The main sources used to make my game:
When creating my platformer game I used this tutorial series as a guide for help implementing various mechanics it offers:
(Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_NzdVSxaQ)
However, even though I used a tutorial for assistance, I improved and built upon multiple things he did in the series to follow a more professional standard, such as (as mentioned in the damage blog), optimising the spikes damage and fireball properties code into running more efficiently in just one script, optimising the scene management order when using 'Application.LoadLevel' in my Unity build index (to organise my level structure since I have a lot of scenes and stages), or changing a lot of the collision functions to hit an object with a tag instead of just any object (or else for example a stray enemy projectile could accidentally set off a trigger. So instead it must be the player that collides with said trigger). I also added a bundle of content that was never included in the video series from outside sources (like the Unity website and me personally posting in Unity Answers), such as music/ scripted sound, a main menu, grabbing ledges, bottomless pits, an in-game tutorial with level-design that gets harder as the player gets better, etc. So I feel I improved upon the code provided and optimised it, while using it in a more meaningful way.
I also used a different video series (shown below) to create my game's main menu, but still optimised the code to fit my needs. For example, the tutorial covers various topics like posting links and entering usernames things that aren't necessary to have in a platformer game. Also, because I used Unity 5.3 to make my game (before downgrading to 5.1, as that's the version installed on the Uni computers) I used 'scene manager' to manage and organise my game's levels over just directly using 'load level' as said in the video. I changed the code back to load level Unity 5.1 later on though but amended the code myself after checking the official documentation from (SceneManager, 2016) at the official Unity website (somewhere I also found detailed documentation for various areas of my code (like sound)), to compare how different the scenemanager API works. All that helped we learn a deeper understanding on how scenes are handled in Unity, and also how scene manager and load level differ in nature. My research into the differences in these functions and also seeing how they compare is an example of me following professional standards, with changing and tweaking the code in my game depending on the Unity version it's running.
(Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOCIlQx5Gw)
Video Walkthrough of my Game:
Once my game was finished I decided to record a video of me playing through the entire prototype. I recorded a step-by-step playthrough of the Unity game using Fraps, and the video shows-off a variety of functionality and features found inside my game! From proof that all of my menus and buttons work correctly, to showing damage knockback and death in action, it all works well as evidence to support my development blog posts I previously wrote, showing how everything has come together into a mechanically deep prototype of my platformer game (and most importantly, it's evidence that the entire game works as intended without any glitches). The game also introduces most of the functionality in the first two levels (which the video proves), with the last one introducing floating spikeballs and merging together everything you know about the game playing beforehand into one hard level. Because of this some testers may not be able to finish the game due to a few spikes in difficulty near the end, but this video helps show the entire game in full just in-case someone really wanted to beat the game, but couldn't do it themselves. The game on the Uni PCs also have a slight case of screen-tearing every now and again, where sometimes a line or portion of the moving image doesn't match the motion of the game's visuals and looks jagged as a result. However this video also provides evidence that the game doesn't have any visual tearing when recording at home. Here is the video walkthrough I recorded, which I have uploaded onto Youtube for easy access and viewing without the need to download the video:
(Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_NzdVSxaQ)
I also changed my game a bit after adding some suggestions from the end-user review below (with various game improvements people suggested. Like a higher double jump that's now 1.5 times weaker than the main jump instead of 1.75 (which makes the later levels in the game much more manageable and forgiving), improved physics for optimisation/ smoother gameplay (like spikeballs now being marked as 'is trigger' to stop falling platforms from bouncing off them) and a timer that counts down to your death). So here's another, shorter walkthrough video that shows the higher jump, moving platform and timer in action with a much-improved version of Pippy The Bird:
End-user review:
In order to get a wider range of opinions towards my finished game, and not just my own, I decided to conduct an online survey using Google Forms to ask a few questions and gage how well received my game is overall. Essentially everyone will play through the game, and then afterwards click the link to my online survey and fill out a few questions on what they thought (link to the survey is available here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KCGXBpYZV3uLMoeyFpU1C3zM7gU3H6x1AKn6qA38SS4/viewform). Because my game has always been planned to be an accessible, yet challenging casual game that anyone can pick and up and play, I asked various friends (online and offline) and family members within a very large age range that are both male and female to get a broad range of responses. In the end I managed to get 17 responses from lots of different people who I were with in person and also online. Here are the questions I asked them with the results I received just below each question:
Are you male or female?
