Experimental 2.5D Action Platformer

Prize: Alumni Select ~ this project was specially selected by class Alumni as a standout project

Source code for my final project in CIS 441 (Computer Graphics) @ University of Oregon

This experimental platformer, as I will be refering to it, was the core concept I had for my final project. My goal was to build a simple platformer with tight movement mechanics and simple but fun combat.

The final feature set in the vertical slice I built is as follows:

• Full 2D character movement in a "3D" environment
  • The player can double jump, dash up to two times in the air
  • The player can also perform a multihit combo on enemies (fairly extensible system, but I currently have only implented a three hit combo)
• Enemy State Machine (I would specifically call it behavior driven AI)
  • Each enemy slime in the main level is controlled by a state manager that calls the initial state and then on each frame updates the current state behavior
  • Each behvaior will determine which behavior it transitions to and under what conditions
• To emulate a "full" gamplay loop there is a win condition and a loose condition
  • Win condition: To win, simply reach the end of the "The Forest" level where you will see a summary of the collectables you obtained as well as how many enemies you have slain
  • Loose Condition: there are two scenarios, the player runs out of health or the player falls in the pit early on in the level. In either case the player will see the same summary of colletables and achievements. The player is then prompted to either quit to the main menu, or try again with all progress maintained but they start at the beginning of the level.
• Certain measures were taken to optimize the WebGL build of the game. Currently the game still does not run well on MacOS systems, but in general performance should be servicable
  • Utilized unity's built in system for Occlusion Culling of objects outside of the main camera's view frustrum
  • Utilized a free Asset Store package to combine meshes on an object for better optimization.
  • Took time and care to plan out which assets in the scene should remain static vs dynamic
• Collectables system for tracking and maintaining talleys of level collectables
  • I also drew the pixel art for the collectables in the scene although they are not entirely suitable to the artstyle I was aiming for
• And many more details I will delve into bellow...

Where I spent most of my time on this project

Most of my development time went into learning how best to combine 2D and 3D elements to make the game look cohesive enough to be playable, as well as the character controller + combat mechanics.

Another large chunk of time was level design, as I was not able to build any level design tools to speed up the process I ended up placing assets by hand in the scene (which is very tedious).

I spent an unecessary amount of time prototyping different shaders for Universal Rendering Pipeline Sprites. I was trying to allow 2D sprites to cast shadows from 3D lights in the scene but due to some newer changes to Unity's Shader graph I was unable to implement this and scrapped what I had.

What is NOT mine

From Unity Assetstore:

• NaughtyAttributes

• Cinemachine

• Mesh Combiner

• LeanTween (UI Tweening library)

• Low Poly Ultimate Pack by user POLYPERFECT

• (Will update this list once Im not in crunch mode and can actually get some sleep)

Assets from Itch.io

• Slime Animations by Reff SQ

• Glacial Mountains by vnitti

• Animated Pixel Adventurer by rvros

• Pixel Art Froest by edermunizz

What I did not have time for

There are some things I would have liked to get done but simply did not have time to do for various reasons. These include:

• SFX / Music

• Accessibility Settings in the options menu

• Multiple Levels with fleshed out platforming elements (i.e. moving platforms, spikes, etc)

For the Professor

Here is a list of things you should probably look at when considering my grade for this project...

• Navigating to "Assets/Scripts/" you will find that about 99% of the code there is written by me. It's not organized in the most convienient way, but all of the obvious to look for items should be easily accessible. One thing that I meant to change was the AI state behaviors are located in "Assets/Scripts/ScriptableObjects/AI/Behaviors" these are no longer Scriptable Objects and were supposed to be moved to a more convienient folder location

• The game is actually playable anywhere in a browser that supports and runs WebGL applications. The go to browser I recommend for testing purposes is Chrome obviously, and you will find a link on the right hand side of this repository or right here