Devlog 1: – LET’S GET IT STARTED!! [Player Movement]

My team the Emeraldgards have started a new project for a metroidvania named “Avare Manoir Malédiction (Miser Manor Curse)” that have both 2D and 3D components to it. The task that I have this devlog is to start making components needed for the player controller. The main basic controls that are needed and were created were:

• Movement (left to right)
• Movement speed
• Jumping

I was also able to setup a simple camera using the cinemachine package that will follow the player as they move through the level 

I also used example animations to work alongside the controls that will be updated later on with our final character animations. But so far those are the basics that I have implemented for the player/camera and I will continue to tweak them and add more as we go along!

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Devlog 2: Combat Shenanigans [Version Control, Player Health, Player Combat, Main Menu, and Collaborations]

This week the team decided to use Github for our version control in order for all of us to send in our progress to each other. I went in and set up everything that I had done for the player and camera from the last devlog into the project that we now all share. This devlog I am focusing on a simple main menu and the player combat system and communication with the enemies that my other team member, Caleb, has been working on. 

For the main menu, nothing too fancy was done, just made it so that when you are on the main menu screen you would be able to click the start button and it would take you to the next scene where you play. That’s all for that folks!

Next combat, if there is combat there is damage and more specifically there is damage on the player. So for that a health system was created for the player. All it basically does is check if the player gets damaged three times by the enemy it is no longer alive. As for the combat, the player has two ways of attacking the enemies: side-side and upwards (shown below)

I also had the code setup in a way that we could change the keyboard button we use for the attacks to be anything we want. Additionally I made a certain range the player would swing the sword and damage the enemy within that range as well as make a bullet prefab for the gun-like weapon that would damage the enemies based off of the amount of damage given to the bullet. That was all for combat. I then communicated with Caleb to make sure that the enemies would interact with each other and damage each other and they did! On to the next Devlog!

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Devlog 3: Updates and Some Visuals [Combat updates and in-game UI]

Things are going along pretty well as far as combat but the player can’t switch between the weapon they are using. For that I made it so that there is a button that can be pressed that will switch the weapon along with switching the animation of that weapon. Again I made it so that the button can be bound to any key we choose.

For the in-game UI, all I added here was a visual for the player’s health using hearts that another team member, William, created. The hearts are connected to the number of lives the player has in the game when they lose a life it disappears. Once again I checked in with Caleb and his enemies and that was all for today’s devlog.

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Devlog 4: Back At It Again! [Some Updates, Crouching, Respawning, and Merging]

So for this devlog we are continuing to test and tweak how the player moves and interacts with enemies while also taking a look at how it looks with some art aspects since they are mostly in the scene now. 

I also added some functionality of the player by adding a crouching function for the player to duck under objects that are in the environment. For crouching, like jumping, combat, and switching weapons, I allowed for the key used for crouching can be changed by us to whatever key that would be optimal to use. Also I made it so that when the player crouches if they are crouching and trying to move the speed of the player is slower. Some colliders were added for some areas to duck so there is also a head check on the player where if there is something above them that is too short for their standing height or if they were to go underneath something and they are still underneath then the code will know to continue staying in the crouch position until they are out of that area. 

If combat happens, that means player death may occur which then means there needs to be a way for the player to get back to where they are based on some checkpoint system. So I started working on that first. I made a checkpoint system where if the player reaches a certain area then the space where they reached the checkpoint would be saved. From there I just set it for this demo so that if the player dies in the game the player will be respawned with their original max health to the last checkpoint that they reached.

Once again I set up the testing animation for it (once again this was not the final animation but just the animation that I used to make sure it worked) and now we are on our final stretch of making some tweaks and having a prototype for a demo!

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Devlog 5: Final Stretch for Demo! [Tiny Updates/Fixes and Github Nightmares]

Some last little touches are being done for the demo. I had to do some edits on some of the player code to fix a few bugs (such as the shooting combat animation issue which would play the animation even without shooting) and we also messed around with level design balancing for the game with the codes and art that we have implemented all together. We also went through Github troubles with a broken main branch but we were able to get an old most recent file and get back from there