| Male | 11 | 68.8% |
| Female | 5 | 31.3% |
How old are you?
| 3-7 | 1 | 5.9% |
| 8-12 | 1 | 5.9% |
| 13-17 | 3 | 17.6% |
| 18-21 | 5 | 29.4% |
| 22-26 | 3 | 17.6% |
| 27-31 | 2 | 11.8% |
| 32-37 | 1 | 5.9% |
| 38+ | 1 | 5.9% |
How often do you play video games in your average week?
| Never | 2 | 11.8% |
| Rarely | 3 | 17.6% |
| 1-3 hours a week | 2 | 11.8% |
| 4-6 hours a week | 4 | 23.5% |
| 7-10 hours a week | 2 | 11.8% |
| 11-14 hours a week | 3 | 17.6% |
| 15-18 hours a week | 0 | 0% |
| 19-23 hours a week | 1 | 5.9% |
| 24+ hours a week | 0 | 0% |
On a scale of 1-5, how much did you enjoy playing the game?
| 1 | 1 | 5.9% |
| 2 | 2 | 11.8% |
| 3 | 4 | 23.5% |
| 4 | 8 | 47.1% |
| 5 | 2 | 11.8% |
If the game prototype was expanded upon and released as a full game, would you buy it?
| Yes, I would pre-order it. | 4 | 23.5% |
| I would buy it after release | 4 | 23.5% |
| I'd wait for it to go on sale | 7 | 41.2% |
| I wouldn't buy the game | 2 | 11.8% |
Overall, do you have any suggestions or improvements to the game that you think would improve it (please type your answer below)?
Lovely game Adam. Was very fun!
Please make the the bird jump HIGHER!! The game plays smoothly like butter, but the bird could just have a little bit extra OOMPH in his jump.
Needs to come out on PS4. I love it.
you did a really good job of designing challenges within the rules of the game, which is the unappreciated art. The difficulty was right: not too easy, but still took several attempts to complete. The dialogue stuff was my favourite part, it gave it its own personality. 10/10 made me have a meltdown irl
Add multiplayer so we can play together at the same time like rayman adammm!!
It doesnt feel fluid. The jumping is really strange for how far you can slide and the game looks like something made in Scratch. Also the sign that said "haha" in the first level was fucked up. Plus those cacti blend into the background too well and it's hard to see them, and i dislike the 1-hit kill mechanic when you land on something. Overall it seems like a game that had quite a bit of time put into it, which it probably did. Not bad. Wouldnt play it again though.
The game was good, I enjoyed it, and the music, fucking great, I enjoyed the shit outta that. It was a little buggy with the platforms, where sometimes I would have to jump over a small invisible wall. Some higher quality sprites and backgrounds, and you got yourself something pretty good. Props to you for making something that I would never even attempt to make =)
The game's more fun than my entire life has been...
The game mechanics are well polished. But could be improved. Maybe make the bird jump higher?
The bird was cute! But please make the game have more animals. Loads of different colour toucans would be amazing! At the moment there's only one type.
Great game, actually quite enjoyed it, not usually that into platformers but in honesty this is as good as a lot of platformers I've played if you bump up the textures and general graphical parts a bit. (But obviously thats hardly even necessary now, you're a student). Only other issue is that occasionally knowing where to land etc. needs to be done on guessing alone, like there's no way I could know where some of the platforms in the final level were until I'd died falling past them. Personally I die a lot so it didn't matter anyway, so a timer to make people hurry up would be good. Thanks for making this fam
Really good game and I very-much enjoyed it, but the character could jump a bit higher. Or even just make the double jump not be so minimal in height! Double jump height should be higher (jumps in general should be higher) Should be some level of friction in the air so you slow down naturally when not holding forward, less friction than on the ground Passive hero is boring, add power ups or some form of attack, along with breakables that contain collectables Powers such as flight, glide, third jump, beak drill dive Even though its a demo, practice good level design, dont use leaps of faith Plan levels to be ran through quickly and smoothly if played by an experienced player, for replayablity/speed running, such as timing up projectile spawners and moving platforms Controls need a lot of work, maybe it was my controller but it was a hassle getting it to work with my 360 controller and mouse only menus is a bad idea, get em working with keyboard and ideally gamepad as well
I don't play many games- however I found it lots of fun!
