Making A Game with Unity + Bolt Visual Scripting: Devlog # 1 - Character Design & Movement

while i enjoy a variety of different types of games there was one game that had my complete attention growing up the legend of zelda a link to the past i'd spent hours in my room playing zelda trying to figure out what it was i was supposed to do next and i will admit most of that time was probably spent mowing the grass and trimming the hedges and i was always frustrated when i turned around and it had grown back again there's a reason why zelda was a legend zelda mastered four directional movement that gave the player complete control in 2d allowing them to go pretty much wherever they wanted it had enemy ai that was engaging but not impossible to predict and overcome it had interactable objects that could be not only used as weapons but it could be something that would move the player from one place to the next for example when they'd used the grappling hook zelda had a variety of core abilities and items that were not only introduced as you progress through the game but entire dungeons were designed around using them they had npcs with quests and interactable dialogue and ways to improve the player it had an open world with several hurdles that could only be overcome when you progressed through the game there was always this gentle reminder that you were the one the game was waiting on to move forward making a game like zelda took an entire team of people all working towards the same goal but with the technology that we have today i aim to make it by myself and because i've heard it said that you can't make a marketable game using bolt visual scripting i'm going to use it as the backbone of this build in full transparency i'm not going to try to make the legend of zelda a link to the past instead i'm going to try to use it as some inspiration for creating something like it today i'm going to give you an inside look on how i accomplish player movement in the legend of zelda a link to the past link only truly had four directional movement sure link could move diagonally but the animations only reflected link moving in four directions up down left and right any diagonal movement was simply a copy of left or right now there is another issue that you may not really notice when playing zelda in reality only three directions were drawn up down and left because of this link has become famous for being ambidextrous when you turn left to right the shield he was holding would switch hands this is a subtle difference that like i said many people don't even notice but for my game this little detail bothered me so i plan to fix this even if it requires just a little bit more leg work for my character to take shape i'm not only going to have to draw diagonal animations but for true 8 directional movement i'm going to have to recreate animations 8 times so the shield doesn't change hands when the player moves nothing can be reused so this is what i've come up with meet tom now if you're saying to yourself wait you have a character concept and i'm still struggling trying to get mine together i would tell you that i was able to arrive at this character concept by doing three things first of all i watched at least 20 videos on youtube on designing a main character i'll put some links in the description below that i would recommend second i've also been building a pinterest board for the art that i liked things that i wanted to try to either replicate or take direct inspiration from and i would highly encourage for you to do the same if you're trying to design your own art third i didn't get the finished product right away tom actually went through a long line of toms and i had to pick him out of a lineup like he committed murder seriously stop looking at me i probably drew tom like a hundred times before i actually got something that i could be happy with now there's a devlog that i've really enjoyed watching and i would encourage you to watch as well one of the things you might notice in this dev vlog is that although his player moves in eight directions he really only drew one animation that flips its scale whenever he moves left or right and it still looks great in my opinion but i thought i could improve on this by trying to draw the animations for the player eight different ways although i will note that this is exactly what i plan to do with the enemies and npcs in this game so once i was satisfied with tom and he began to take shape i began drawing him out in eight different directions i'm not gonna lie to you this actually is probably the most time consuming part in the process but it's a whole lot easier to do this whenever you have a program like a sprite i don't know if you ever use this software i couldn't recommend it enough this software not only allows you to capture frames when you begin animations as well as easily create tile palettes but it also keeps track of layers so that moving the shield from the front of the player to behind the player for example is relatively easy once i had my player drawn in eight directions i began working out the animations for a simple idol and walk phase once i had my animations ready it was time to import tom into my build for reference i've actually created a small world for tom to walk around in and i'll cover this process in a future video for now i just want to focus on what it took to get tom to move as i stated before for the programming side of things i use bolt visual scripting to do most of the legwork and for this series i'm not going to be following my traditional approach of making tutorial videos on bolt visual scripting for three reasons first this is a dev vlog not a tutorial video second i want to wait until i'm completely satisfied with this