Oops! Stupid Pixels

Consider this post a tutorial if you will. A tutorial on how to not screw up.

So a lot of game development goes into proper planning. But where would we be in this world if we always planned everything to the last tiny detail before jumping into the unknown? For example, the Wright Brothers were originally trying to build a better toilet and not the famous invention they ended up with (no, not the popcorn popper, that's Charles Cretors, silly). And by some bizarre miscalculation due to poor planning, they accidentally built a flying machine which brought a joy to everyone that the world figured only belonged to the birds. Of course that is all horse shit (except for the popcorn guy). The Wright Brothers planned thoroughly before they got in that flying deathtrap.

"I like how you are comparing your game to the invention of flight. Whatta' douche."

Eat it, Bannon. Eat it hard.

So like any endeavor and especially one such as game development, you must plan ahead. Or like this moron (aka: ME!) you will draw things without any recourse of how things will interact with each other in your game. And how those things will even react once in the game. Confused? I am. 

Let's see how I finally got down proper tile spacing and my trials and tribulations from the beginning of designing ITW.

So... This is how it all started.

  

And then...

And then

   

And then...

  

And then...

 

Wait... not that beginning. How my game got started. Get it together, man.

When I first came up with the game I knew I wanted a girl piloting a mech. I decided on an egg shaped mech. And at first I thought about making the game a shmup (shoot em' up). But I remembered how boring those games are and nixed that idea immediately. But the character design stayed the same. She had to pilot an egg bot.

This was my first concept piece for the game. I decided on a white paint job because it stands out from the background vividly but still be devoid of bright colors. Funny how many different colors I tried for the cockpit glass. I settled on green. Woo hoo! GREEN!

Let's go for a walk.

A

B

So as you can see, there is a big difference between the A (the final version) and B (the original version). When I first started drawing the EDU, I just slapped everything onto it (the jet pack, halogen lights, drill arm, etc) without any sense of how this awkward shaped character would fit into the game levels. Sure this might work for a Metal Slug type game where there are not a lot of platforming elements, but not for a platforming sidescroller.

So with the smaller more condensed final version, I made sure that the EDU would be able to fit much better with the tileset where the tiles are 32X27 pixels in width and height. The original version was the exact height of two tiles. That would make it so cramp and you would have no wiggle room when you tried jumping to a higher walkway. You would have to jump into spaces EXACTLY. Almost like a square peg being put into a square hole. Plus that jetpack was just impractical. So it got shoved up the EDU's butt instead.

A

B

C

I even tried to keep the drill arm on my original design but it still wouldn't be able to jump up a shaft that was only one tile in width (check example C). It was killing me trying to maintain the original design and keep all the features I wanted. But alas. The drill arm had to go, otherwise it would overlap the tiles and that wouldn't be good for business.

Spaced out.

I should have just looked at Super Mario Bros for how to do this whole character to tile spacing thing. Why did I not listen to you Mario.? You are the size of all the tiles. It makes perfect sense. If you bash the bricks above you, you can fit in the hole you just made and continue moving upwards. Ugh.

Absolutely no way that fat ass can fit through there. Unless I made every single vertical shaft two tiles wide. Even then it would be cramp.

See how the character can now jump up a vertical shaft tile in length with no problems. Albeit the EDU is squeezed in there but it's a claustrophobic game. The player needs to feel a little trapped and alone.

So in conclusion, work out the size of your player in accordance to the tiles you are going to make. I sacrificed the drill arm in favor of strictly using mounted weapons. It did change the way I perceived the game, but you make do with what you have and you evolve your gameplay from there.

Check out this snippet of info about the amazing Shadow Complex video game. This is a classic example of poor planning. But catch it early enough like they did and you can still pull through...

Chair Entertainment's creative director Donald Mustard stated that much of Shadow Complex is based around the gameplay of Super Metroid, a game he considers "the pinnacle of 2D game design".[4] Much of their effort was in creating the Metroid-style of gameplay, a first for their company. The first month of development was spent having the team replaying the various Metroid games in order to establish the language and concepts of such games for development in order to expand on enjoyable sections while avoiding the mistakes of these games. Chair's design process started by drawing out the game's world on graph paper, using the concepts of tile-based games to craft out the world, despite the final game not being tile-based. This process set certain rules, such as how high the character may jump with the various upgrades or how far the character must run before a certain power would activate. They then played out the game on this paper map to make sure that all parts of the game were possible to complete. Such a map was also used to help with the game's pacing, making sure that the player's interest in the game would remain despite the acquisition of more and more powerups.[5]

Roughly six months into development, they recognized that their initial selected jump height was too large and did not fit with the game, forcing the team to redesign the map with a smaller jump height; Mustard noted this was one of the few changes they made that "hurt" but was caught early enough in the process to be repaired.[5]The team also had to consider the impact of the variety of power-ups they wanted to include, made more complex by their desire to have the power-ups usable anywhere. For example, while other games would specifically limit the use of a hookshot to specific surfaces, Chair's developers sought to have their tool usable on any surface, and had to consider all the potentially game-breaking routes that would be created by introducing the tool too early.[5] Several iterations of this paper map were performed, though Mustard noted that about 85% of their original design remained in the final map.[6] With a brush stroke tool within the Unreal Engine, they were then able to quickly build out their drawn map into the 3D computer engine, using a cylinder to represent the player. After working on tightening the feel of the player's movement controls with the simplistic map, they then began prototyping the rest of the game.[4]