Zerky Island

Zerky Island
(Mobile Platformer Game)

WHAT I'M POSTING IS ONLY A MOCKUP LEVEL!
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This is the project I'm working on.
Keep in mind this is not supposed to represent the actual gameplay! Currently I'm finishing up a mockup level. This is not an actual level, just working out my workflow and aesthetics, the base to build the real levels. I will rearrange the level to suit a better gameplay in the future.

Click here to download Android APK

Webplayer

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I absolutely LOVE the way it looks!!! Gorgeous graphics and super smooth and dynamic animations Reminds me of Rayman Origins/Legends in terms of quality

I'll sure keep an eye on this one, by far the most eye catching project I've seen so far in this wip section. Keep up the fantastic work!

 

Hey, thank you! I've been working very hard, it has been exhausting, but I've gotta keep working. Thanks for the support!!

 

Visually it looks fantastic! The animations also blend perfectly with the design. I can see allot of potential in this, keep up the great work.

 

This is very cool! Very pretty.

 

Very awesome style and work so far Dogzerx2. really like how it looks. Also I love how the character runs. Very nice animation.

 

For a mockup level, it looks really good. Too good even. It reminds me of Rayman Legends/Origins. I would love to see this released.

 

Thanks Euphoric! I've been working on this for about 3-4 months now. I will have to leave the project for a month soon, but then I estimate it should be another 3-4 months to finish.

THANK YOU! As you can see I've put all my efforts on graphics and animation so far!

Thank you! Actually I've been planning to make a game with such cartoony animation for ages. In fact I have an old 'failed' project attempting this.

You totally nailed it man... I mean, Rayman Legends is a work of art... and I literally based most of my art in that game. As the game progressed I've started to detach the style from Rayman (ie, not doing all my art while watching Rayman Legends), but in essence it's inspired in that game.

I hope to see it released as well, hopefully should be a fun little game to have in your cellphone! For those of us who like platformers at least!

 

OMG! Everything looks fantastic. I can't imagine how do you do it. You should create a story for your game.
I would love to see this released.

 

Looks awesome dude, looking forward to seeing more

 

Looks good, has potential

 

Looks awesome! What assets have you used for animation, terrain, and character physics? Or is it all custom-made?

 

This looks really great, I like the art.

 

THANK YOU!

It's custom made! But I looked closely other games such as Rayman Legends as reference. Not to the point of plagiarism of course! But as inspiration.

Much like Rayman you rescue cute yellow characters. In the final game I'll have a whole lot of variations of the yellow characters. I might try to make each one unique, using random features that never repeat. Unlike in Rayman, the yellow characters must follow you to the end of the level. Right now I'm working on the first enemy, which is a rat that will try to take away the yellow characters, or "zerkies", hehe.

 

Gorgeous 2D
How did you made the water surface effect ?

 

Graphics are awesome! What tools did you use to create the graphics? Is the scene set up with a bunch of parallax layers? How did you do the water? It seems as if the camera almost changes angle to see the top of the water more at certain points.

Keep up the good work!

David

 

Should put this on Vita.

 

The art is absolutly amazing. I wish I could make art 10% as good.

The main character doesn't seem to fit that well IMO but the levels are wowowowoww

 

The face expression of hero would be more appropriated for fight, when running he should have a better nice face. Another point is when running the whole body is dynamic and the head is static, is face is frozen, some sprite animation with face rotating on Y or some animations would make it lot more attractive.

 

Thank you!! Great comments! Everything is of course a lot of work, I've spent a looot of time working on this little platformer mockup, and it's still going to take me several months before it's a real game, but it's getting there!

@secondbreakfast The water and everything is actually 3D stuff. I animated it all as if was 3D, but if you look it from the side it's *almost* flat.

 

Wow, so the ground she's running on is actually a top view image angled so the camera can see it? I guess it's really a 2.5D game with a perspective camera when I thought it was straight 2d with some extra tricks I wasn't aware of. I can see how time consuming that can be making everything into 3d models. The results are impressive though. It gives it that extra amount of realism. Nice work!

 

Thank you!!
I got the idea from Rayman Legends, where they use 2D planes in a 3D space, to get the parallax effect. And I think they mix a bit of 3D as well.

