[WIP] Tales of Lena - 2D (pixel art) platformer

Those are definitely great games though I didn't have any consoles back in the day, only PC

Anyway, I've mainly been working on a level editor (custom inspector) lately. Most of the basic features are there now so I now I'm working some more on level art and animations

 

And another little update of something I've added this week: slopes!

 

Simply beautiful

 

beautiful indeed!

 

Bro this games so F***in charming I can't stand it.

Are you an experienced dev?

 

Thank you very much guys

Haha, well thanks

I've worked on some game projects in college, did an internship in a small game company and I'm a Multimedia Designer for 3 years now (mostly working on educational stuff). I haven't released any games myself though, so this is my first

 

Small update:

I've been working on some new graphics for the level, though I mostly did some more programming.

I made a new enemy, a bee/wasp that moves left and right and when it sees you (when you're close to it and it's facing your direction) it will start chasing you till you are too far away, then it will fly back to it's original location. I'll show it as soon as I made the graphics for it

I also thought some more about the way the levels are structured. There will be an overview map on which you can access the different worlds (it might be that you can choose yourself which world you play first, though I'm not sure about that yet), each world has 3 levels of which the last one is a boss fight. These levels are individual markers on a map of that specific world. The idea is a bit of a mix of Commander Keen and Mario Land 2:



Lastly, I made a limited color transition effect for when you enter a door:



From now on I'll be doing mostly programming using placeholder graphics, hopefully that will speed up development a bit ^^'

 

Can't believe it's already a month ago I posted an update

I've been working on lots of different parts of my game. Most of it is visible in the GIF animation below (the menu and map graphics are mostly placeholders). I also added gamepad controls and fixed/optimized a lot of internal stuff.



The reason it took me a while to post a new update is because I'm never sure if I should show off things with placeholder graphics... I decided to post this anyway because it'll still take a while before I work on graphics again.

 

So.... what's the story?

 

I'm focusing on gameplay right now, there will be some kind of story, something along the lines of: Bad guy steals special artifact and you have to get it back. You have to play through each world and defeat its boss to get a key. When you have all the keys you can unlock the final world, defeat the bad guy and retrieve the artifact.

 

That title screen. Were you going for a gameboy look? Because thats the vibe i get. Really niccce.
Can i ask how the fade is accomplished with the color saturation?

 

Oh the title screen background is just a placeholder ^^' The only reason I went for a monochrome version of the artwork is because the artwork is old and in the color version Lena's clothes are different colors so I just used the line art. The final title screen background will be full color and (even) better

I made the color effect before Unity 5 so it's just some GetPixel/SetPixel algorithm with a color ramp that specifies which color should be used in every step of the fade. I'll still be optimizing this a bit more now that I have access to RenderTextures. It might also work with shader but I don't know much about those...

 

Another small update:

Added some more collectibles and updated the HUD to better show which collectibles you've already collected.
In each level you will find a specific amount of collectibles, for example a normal level will have these:
- 3 rubies
- 3 sapphires
- 3 emeralds
- 4 letters spelling LENA (won't be all in the same place like the animation shows )
- 1 vinyl record of the level's music
- 1 special treasure
In comparison, a boss level might only have 1 of each gem and 1 special treasure.
None of these collectibles are required to finish the level (though something might happen when you collect everything ).



I'll be working more on graphics soon so next time you don't have to see the same unfinished treetops and background again

 

So I decided to change everything and make Tales of Lena a top-down RPG:



Just kidding of course I'm working on graphics for the worldmap

 

So I wasn't able to work much on graphics for my game this past week... Mainly because of the horrible weather (waaaay too warm)!

I did do some coding Got the basics down for a save/load system

Hope to show you guys something new soon

 

This is looking really good !

 

This game looks so charming! I am in love with the graphics and art style. It does bring me back to yesteryear as many others have mentioned as well. Particularly the main menu really got me in the feels. I know that it is placeholder but that really brought me back to my childhood, can't wait to see the full updated one. Very nice!