build before i release any content on how exactly i accomplish programming with bolt since i might not like something later on and i end up changing it later on down the road third once i'm happy with the build i am planning on making a course on udemy and i'll give you more information on that as we draw closer to that time in truth top-down movement isn't all that different from 2d platformer movement it really only has one significant change you see for a platformer you really only have to figure out how to move the player horizontally and whenever you jump you can add force to push the player up and let them fall vertically for top down movement like the legend of zelda linked to the past you actually set the gravity to zero and focus on how to move horizontally and vertically there really is no jumping this isn't really that big of an issue but there is something i would highly recommend if you consider trying to accomplish something similar when you try to move on the x or y the player will move according to the speed that you have set on it but when you try to move on the x and the y the player will move according to the speed on the x plus the speed of the y in other words he moves twice as fast going diagonally and to fix this i simply implemented a clamp so that the player can never move faster diagonal than he does vertically or horizontally once the coating was done and the player moved the right direction and speed that i needed him to it was time to set up the animations to get my eight directional animations to trigger correctly i could have implemented a series of parameters that determine which direction tom was facing but this is tedious and really unnecessary since unity has established something called a blend tree if you need help on how to establish a blind tree i would encourage you to go watch brackie's video showing exactly how it was done and there is a link in the description below once i got the blend tree working correctly i could set up the animations according to whatever direction i was pressing on the x and y and plugging in the animations accordingly again the most time consuming part of this whole process was without a doubt designing the art and there's something i probably should mention regarding the art style that i went with i chose to use frame animation using a sprite instead of skeletal animation using programs like spine2d now if you don't know the difference between frame animation and skeletal animation here's a brief overview in frame animation you have to draw a new picture frame by frame and that's pretty much how the first mickey mouse cartoons were drawn in skeletal animation however everything that moves on the character is put on a separate layer so for things like a run animation each body part is on its own layer and you can move it accordingly skeletal animation is super useful and ends up saving designers countless hours making art because if you want to change the weapon the player is holding for example you simply swap that layer out with something else but the reason i went with frame animation as opposed to skeletal animation was pretty much because of two things using pixel art is extremely difficult to set up using skeletal animation and truth be told i'm just not really that skilled at it i don't want the pixels to twist and move i want them to relocate in my own personal opinion frame animation looks better overall with pixel art but also i'm not really planning on having my character's overall look change tom will look pretty much exactly the way he does at the start of the game that he does at the end there won't be an equipment screen where he's able to change armor and weapons and if you remember from the legend of zelda lee did have abilities and items that he could switch out and he did have upgraded armor and weapons but this is relatively easy to do using a sprite since the layers are set up and redesigned there all in all i'm not sure if i'm going to end up regretting this decision but it was one i had to make before i started designing the art and if in the future i make a game with an equipment inventory system i will definitely go with skeletal animation because of its flexibility but for now i think i can live with my decision using frame animation i've shown you the overview of the process that i went through to get my main character set up and now it's time to focus on building a world for tom to walk around in before i conclude this video though i just want to share my overall plan for this build while i want to make a marketable game using bolt visual scripting i don't plan on publishing it once i'm done instead i want to get a finished product and design a course for udemy so that others can see the exact step-by-step process on what it takes to make a top-down game like zelda and if you're willing to help support me on patreon i will make sure that you are able to take part in that tutorial either at a heavily discounted rate or completely free according to your level of support i've got a lot of things in store for this project and i'd love to have your support and input on the process for now i'm going to end this video and i'd like to express my appreciation for your interest in what i'm up to your support means the world to me but for now i just want to say thank you my name is megahertz and i'm out

Channel: Megahertzs

Views: 6,850

Keywords: Unity, Bolt, Tutorial, Video Game, Design, Easy, Free, 2D Animation, 2D Platform, 2d platformer unity tutorial, 2d Game Design, how to make video games, indie games, indie game development, unity tutorial, bolt tutorial, bolt tutorial unity, Bolt tutorial #1, Visual Scripting, No Scripting

Id: fWbats2vNyM

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021