Plan

In this current state of game making, the main issue I’ve been having is with Godot itself since I don’t know much about it and am tackling a style of game that isn’t typical for these kinds of engines, or any engine that I can really think of. The main issue I’ve been having is making maps. Not only do simple levels take too long for me to make, the end product isn’t even that great and is completely uneven/not uniform. Another issue is that I feel the basic level style isn’t really my style. It could work for a focused puzzle game, but that isn’t really my end goal or is that fun to work on or play with how small the screen size is compared to the assets. I want this game to have several connected screens to walk through, each with their own top-down and side-view perspectives. Hopefully there will be some sort of path that needs to be followed in order to get to the end in the demo testing this.

Make & Reflect

For this prototype, I began with focusing on the inconsistent size and level-making issue. To combat this, I made a simple tileset (which was VERY inspired by Link's Awakening), which allowed me to both have a set unit for each tile, but to also allow me to make levels with these tiles rather than sizing and moving each individual default cube. The only issue I have with this is that there is no such thing as a 3D tileset, so I can’t make these levels as effectively as I’d hoped. Because of this, I stuck with just the top-down view for the prototype, mostly testing how the tileset and character sprites look as well as tackling my second issue of figuring out how to make connected, yet separated screens to work. The way I did this was with the same method of “camera zones” as the switching perspective mechanic, but changing it from front and top to four separate, yet connected zones. This turned out quite well, I’d say and people seemed to like the way the camera moves. The one issue I had, though, was that if the player stopped in the transition zone for a bit or would turn around and walk away right after touching it, the camera would move ahead, leaving the player behind. There was one common issue that people had for the game which was the fact I disabled the perspective switch mechanic. Moving forward, the next thing I gotta do is figure out how to use Godot better and get the two camera systems to work or I can pivot away from Godot and try out Unity again or maybe GameBoy Studio.