Modifications & Postmortem

This first release includes several modifications beyond what was provided in the Michigan State University x Coursera tutorial.

Changes

While the majority of the assets were provided; I took the liberty of adding one-hit kill lava on a spike layer, as well as constructing new prefabs using abandoned assets and new animation controllers from the project's older files.

For storytelling, this was a great, short exercise in using the level design to tell a story and reveal abilities to the player. Since it's a basic 2D platformer, I don't expect the player to check out the Key Controls page. As such, they will naturally learn about bouncing either when they retrieve some items in the first level, or when they use the bounce mechanic (combined with reduced gravity) to unlock the goal door for the second level. In the first level, Cinemachine virtual cameras/triggers/confiners allowed me to obfuscate a room where corruption has spread through the space station. It's an optional room, but sets up a bit of suspense... especially since you can see enemies behind locked doors and another that has obviously killed an astronaut there. The cameras serve a second purpose in Level 2 to help the player "aim" their bounce, since much of the stage is spent off-camera.

I added a larger & more valuable pickup option, and created a non-moving pickup to indicate precision in platforming.

Itty-Bitty Postmortem

This was an exciting project. By my track, it's been ten and a half hours on this one. I'm not ashamed to say that a good two hours of that was trying to understand why my CinemachineBrain triggers weren't behaving as I wanted. (It was obviously very important that the corruption room remained hidden for possible future storytelling within the space station.) I spent some extra time adding additional layers for platforms, camera trigger boundaries, the player, and the Tilemap; and updating the Michigan State University scripts so the enemies would behave as I desired--especially the enemies that live on moving platforms or near acid & lava. They really just wanted to die. Can't really blame them, obviously "locked in a space station" isn't their idea of happiness.

Obviously, there's a lot to learn and continue to develop. But my biggest surprise learning is that art is really important when conceiving levels. At least at this point. While it was a challenge to work with limited assets, the fact that I didn't have to go searching for new ones and could make the minor modifications as I saw fit was immensely helpful in creating levels that allow players to make the split-second decisions.