of my sprites are PNG’s. PNG’s have “lossless” compression whereas JPEG’s which has a so-called “lossy” compression. The reason I have chosen PNG’s is for this reason, because JPEG’s have “lossy” compression the quality is significantly lower than that of the PNG files. I wanted my sprites to have the best quality possible so that the game would look good.
Feedback / Changes
I mentioned in “errors” that my project had all of it’s assets delete 3 times however I do still have screenshots of the original level. When showing my level to friends and family there was one thing that everyone brought up. The tileset and the castle walls had a very similar colour scheme, making it difficult to tell them apart. So when the level crashed for the 3rd time I decided to change the tileset to a dark colour which is the one seen in the level today.
Some changes made was the addition of a win and lose screen and the ability to respawn.
The End code and Win code
Both of the win code and the end code are very similar except from the last node. the quit game node close the game once the player reaches the end of the level. The open level node opens the level map again. The Spawn program is connected to the end code which makes the player respawn.
Reflection
I am personally really happy with level. There were some things I couldn’t do such as the crossbow power-up and the enemies however I am happy that I was able to get the majority of my assets working the way I wanted them to.