The Making Of: Crystal Caverns

THE COURSE

I created this game 100% on my own after finishing a similar game along with a course.  This is actually the first game I've built completely without instruction.  I went to the Unity Asset Store and downloaded a free sprite pack and made a 2D platformer out of it.  I ran into some issues with the sprites not lining up exactly and creating weird collisions.  This didn't happen during the course because those sprites were handcrafted just for the tutorial, so I didn't know how to handle it when it happened in my game.

THE EXPERIENCE

I found it freeing to write my code the way I wanted to instead of following along with a tutorial.  I had to look back through my notes from the course sometimes but overall the structure of the code just kind of came to me as I wrote it.  I will make my codebase available for review and update this devlog.  

Some of the new things I learned during this project:

• Using the singleton pattern to keep persistent data across scenes
• Working with tilemaps
• Level building with rule tiles
• Managing multiple layers
• Composite colliders
• Creating physics materials
• Creating 2D animations from spritesheets
• Setting up animations using the editor's state machine
• Using Cinemachine (especially the state camera)
• Applying camera shake
• Restricting camera movement around the edges
• Instantiating and destroying projectiles
• Player & enemy health scripts

This ended up being one of my buggiest games yet.  Perhaps I will figure out how to fix some of the bugs and rebuild.  It's more likely that I'll make another 2D game in a jam or something and replace this piece of work.  I learned a lot of fundamentals from this project and it will serve as a point of comparison for the next 2D game I write myself.  I'll be sure to post that one on my portfolio as well when the time comes!