JUX (2.5d side scroller)

Community Showcase Game Development
1

LATEST UPDATE:

https://i.imgur.com/YzaXRpY.gif(image larger than 29.3 MB)

https://i.imgur.com/17NpR5g.gif(image larger than 29.3 MB)

Hello everyone !

I have been looking at this forum for some time but never posted anything before, I guess this is now done !

Before starting, I will introduce myself and talk about how I came to use unreal .

I am turbo banana (kevin also nicknamed french kev in the real world), I am 30 years old . I have been learning unreal on my free time for about a year now (with a 3-4 month break in the middle) and I love it!
Back in 2008, I was studying automotive engineering . During this period I also started teaching myself poly-modelling and really got into it (we mainly used NURBS modelling at school and the automotive industry in general) . Realising that, I decided that I wanted to shift to making 3D models for video games/movies . I then applied and passed the entrance exam for a video game design school with courses starting later that year .
Unfortunately the economic recession came around a bit before I was due to start studying game design and I was offered a job I liked in the company I was doing an internship in
at the time . Game design school wasn’t cheap and my dad lost it’s job due to the recession so I decided the best thing to do take the job I was offered and maybe get back to video game design later .
Fast forward 10 years, I am still enjoying working as a digital modeller/designer now working in London for a big Japanese car manufacturer design studio and doing a bit
of poly-modelling as a hobby now and then .
After seeing the presentation made for Mclaren using unreal, I started having a look at the unreal engine and felt in love with it .

I really hope this engine will become more and more present in my industry as it is a fantastic software .

This is it about me ! Thank you if you made it through and are still reading this!!

I have been doing a few small bits before but nothing that I took very seriously so I decided to start a proper (still small) project .

I decided to do a 2.5D side scroller . I am not planning anything ground breaking but I want it to feel nice to play .

I am working with blueprints only (I hope to learn some c++ at some point) .
I also started from scratch . I like the templates but sometime I feel I understand better what I am doing when I build everything from scratch .

So far I spent about 6 weekends on it . Half of that was wasted by trying to build a physic based rope swinging system that I ended up scrapping due to some strange
behaviours I wasn’t able to correct (Maybe I wasn’t ready for this yet) .

Here is where I am so far :

I have a rough looking menu .
It’s pretty basic . I can save 3 different games (3 saving slots) and change a few options, resolution, sound level… (and maybe a rebind key system later)

https://i.imgur.com/VTbOZ1J.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bumSZuH.jpg

Once the game starts you land on a map where you can choose what level you want to play (you can’t play level 2 until you complete level 1 and so on)

https://i.imgur.com/5P1HA5l.jpg

So far the character can :
-jump
-double jump
-wall jump . the character will stick to the wall for about half a second before starting falling if no jump input is given .
-throw a magnet . the character has a magnet attach to a rope that can be used as a weapon or a swing .
-rope swing . Most of my time as been spent on this . As mentioned earlier I tried to implement a physics based system that I got working nicely about 99% of the time but once in a while it would behave in a strange way which made the game very frustrating to play . I decided to scrap it and made a non physics-based one, after quite a lot of tweaking I got to a point I am almost happy with .
I also tried to type of hooking system for the swing rope :
1-the character had the ability to throw his magnet and stick it onto everything the magnet touch (wall, platform…), on paper it did sound good but in practice it wasn’t very nice to use . I use the left joystick on the gamepad to move the character and also to select the direction you throw the magnet into and it didn’t feel nice .
2-you can only hook the swing rope to specific hook point . This is a bit more limiting but I found it a lot more fun to play . I decided to choose this one .

I don’t think I will had more functionality to the character (at least for now) .

Here is a quick video showing the game as it is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgXX…ature=youtu.be

I only have 3 very basic level at the moment . I am aiming for 10 in total but nothing is set in stone .
I am trying to come up with some interesting mechanics to make the level fun to play . My character uses a magnet so I think there are a few cool things that can be done around this theme . Negative and positive poles repelling/attracting each other…
As you can see there hasn’t been any 3d art work done for now .
Creating levels and 3D assets will be my next task .

My other half is a talented artist and she came up with a few character designs . Here is my favourite one that I will turn into my character :

https://i.imgur.com/67sjMPX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/wDzJDlB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4gKp6GR.jpg

She is also very good when it comes to color balance/mood than I will ever be so she will be helping me with that (happy days!!!)

I hope you found it interesting ! Feel free to give any feedback good or bad .

Thanks

2

I like this! That rope-swinging mechanic looks very fun. Also, I like the character designs - he looks quite mischievous and that could definitely shape up to how it plays.