The game offered me a temporary distraction through a form of escapism, from the chaos and hell that is my own existence. 10/10 would play again.
It's still better than AC:U at launch... (Gg though Adam, this is good stuff you've got here)
It was ok, there could have been a bit more to it, but its not a game for me but not too bad by any means either. The game has a few small bugs that should be fixed if it were to reach a final consumer release. When the player is knocked back, they are only pushed left, leading to insta-deaths when the player had two hit points. The controls are a unresponsive at times (getting stuck on a platform). The double jump mechanic as a game choice is interesting as it requires the user to master the timing, was not sure if it was intentional. Overall the mechanics of the game are good, the game was enjoyable as a small/prototype release, if think the game assets were more consistent and bugs were fixed the game would be a very good platformer. Good job.
improve art direction - make stage hazard more apparent -art design look to condensed -control are floaty but kinda acceptable with cliff hook and double jump -quite a lot of text to read, kinda kills the game's pacing -and call me dumb but it took me 3 tries to realise the cactus is a hazard, make it more apparent
Overall out of this sample size of 17 people, the results are actually fairly positive and I'm pleased to see such an overall good reaction form a broad range of people of different ages and genders. Although saying that, twice as many males took the survey than females, and most of the people who took the survey were teenagers and early adults, so gender bias towards a specific group of people is something to take into account here. However even though there is this unbalance, the results surprised me- in the fact that this large demographic was mostly positive towards the game, and everyone except 2 people said that they would buy it in some way. The comments for improvements were mostly positive, aside from the obvious joke ones, there are clearly people who enjoyed the game, and those who had improvements like:
Multiplayer (which was tested with a bit before, however it didn't work very well as the birds could jump on eachother, push everyone around and fell off another person's head when the other moved. Plus the game is just designed with one person in mind), a better camera angle (and I do agree, as pointed out, a section in this last level requires the player to fall down, and it's tricky to see exactly where you're going to land. But this wouldn't take too much extra time to implement as the camera script is set to just follow the player's central position), fixing the damage so you don't instantly die when you jump and land on spikes (which was intentional at first, but now feels harsh on the player so I adjusted the code accordingly so you always take 2 hits to die), a timer (which I think is a good idea and something to add, since it'll count down and kill the player when it reaches 0, adding a sense of urgency) and better art design (as apparently it was hard to tell that the cacti were dangerous without the toucan explicitly saying it is, so in the future all of the dangerous objects need some way to 'stand 'out without being pointed out directly).
One of the most common suggestions as asked by a few people was to increase the bird's vertical jump height, even if it's just for the double jump. The game was designed with this in mind from the beginning, since Pippy has a very large horizontal jump and can reach quite far, but can't go very high. It matches the aesthetic of the fact that he's a bird, but it does go against various typical platformer game conventions and I can see why it was a bother for some people. However, remedying this is not as simple as increasing the value of the jump height in the player script, as the entire game's levels were built around Pippy's limited moveset and abilities, so even the simple act of making him jump higher could have disastrous consequences of players possibly reaching out of bounds areas they're not supposed to reach, or they could maybe skip sections of the game they were supposed to. In the end I slightly altered the code to match this feedback, where before the double jump was 1.75 times weaker than the regular jump, now it's 1.50. I feel that it's not worth the extensive testing it would require to remedy this small gameplay mechanic even further, so in my opinion it should stay as it is with only a small change, and it also gives this game an edge over other platformers out there like Mario and Sonic, in the fact it's all about stealth, strategy and planning your next move.
Lastly as a final note, this survey was incredibly helpful to conduct, and I've gotten a much greater understanding of what way to take the game next (with other honourable mentions being levels designed around speedrun tactics and Xbox 360 controller support), and also what can be improved if I ever made this into a full and finished game released to the public. But in it's current state Pippy The Bird is still a very well-received product that seems to have a great casual, and hardcore appeal (judging by the variety of hours my test subjects play games for).
