Week 1
We began the week by learning about the phaser game engine which is used to create 2d html games in javascript, it’s quite powerful however the setup process is a bit convoluted involving creating a config made of multiple layered objects inside the html index
We created a project in phaser, a little game where the player has to platform to collect stars and avoid bombs bouncing around the screen and platforms. This highlighted how to use sprites and collision groups which work differently to how im used to (unity which all colliders interact with each other unless specified) where you have to specify what other collider groups it can interact with
Week 11/01/21
The object layer in Phaser is much more powerful than I had thought although it works very differently to the tile layers where you only create data points for the code to reference as opposed to adding assets and laying out the level.
Over the christmas break we were tasked with creating a basic 2D platformer in phaser using what we learned, I used this opportunity to improve on my sprite creation skills by making all of the assets I used myself
This is the player sprite sheet I made, the first image is the character in a T pose, this was to have a reference for the dimensions of the sprites, the second through to fourth is the idle animation for the player, the fifth and sixth animation is running, I used a different shade to colour the limbs that would be (in a higher frame count animation) moving behind the player, this creates a (mild) illusion of movement to the user and is more dynamic than a singular frame, the seventh to ninth animation frames are a jump animation, I had run into a problem with it actually where there is only one situation where the jump code runs due to the movement animations taking priority over it, the only time it runs is when the player dies and tries to jump (now fixed), the tenth animation frame is the wallslide frame, the offset on this makes it always stick to the wall left walls work thanks to the flipX method, and the eleventh to fourteenth frames are the death animation which start with the t pose and have the characters limbs collapse followed by its torso and head, I decided to style the death animation this way as I felt it made sense due to the characters lack of connection between limbs and torso.
For this weeks task we had to create a tank game following a pre recorded lecture. In this we used static functions in a class called Utils, I’ve had minimal experience with static functions before but hadn’t found them that useful but after this I get how they can be much easier to use over having to create a new instance of the class whenever you need to access the functions.
Reflect
This project allowed me to try out new things and learn programs that I’ve never used before (Tiled, Aseprite) along with creating assets that I’ve never made before such as a spritesheet and tileset
Week 18/01/21 (WIP)
Metrics in games
Maze game randomization
Pointer Movement vs WASD
Maze Project eller algorithm
