In this blog we will add on to our last blog as now enemies will move and they will hurt us so without further delay lets get into it.
To start we will need to add an event.
Now I know this probably looks intimidating but is pretty simple and I will explain how it works. First we add our event cplayer on collision with enemies and instead of adding an action we will add a subevent. cplayer platform is falling and then we add another condition enemies type does not equal spiked. Because obviously you cannot jump on spiked enemies. Then we will need to add a whole bunch of events.
Our first event is set collisions disabled which may sound weird but it makes the enemies death more satisfying. Then we play the enemy hit sound, next we set cplayer to -400y which actually is pretty high up in the air. Now this is where it satrts to get a little tricky. First we need to spawn another object on top of our enemies which is our score popup text. Then we need to set that text to Enemies.bonus.
After that we need to add Enemies.bonus to our score and finally we need to wait 0.5 seconds and then we will destroy our enemies and when an enemy dies it should look similar to this.
Enemy dying
As you can see our enemy has died, we have gained 100 points and since we set collisions disabled our enemy fell through the ground.
In my last blog I went over the players movement but I forgot to add 2 things. Which is mirroring which makes the player look normal when he faces the other way other wise when he moves backward he is still looking forward. So to do this we will need these two pieces of code.
That way when left arrow key is pressed he is mirrored and when right arrow key is pressed he will be un-mirrored. And in game it will look like this.
This would be the running animation but I could not take a screenshot and move the player at the same time so it is just standing sorry. (Mirrored standing animation)
And this would be how it looks Un-mirrored
Un-Mirrored standing animation
So now whichever way the player is going he looks that way. Now that that’s out of the way lets get started with the Enemies movement.
The first thing e need to do is ensure the enemies only start moving once we can see them as that is how the enemies moved in the original Mario game so we want to mimic that. And luckily this very easy with construct.
Code for enemies movement
This is extremely important code that can be messed up very easily. So first we add the event “enemies is on screen”. Next we right click on this event like this.
Once you have right-clicked on the event it should show add then hover over it and once it shows up click on add sub event. This will cause the next piece of code to basically be indented which allows another event to go below it as a sub event.
This sub event will be “enemies is mirrored” and the action will be “simulate platform pressing right”. Once this is done we will need to add another sub event which will be “Enemies X is mirrored”. Which if you remember from I believe my last post the big red X in front of the code means it is inverted. The action will be “simulate platform pressing left”. This will make it so that when the player sees the enemies they will start moving but if they run into something they will stop. This is where our next piece of code comes in handy.
Just in case you needed a visual aid this is what the code should look like.
Our next Piece of code will also use sub events and a new type of code but we’ll get to that in a second first I’ll show you what the code looks like.
This code will allow the enemies to change direction when they are stopped. So first off we need to dd our main code piece which is “Enemies Platform on stopped”. From there we will need to add a sub event not 2 this time. Our sub envent will be “Enemies is mirrored” and the action will be “set Not mirrored”. But now instead of wasting lots of time and energy adding another sub event simply click on the “Enemies is mirrored” code. Like this
Then hit “x” on your keyboard and it will add a “System else” code and then you add a set “mirrored action” and thats it. I’ll show you what it should look like.
And as always with this set of blogs Huge thanks and shoutout to Gamegen and Raymond Roque for all their help with this difficult project without your help I would have had a really hard time completing this project so thanks so much.
In my last blog I went over how to make the cPlayer invisible and how to add a spawn point for Luigi. In this blog I we will be adding a running, jumping, and falling animation. If you didn’t get the link earlier to download the “starter pack” I made the link is right here : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4T03AITeoiuWUF4MTROOU1mS2c/view
Once you get the file you can simply upload it to construct and you will not have to ad as many basic things but with that out of the way lets get started.
In this picture we only want to focus on the highlighted yellow code which is for Marios jump. It will set his animation to jumping and it will play the jumping sound once the now invisible cPlayer jumps. It will look something like this.
Player Mid Jump
There is one problem with this however, and that is that once Luigi starts falling he will still be in the regular Luigi animation because we have not added a falling animation yet.
Now we will use the above highlighted code to make our player appear as if he is falling. With his falling animation and it should look something like this in game.
Player falling
But the problem with this is once he hit the ground he thinks that he is still falling because we haven’t told him to stop falling. And the only reason he stopped jumping was because we added the falling animation.
Our next piece of code will tell him to stop falling once he hits the ground.
This code needs 2 verifications to allow him to run. He must be on the ground and he must be moving this will activate the running animation for your player and it should look like this.
Running animation
So when our player is moving he will look like this although this does not fix our problem because he will still be falling when he hits the ground. For this code to work he also has to be moving. So we have to add standing code that overrides our falling code.