You mentioned that the resolution is 320 x 180, how will that look on a modern monitor? While I understand that creating pixel perfect pixel art on a 1080p screen is unheard of (that's a lot of pixels...), are there any plans for allowing the game to be full screen and not be super pixilated. Or will it be just windowed with those exact dimensions? I know some games have a border around the edges of the screen to minimize the pixilation. I know that the Gamecube GameBoy Player gave the option of having a border around the edge of the screen that you could change.

 

Thank you very much Always nice to be reminded my game looks fine after all!

Hey thank you so very much for the nice comment Sometimes I feel like the game could look so much better if only I was better at doing pixel art... But that's just me being ridiculously critical ^^'

At the moment the 320x180 just scales up to full screen but I'll definitely be adding options to choose the amount of upscaling (2x, 3x, 4x,...). A border could be an option too What I know for sure it that the resolution/aspect ratio of 320x180 is fixed, there will be no options for higher native resolutions that would allow you to see more of the level.

 

Time for another micro update: Micro(wave) Lena



Now I'll be making the walk cycle for each direction

 

Super cute spritework! Keep up the good work

 

Thank you very much Now if only it wouldn't take ages to make... ^^'

 

Haha, I know that feeling Bon courage!

 

Merci beaucoup!

So today I felt like doing something different than the usual programming or art so I tried making some music I wanted to make a tune for the forest level but it ended up kind of too "dark" ^^' I don't know if it'll end up in the game but I thought I'd share it anyway Note: I'm not a composer so don't expect too much haha

http://siegfriedcroes.com/music/Storm is Coming.mp3

 

The song sounds good though I would have to agree I don't think it fits the area. This would be cool if you had a night version of the level where things were a bit more subdued. But at the same time it sounds "epic", it could be played in an area before a huge part in the game, helping build up to the climax.

To obtain what I think you are looking for in a forest area song try using more major chords and a bit more upbeat and a slightly faster beat. That could help give a sense of wonder to the forest while still giving that "Go get 'em!" attitude, which I am assuming you are look for.

Try checking out Kirby Dreamland 3 for what I am talking about:

Ripple Field 3

Grass Land 1

I know I have taken some inspiration from Kirby in terms of music for the game I am working on. But I am assuming that this is a bit too cheery for your game.

 

I totally agree with what you say I'm still not sure if I'd go for cheerful upbeat music or more ambient/mysterious music.

Something like the first song would work, second song would be too cheerful. I'll sure try out some more things, Thanks for the help

I'm on vacation now so I might not be working much on my game though I made some more progress with the forest level graphics, still need to make the backgrounds better. Hope to show simething more soon!

 

Quite a while since my last update again... I've been working on a different project the past few weeks, nothing big really, just something small in HTML5. Nothing Untiy related so won't talk to much about it here though if you want to check it out: Single Image Platformer

I'll be getting back to this game soon and make a new video showing off the level editor script I've been working on

 

Finally I was able to make the video I was talking about:

 

That's pretty awesome! It seem really easy to make levels with that. And it looks fairly simple to follow. Well done!

Are you thinking about using the new 2D tiling tool when it is released? I know that your current solution does some of the same things that it takes care off, but it seems like your workflow (when it comes to the terrain at least) would really benefit from the automation it does.

 

Thanks you very much I'm quite happy with it myself. I could've used a tilemap editor from the Asset Store but I felt like making a custom one specifically for my game would be better.

I assume you mean the "2D: Tilemap" that might come with Unity 5.4? Still a while till that's released but I might just hold off building levels till then, there's a lot of other things to work on and I don't have that much time to work on this game so I imagine Unity 5.4 will be here sooner than I think.

 

Looking at the roadmap (http://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap) It looks like it is slated for a March release. I would say if your solution works and you can finish the project earlier it might be worth it to just push forward without thinking about that. But it is your call.

 

Not expecting to finish the game by then really. Tales of Lena is only a hobby project for now, I don't have that much time to work on it... For now I mainly work on the programming side (gameplay mechanics, object/enemy behaviour, game/menu structure,...)

