Procedural generation of meta-level layout

I really enjoy games like Slay The Spire, Monster Train, Faster Than Light, Spelunky and more. They’re all quite different roguelike games (deckbuilder card games, spaceship combat simulator, adventure platformer) but they all share something similar: randomly generated “meta-level” maps: The spire of Slay The Spire. The sectors and beacons in FTL. The railway in Monster Train.

I’m working on something similar for my platformer (maybe). No details yet besides this quick WIP demo to show a few friends.

2D Platformer – build 007

A melee attack! And cute little doggies to use the attack on 😢. Also I added a UI for testing the Music Manager.

2D Platformer – build 006

No big visual changes in this build. But I finally got around to learning how audio works in Unity.

2D Platformer – build 005

Big changes! I remade the main menu. It’s now in its own “scene” (a Unity thing), and it works with mouse, keyboard or controller. The options still don’t do anything… but I think they look cool. And when you choose a hero it loads the Springtime scene to start the placeholder level.

2D Platformer – build 004

A main menu! And a pause menu! (press escape). It’s very ugly, only works with a mouse, and the options don’t actually do anything…

2D Platformer – build 003

Not much to see here. I added more physics tweaks and experimenting with an alternative jump method. I also improved some behaviour when using a controller, e.g. better analogue stick input.

2D Platformer – build 002

Making a platformer character “feel” good is tough. It requires lots of tweaking, and you can’t always rely on using Unity’s physics engine to handle things for you — platformer game physics doesn’t really behave behave like real world physics! This build adds a DevTools panel for easier in-game balance tweaking, so I can customise, at runtime, some of the custom physics I created.

2D Platformer – build 001

I’ve always liked playing 2D platformers, and a simple platformer seems like a good genre to continue my learning. So this will be my second gamedev project.