Here's a video of how Rayman Legends was made, if you go to minute 10:00 you can see how he moves the camera and you get to see how they place the several layers.

 

your game is looking great i just watched this video and had my mind blown. that engine and the art work is incredible!

 

This is looking pretty awesome! Did you build the level geometry in an external tool or did you develop an editor extension for level creation? If so I'd love to know some of the techniques that went into the various pieces.

I'll wager you could package some components up for the asset store and make a few bucks to help development.

 

Hehe... it would be awesome to have a fast level making tool, but that's big teams stuff. I just don't have the manpower so I just do it manually and bring it in as .fbx files.

 

Do you use some alpha with colors on the hero, it is like it is some bloom around the character ?
The game frame rate is slow on a simple Adnroid phone, while other 3D action games are faster. will it be some graphics option to choose best config ?

 

How are you doing the animation and the rim light effect? In Rayman Legends, they basically have two layers for everything - the base layer and the rim light layer.

 

Thanks for the link to that video. That's quite an impressive engine they've made.

 

@zenGarden:
The bloom is a simple alpha plane. I actually use a legacy particle generator, because it uses only one drawcall.

Yes. The game is extremely slow right now. Drawcalls are actually between 20 and 30... But there are just too many animated things on screen. The problem right now is the moving grass, I'm sure I can find a way to have some moving grass without killing the game performance. I'll try using prefabs instead, lower grass triangle count, and do chunks of grass (instead of individual grass). Without the grass and plants, game runs 60+ fps on my phone.

I'm very grateful towards you for actually installing the apk btw! :-D

@ZimM: If I add rim light effect, its going to be a simple blend transition that uses two textures. (I haven't implemented that yet).

I actually made a shader that blends two textures based on distance toward a point... spent a lot of time learning shaders to accomplish this, but... it destroys phone performance completely. So I'll just do a simple texture blend when character gets inside caves and such.

@secondbreakfast: I agree, it's very interesting to see how they work!

@David Berger: I really appreciate that sir! It will definitely hit the stores eventually, progress is nice and steady! Home screen and first real level is already my next milestone.

 

Maybe you could get a performance boost if you deactivate decorative objects when they are not on screen.

 

Yes! I mean it's bad enough that I load the whole level on startup. I think Unity already optimizes off-screen rendering. But the wind-flow scripts are still running. Also I might reduce level size, and add more puzzle solving elements to slow down the player.

 

Amazing art!
Are the tilted move controls on screen comfortable to use? I mean, it seems that to change from going up to going down, you not only have to move the touch up/down but also a bit right/left. Or are the hitboxes larger than the visual controls?

 

Thank you!
The hit boxes are actually pretty big, you can miss by a lot and the dPad position gets adjusted dynamically, so you don't even have to look at the dpad while playing. The tilted controls are meant to accommodate thumbs rotation, which I've concluded are not perfectly horizontal to the screen, as thumbs pivot on the lower corners, like this:


The dpad sensitivity is also just a bit biased so it's easier to hit left and right, as you move more horizontally than vertically (up and down input wont be used as much in this game).
This is a sketch of how dpad touch areas would look if they were visible. As you can see left and right cover a bit more area, as they will be used more.

 

Oh, one more question that came in mind: how have you did the character clothes that react to physics, and mushrooms that react to character pushing them and jumping on them?

 

This looks so awesome, man! I don't know how I missed this project.
Keen to see more!
Buen trabajo!!

 

Just wow... Gorgeous, brilliant, stunning.

 

I said all along Dogzer it looks awesome .

 

@ZimM: Good question. The clothe and hair just offsets the local position reacting to the character acceleration. If it accelerates to the right, the hair moves to the left, and in turn I add a rotation that reacts to the offset velocity.

Mushrooms uses Unity's "Configurable Joint" component, they seem to work great on mobile.

@marcos: Muchas gracias amigo! :-D
So far there's not too much "game" to show, other than visuals and basic game mechanics. I'll show it more when there's actual gameplay!

@GeneBox: Thank you! :-D

@ShadowK: Haha I know, you're the first person I showed this game to!

 

I hate this Guy... Too talented....I return to my tutorials.

 

This is brilliant, love the artwork. Will be following. Hope develoment goes as smooth as can be!