Assignment 3A - Checkpoint 1 - Player Movement

Player Movement - Version 1

Player Movement for my game, being a platformer, takes the highest order of priority in regards to all functions of the game. I want it to feel smooth, easy to link and combine movements, and enable a casual, or even skilled player,  to take full advantage of all tools given.

The first thing i began was simple left to right movement. then adding in a jump, then even experimenting  with sticking onto walls and attempting wall jumping. All of these took a bit of time, but with a simple gravity effect that allowed the player to fall I achieved my first version of player movement. 

This was the first version of player movement, while basic it severed its purpose and I began to ask others how they felt about the movement and what can then be improved. I would also like to note that all Player sprites and animations have been acquired through the Unity Assets Store through the creator called "Dead Revolver" and the assets (Revolver, 2024). There are key animations that they have created that will be vital to the "Feel" of this game. 

Some of the notes of feedback I received on the first version of my player movement were: 

1. Jumping feels like the player is "Floating" almost as if in space. 
2. Sticking to walls feels a bit odd and abrupt.
3. Lack of animation feels weird with just a little guy hovering around.
4. Same run speed feels basic.
5. When running and jumping off a ledge, it feels like it has to be frame perfect for the jump to work. 

I took on all this feedback and put to work on improving these aspects, however, I also wanted to add another feature to this game, that went down a long rabbit hole of confusion and ate away at time coding. This particular movement was - 

Swinging

Swinging, for me, was a nightmare.

After laying the groundwork for basic movement and taking on feedback, my next goal was to create a tool for the player to launch a rope or something similar to an object, and swing from it back and forth. Be it for going from platform to platform or even creating more speed for the player. 

However, no matter how many types of swinging mechanisms I tried to implement it always ended up creating errors, or looking downright silly. Like the following example: 

It was a constant problem, and this was only one out of three versions that had their own "issues". This feature was one that I had set aside large chunks of time to try and produce a note worthy attempt. Yet at the end of the time I made for it, I made the decision to not continue this pursuing this movement, as it did not produce results in the time-frame I had set aside for it, and the movement I wanted to work on and polish required the attention that was creeping up with deadlines and other work.

Moving on from the lessons learned from the attempts of the swinging mechanic, I moved forward in refining and adding more features to the movement to make it feel more "fleshed" out. These included making wall jumping and sliding to work, adding a double jump, and allowing for frame perfect jumping forgiveness, culminating in my 2nd version of Player Movement. 

Player Movement - Version 2  

The following is where the player movement went to adding these new features and added a trail to take into account how the player is moving. Due to time constraints lost from the time spent on attempting the swinging mechanic, there are currently no animations at the moment, as i wanted to entirely focus on getting the movement right. 

The new features added from the feedback given and shown in the GIF are: 

1. A dash to vary up the speed of the character and enable nifty saves
2. A wall jump to add a layer of usability of the environment in navigating levels
3. A double jump to add to possible level arrangements and movement
4. Varying heights of the jumps
5. Adding a slide down walls as to give a fluid feeling rather than sticky
6. Improvements to increasing frame forgiving jumps or "coyote" time. 

I really wanted to push more onto what the movement could be like if it had more feeling to it, so I added on an Acceleration and Deceleration  to the run speed. However, as I am learning with movement tools interacting with one another, when you change one movement, everything changes. This caused issues with the wall slide and wall jump so much so that it took a two nights to figure out a smoother looking solution. 

The final result of which is Version 3 and the current movement of the Player. (With some added background assets from FeonY (FeonY, 2023), as well as a little slime guy from the creator War(War, 2022))

Player Movement Version 3 - 

From all the feedback i received i wanted to make a game that had plenty of movement with a fun combination of choices. With the acceleration and deceleration I feel pretty good about the current state of base movement and wall jumping + sliding is working well too. Although this is the current state there is other movements I might like to include that interact with the environment more. These are for example:

1. Pushing and pulling objects
2. Vaulting over obstacles or sliding
3. Ledge grabbing

While I will purse level design next week, if time or opportunity presents itself I hope to implement some form of these elements in the future of this project.

Reference List:

Player Sprite Animations: 

Dead Revolver, (2024, Nov 20th) Pixel Prototype Player Sprites. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/pixel-prototype-player-sprit...

Background Image:

FeonY, (2023, Nov 27th) Animated Pixel - Art Backgrounds | Free https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/environments/animated-pixel-art-backgro...

Slime Guy:

War (2022, Oct 7th) Slime Enemy - Pixel Art https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/slime-enemy-pixel-art-228568