3

Thanks! I am trying to capture the feel of sketch in my 3d model but I am not quite there yet . I am also a little bit worried regarding the animation since I have never tried to animate a character with legs that short . I am not to sure what it will look like .
This is what I have so far :

https://i.imgur.com/3cPlWsX.jpg

4

Little update :

I wasn’t completely happy with the character only going from left to right and decided that it would look nicer if the character would walk along a curved path .

https://i.imgur.com/hZdyvCJ.jpg

It took me some time to find a way to get the character to follow a path that allowed me to move the character using the charactermovement and not just move the character using a distance along a spline .

I also polished the swinging mechanism and it now works without any bugs . The wall jump still feels a bit off so this is what I will work on next .

Here is a quick video of the progress :

5

A bit more work done on the main character . I ended up remodelling everything from scratch and changing the design for something easier to skin . I decided to skin the character over a mixamo skeleton . I am not great at animation so making use of the mixamo library will save me a lot of time .

6

I’m looking forward to see more from that project and for sure I’ll follow that thread (as I’m in making of 2.5D platformer too). Keep up the good work and don’t give up :slight_smile:

7

Thanks AM Deluxe!

Sooo… It took me a little while but the main character is nearly all setup . The ledge hanging/wall grabbing system still needs a bit of refinement but it now feels quite fun to play around with the character .

It turned out using a mixamo skeleton was not such a good idea as most animations didn’t work well with my character (I knew a short legged character would create issues !) , I ended up redoing all off them from scratch apart from the idle, walk and run cycle .

Me and my partner then started putting a tutorial level together . We modelled a few assets and started creating the place where the character lives . My partner hand painted the textures (wood and leaf) and set up the materials . It still needs a lot of work but so far it looks OK (I think) .

We are also creating a simple story but I will keep it secret for now as it still needs to mature quite a lot .

Here is a video showing the game as it stands now :

8

awesome! exited to see more.

9

thanks noohkema!

Most of the thing I did lately have been bug fixing and little improvement here and there so nothing visually exiting .

My other half started working on the enemies design . Our main character will be facing robot space pirate . We made a 3d model of one of them . It is still very much a WIP it needs a bit more details, textures and also a cape ! but we are happy with the proportions .

I decided to use mixamo again for the enemies animation . The way we have planned the game, the enemy characters will be there mainly to set up the story and won’t be seen too much during gameplay so hopefully I won’t have as much work on the animation side on those character (maybe…) .

https://i.imgur.com/oreJUGt.gif

10

More design done on the enemy characters .We are pretty happy as they are . We now need to model them .

988×607 501 KB

In the meantime I worked on the second part of the first level . In this level the enemies will be trying to kill you by shooting their cannon while you are trying to escape .
It’s mainly there but still needs a few things done .

11

Awesome!

I love the art style!

Few things I’ve noticed (imho):

  • gamefeel felt a bit… rigid I would say, the jump curve looked a bit too “light” and the air control seemed a bit too high
  • find a rewarding / good feeling jump sound asap!
  • find a reward / good feeling music asap!
  • looking forward seeing more things in the game: traps, moving environment, background / foreground element, pickups and of course your enemies!

Keep up the good work :slight_smile:

12

Thanks for your feedback ! :slight_smile:

It’s good to have your thought about the jump and air control, I have changed the settings back and forth so many times that I am at the point where I am not too sure what is best anymore . I am not too sure how to make the gamefeel feel less rigid but I will have a try .

You are totally right regarding anything related to sound .

For the music, I have used the tune ‘Under the sea’ from the movie ‘The little mermaid’ for the first part of the level and another track with a feel of emergency for the chase part . It did work quite well (I think) but I removed them for the video as I have no right to those musics .

Once I have a few level done I will try to find out if I can afford to get someone more knowledgeable than me to compose some music .

Regarding the sound effect I have no idea what such a creature should sound like when jumping, landing, and so on…What I found online so far hasn’t really worked out so far . The best solution is probably to record some sound myself and see if I can get something interesting or if I need some help from someone that actually have a clue about sound design . :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Think Mario, his jump sound does not make sense. It’s just rewarding.
Think Overwatch, when you deal damage to an enemy you hear an interface sound (2D) which is the sound of a beer can opening! And if you headshot, this sound turns into a jackpot machine sound!

Search for Cartoon jump sound on the internet, I’m sure you will find something (you do not care if it’s copyrighted as you are not planning to steal content or gain money out of stolen content, you just want to have fun while you prototype your game).

14

As suggested above by and by a few other people outside of this forum . The jump was made heavier (by quite a big amount) and the air control tweaked and so far the feedback on those changes have been very positive !

I still haven’t done anything related to sound yet but I had a bit of fun modelling a stone golem and made a chase level .

https://i.imgur.com/h32tccY.gif(image larger than 29.3 MB)

15

This weekend I managed to make the first type of small enemies . They can be killed by jumping on their head or using the character’s weapon .
The main character deaths animation need some tweaking so it does clash too much with the jaw of the enemy .

https://i.imgur.com/YzaXRpY.gif(image larger than 29.3 MB)

https://i.imgur.com/17NpR5g.gif(image larger than 29.3 MB)