After finishing the zombie runner section of the course I decided to take a break and solidify the skills I’d been learning by building a simple side scroller. I had also been watching videos on procedural generation and decided to combine the two. Then out of that came my little game the Myth of Stickyphus.
You play as a little stick figure character and patrol across an infinite procedurally generated block terrain shooting enemy stick figure soldiers including snipers, mortars, an Armoured Boss and more.
There are multiple weapons to pick up as well as armour, explosives and other items, all which have been procedurally generated along with the terrain. As you traverse further along the game gets more difficult with an increase in the number and strength of the enemy.
Overall this was a fun little project and really helped grow my confidence in game programming by taking all the information Ben had taught me on the course and applying it to my own unique project.
If anyone is interested in procedural generation i urge you to have a look at some of the youtube videos on the subject (I can’t find the specific one I used sorry and I don’t think it’s covered in these courses). It’s super interesting stuff and really fun to use. I used Perlin Noise to generate the different terrain heights. Something like this:
foreach (Transform child in transform) {
int yPos = (int) (heightScale * Mathf.PerlinNoise(child.transform.position.x * scale, child.transform.position.z * scale));
child.transform.position = new Vector3 (child.transform.position.x, yPos, child.transform.position.z);
if (child.transform.position.y < 0)
Destroy (child);
}
So please check out my game and let me know what you think. Any tips or bug reports would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks heaps,
Jordan
P.S. This is a great course full of very in depth and sound information. Absolutely loving it. Video Game design is such a broad and interesting field. Looking forward to moving on to the Twin Sticks section! Thanks Ben!
Could you use a WebGL build instead? WepPlayer cannot be played on chrome, at least I think it is what you published there. Not possible to see for me atleast.
Yeah i uploaded the web player version to the courses’ gamebucket.io site. I’m currently trying to upload it onto sites like wooglie and kongregate but having some tech issues. In the meantime the link still works on safari or firefox
As I’ve already said, the game is great, mostly due to the addition of procedural generation and a nice, catchy music track. However, there are some problems I have with the game. First, the power ups on the far right side of the screen are non-useable due to you exiting the level and therefore not reaching them. Also, there’s no walking animation and no control list. But I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To recap,
Pros:
Nice Procedural Generation
Music is quite nice.
Cons:
No Walking Animation
No list on controls
Powerups on the right side of the screen are un-usable
Overall, I’ll give it a 7/10. It could easily be an 8 or even an 9 if you add a control listing on Newgrounds or even a built in tutorial section and a nice 3 frame walking animation.
Great review. Thanks! I like the idea for a tutorial screen. Maybe with just a few images with controls beneath. There is actually a controls section in the menu, although it might not be so accessible.
As for the animation, I did try but I’m absolutely hopeless at it haha and it turned out terrible. Might give it another go now that the rest of the game’s done.
I noticed that the enemies are firing really fast sometimes, that killed me in seconds ^^
Great idea for shooting in main menu on ui elements!
Good art and a nice soundtrack
Maybe improve a bit on controlling the player and adjust the difficulties a bit xD
The shooting is very nice. I like that the characters can see whenever the player gets close. The map moves when you reach a certain area which is neat, but maybe make it move whenever the player beats all of the people in that region?
Other than that, its nice, but needs more animation and color.
I have to admit that was a hell of a lot of fun! The controls were a little weird with the jumping at the higher inclinations and I had to learn how to jump off the sticky way to move higher since I can’t just simply climb the wall. Eitherway, was still a very fun game