Evaluation:
My game 'Pippy The Bird!' follows a lot of core professional games design techniques throughout, which both enhance the experience and make the game generally more enjoyable raising it to a very high standard. For example; the game has various gameplay mechanics inside of it that the user will need to learn, however these are slowly drip-fed to the player as they get introduced one at a time piece-by-piece, starting with the basics of movement and jumping at the very start of the game, to enemy Dinosaurs, falling platforms and floating spikeballs in tricky positions by the end of level 3. This was done to not overwhelm and confuse the player with such a huge amount of different gameplay fundamentals at once, but it also helps keep the gameplay fresh and interesting throughout the entire thing, as the gamer is always aware that something new is just around the corner to shake up everything they thought they once knew about the game, and it adds another layer of complexity and challenge to the level design to match the player's own skill level. The levels were also designed with this in mind, as the player must have been able to clear every obstacle thus far to get to any point in the game, and with that in mind I as designer were free to gradually increase the difficulty of the game while still being confident the player could keep up.
The game also demonstrates excellence at teaching the player these mechanics one at a time. And not just by the in-game tutorial messages (which do work well, often enhancing the learning process through entertainment, by teaching the player every gameplay mechanic through witty and comedic dialogue with the animal NPCs (non-playable characters). But it's a lot of text to take in throughout the whole game, and some people may just want to be left to their own devises when playing to figure things out and explore for themselves). Almost every gameplay mechanic in Pippy The Bird is introduced in a 'safe space', where there's no immediate danger to the player and the user is allowed to freely toy around with the controls/ mechanics until they have a basic understanding of how it works. After that the difficulty can be ramped up slightly with confidence that the player knows how that mechanic works, which can then often pose a threat that increasingly gets tougher as the game goes forward (here's an example of this method of teaching that my game uses in action, which is shown below).
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| The first time the player encounters a falling platform near the end of level 2, which tumbles downwards if you stand on it for 0.5 seconds. |
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| As you can see, the player experimented with this new discovery and it fell downwards. But it landed safely on the sturdy platform below it, a game object that the player has already encountered before. So the player has just witnessed this first-hand. |
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| Now further on just after the first one, is another falling platform, this time over a bottomless pit. And because this is late into the game it's something that the player is highly likely to know that falling off the edge kills them. So they can see it'll fall downwards into the hole and plan how they will get over this platform accordingly. |
If I were to create the game again I'd create the levels with a more mobile main character in mind with a higher jump (as suggested by the questionnaire answers) to add a more universal appeal and generally make the game appealing to look at and play. I also would make the levels larger and more explorable, with even more secrets and goodies to be found. Plus, the game does have a pretty large difficulty spike between the end of the second level and to the start of the third, which is something that can be remedied in a larger game as the levels can get tougher at a more gradual pace. But the game does have a lot of variety in both the mechanics I programmed into the game, to the things that Pippy will encounter on his adventure. But with the current and complex code in the game currently (using the latest version of Unity 5.3, with the latest APIs being incorporated like 'Scene Manager' showing professional practises), there are absolutely no Syntax or Logic errors in the Unity console. This also shows a good level of professional working practises, and this is evidence my code has undergone lots of debugging with rigorous testing to iron-out every issue.
To expand on this, I also added various wild and plant-life like Toucans and Frogs, and plants and trees, using royalty-free sprites sourced from OpenGameArt.org to populate this expansive world and make it feel more natural. Or else if the entire thing would be composed entirely of platforms, it would feel... uninteresting and generic. The extensive programming I did in the game like the Dinosaurs, falling platforms and spiked objects just couldn't carry the whole project (as engaging as they may be), there needs to be pretty eye-candy as decoration for the player to gaze at too.
But if this were to have a full-on retail release then I would also definitely create all of the assets myself, without having to use royalty-free ones. This would have the advantage of having the game being able to fit into one cohesive artstyle, whereas now the characters feature pixel-art designs but the locations are more cartoony. If everything were made by me as well then dangerous objects could be more defined, as it stands some dangerous things like the cacti in the game blend in with the environment too well, so having every dangerous object have a similar style or look would go a long way into improving the player's quality of life whilst playing. I also created my game from a completely blank Unity project without using any starting assets or downloading from he Asset Store, something that would be done if this were created into a full-game too. I did this is for multiple reasons: firstly it helps optimise the game by reducing the filesize and cutting out unnecessary padding to my game in files that may never be used, but it also demonstrates clearly that everything programmed and added into the game is my own work (aside from the royalty-free sounds and sprites used) and all the scripts, prefabs, materials, etc were created by me and tweaked/ coding by hand.
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