 

I'm taking a little break from this game again to work on another little project that I should be able to finish before the end of this year. If only I could work on this game full time...

 

Just checking in to see how your project is coming along? I notice you stop occasionally to do other projects. Are you losing interest in this game or just need a brain break occasionally?

This game looks excellent so far and it'd be cool to play it some day!

 

Ditto.

 

Amazing !

 

I've been taking a break from this game to play around with some other things It's not Unity related but I guess it's not forbidden to post it here anyways:

I might work some more on Tales of Lena now that I got stuck with this little project (there's a fault in the device's bootloader that causes a glitch when exceeding a specific RAM usage).

Thanks for the comments GarBenjamin, Not_Sure and mcunha98! I'm happy to hear people are still looking forward to Tales of Lena

 

Of course we are, so get the thumb out and start coding : p

 

Guess what, I did! And I'll sure be working on it more this weekend

 

Yay : D

 

I made a few small improvements today. Mostly internal stuff that isn't really visible ^^' I did realize I never showed off the wasp enemy behavior I made a while ago so here's a little animation to show that off (the graphics are placeholders obviously)

 

Finally made mini Lena walk in all directions, I'm sure I'll still tweak it here and there but this is close to final

 

mini Lena is really cute : D

 

Thanks

This week I reworked the wall breaking as seen in an older video and added an invisible trigger you can kick that will activate a spawner to make a collectible appear. I'll be doing some more coding this weekend

 

How did you implement your tilemap system and the editor? Is each tile a sprite or did you write your own renderer? Would love to get more indepth insights into that!

 

Yeah every sprite is a GameObject with SpriteRenderer attached Not the most optimized way but it works fine for a simple game like mine (maybe in the future I'll look into dynamically generating a mesh for the tilemap).

In case you have more specific questions about the editor feel free to ask

 

Made a little animation of the trigger system I made. Triggers are tiles you kick to make things happen like spawn an object, make a platform move,...



Also worked a bit on a frog enemy (with placeholder graphics):

 

I love how this looks and feels. You perfectly managed to capture the feeling of those DOS games. The parallax scrolling reminds me of Duke Nukem 2 or Cosmos Comic Adventure.

You mentioned earlier that the internal resolution is 320x180. How did you set that up? Are you rendering to a render texture first, or do you use something like the 2D Toolkit camera?

 

Thank you very much I love those 2 games you mentioned, I'm definitely going for that kind of retro feel (instead of the typical NES retro look). I also hope to make some cool Adlib music like you had in those 2 games

My orthogonal camera size is set to 90 (half the resolution height), pixels to units is set to 1 for all sprites and I'm rendering to a Render Texture of 320x180 that I display on screen with a post effect shader to limit the palette to never show any other colors than those in my 16 color palette

 

Cool, thanks for these insights! Regarding Adlib... someone turned the Adlib engine from DOSBox into a handy VSTi and it comes with a bunch of instrument presets from Adlib Tracker. ( https://bsutherland.github.io/JuceOPLVSTi/ )

Regarding the render texture... How do you display the render texture? With a second camera? If so, how do you ensure that you don't accidentally render it with the main camera? Sorry for the noobish questions. I love the DOS look and would like to play with it some, too.

 

Wow that's exactly what I've been looking for!!! All I found was a VST with some sampled Adlib sounds but this is obviously way better Thanks a lot for sharing that link!

Right now I have one camera rendering to a texture so with that nothing actually gets rendered to the screen yet. I have a script on the camera with an OnRenderImage() function that blits the rendered texture to the screen using the shader I talked about to limit the colors. I might change to something with a second camera though as I don't have much controls over the image that gets drawn on screen, when the resolution is not multitude of the base resolution (320x180) it looks bad cause the Blit function will always render the texture full screen while I'd want to do something like search for the largest multitude of the base resolution that fits the screen and draw it that way, then you just have some black around it which isn't too bad. I could also add the option to make the screen smaller in full screen with some graphical border around it for those that don't like super big pixels on their screen Still have to look into all of this.