Arclight Development Progress: Davis
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.
Davis here to give an update on the development progress of the game ‘Arclight: Tales of Auria’.
I think I speak for all three of us developers when I say that the development of Arclight has been fun and educational. For me personally, I have always wanted to work with a 2D-Sprite game; and taking on the role of level design really gives me a chance to reach for new heights!
At first, our scenes in Unity were being created in the standard 2D format of creating/placing tiles on various layers. This approach seems effective for some games/perspectives, but it was not working quite as desired for our game. The collision system was limited, and the rendering of certain objects was breaking. Furthermore, it was going to be difficult to implement some movement mechanics, such as jumping and dashing.
In an endeavor to make our scene look more refined and function more efficiently, we opted to create the scene in 3D space whilst using an orthographic camera. By rotating all sprites to reside within the sccene by 45 degrees, we can make the scene look 2D while maintaining the functionality of a 3D scene. This would aid in collision detection, rendering, and character control.
While the functionality of creating a level in this manner increases, it does create some problems. For one thing, it takes much longer to create a scene that looks normal. All objects must be placed precisely to ensure that there are no faults in appearance, and colliders must be positioned relative to the real world space rather than where the sprites are positioned. Making a ground plane that looks cohesive, and uses its own custom material is also a major hassle.
Aside from level design, I have begun production of our local AI. Currently, I have implemented a simple AI for small Leaf Elementals which will run away from the player.
Next, on my list of AI implementations are the fellow students of the college. These will be recolored sprites of the player, and they will roam around the college grounds. In the future, we would like to have different NPC’s doing different things within the college; maybe reading a book or practicing a spell. I would also like to alter the Leaf Elementals so that they tend to congregate together. Further production for hostile AI that attacks the player will come in due time.
This has been a peek into my side of progress for the game’s development. In general, production is coming along at a bit slower a pace than we anticipated. But we are very pleased with the results of our work!