Standing Code
And with this our player will not continue falling when he hits the ground he will stop. Also just in case you dont know if you want to cause that big x infront of any code that means that code is inverted and to do that simply click on the code/highlight it and hit “i” on your keyboard.
Yesterday I made the first part of this blog series and I went over how I made my Mario games main character Luigi interesting twist right? And I also went over how I created the background for the game by just make sprites and then duplicating and placing them. But enough about my last blog time for this one.
So first of all we need to start adding some basic things to our game like Luigi’s spawn point because right now he just starts at a random spot on the map floating in the air so Ill show you what code I used for this.
Code for Luigi’s Spawn point along with other variables
So first off you can see I have a lot of global numbers/variables and it may look quite intimidating but it is quite easy to add these. The main ones to focus on right now are spawnPointY and spawnPointX which obviously are the spot on the map where we want mario to spawn. Now If you just added these variables Luigi still wouldn’t spawn there. Because we have no code telling him what these numbers mean. But the blue code below it explains what Luigi will do. But it is crucial that you add this code for the cPlayer and not Luigi because Luigi is basically the skin and the cPlayer is the actual character. and once you have tat done your game should look like this.
In construct hit the play button and it will open your game and show you what it actually looks like. And I know that this is actually Mario and not Luigi. Because I had to open a plain Mario for this image as my actual game actually has animated characters and more importantly enemies.
So your game should look something like this except obviously with your character which could look like what ever you want. But now that we have our character spawn in the right spot we need to make the red box AKA the cPlayer invisible. This is very simple as all you need to do is click on the cPlayer
Then scroll down to where it says initially visible
In the bottom left hand side of the picture
And make the check mark go away by clicking it and the cplayer will be invisible
Once again Special thanks to Raymond Roque and Gamegen for their help with this project and check out Ray on itch.io where he makes awesome games also if you want to have a headstart click this link and down load this project that way you have less code to add. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4T03AITeoiuWUF4MTROOU1mS2c/view
Today I will be writing I created Mario in construct engine v3. Construct is a much much better version of scratch that is free to use and it can be used to makes games similarly to scratch although it is a little more complicated.
So first off I need to make my character so I will begin drawing him and I will make multiple verisons of him for the animations I need to create.
This is the Luigi Character I drew but it is a little blurry but that is only because I copied it and then pasted it onto this blog post other wise it is much clearer. Next I will need to add all the other animated images of Luigi.
Thats it for the animations and I will string these all together later in the game but first we need to establish a background for our character to move and interact with like the one below.
This was the background but it was too long so I had to split it into 3 images. I designed this background with a bunch of sprites but it was quite simple although since I had to do so many it took a little while.
Thank you all for reading my blog check out my YT channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrlNUqQVBxLIbdltHQBdcYg?view_as=subscriber Also another important thing this was a difficult thing for me to do so it was my first project with help so I would like to give a huge shout out to my teacher/friend who introduced me to construct Raymond Roque from game gen I recommend you check him out on itch.io where he has many cool projects. Thanks soooo much Ray.
In light of the recent release of Valorant I bet many people across the globe are wondering how they make money because the game itself is free. And not just Valorant there are tons of video games that are free that make millions or even 10’s or 100’s of millions each year despite them being free. Keep reading to see all the strategies that developers use to make money through their free games.
1. In game purchases
This is a very common thing to see in video games and in particular free games. These purchases help you boost yourself to either do better or they can make the game easier. This is especially evident in Valorant where many players buy skins that improve the look of their weapons and these skins can cost anywhere from 5$ to about 25$
Elderflame skin pack valorant (Basically makes your guns animated dragons)
This skin pack cost is 95$ and it comes with 5 skins. The skins are for the following guns: The vandal, The operator, The judge, The frenzy, and the Knife. These skins are amazing animated dragons (I wish I could have bought them ngl) But they are wayyy to expensive for the average consumer because most players wont spend almost 100$ on just some skins. But there are people who will buy these skins because of how amazing they look despite the cost.
2. Advertising and sponsorships
Now this may sound a little weird that the devs paying streamers would be counter productive seeing as they would be loosing money. But the thing is when streamers endorse your game they will get more people want to play the game. Also you can give them free skins which costs you nothing and it helps encourage people to buy skins because their favorite streamer is using it.
In my last blog i went over all of Killjoys abilities and characteristics. In this blog I will be going over how she was modeled in Unreal engine and how they used many techniques that were similar between the creation of all the agents.
The first picture is the final design for Killjoy (which was later modeled in Unreal engine which I will explain). The second picture is concept art for killjoy sprays, facial designs, body designs, and ability designs.
The way Riots character developers were able to render these images into the actual game is actually quite simple but it does have a few steps that require precision and lots of time. The first step is in the pictures above as before these images can be rendered onto a character they must be drawn in 3d with cad or other digital art tools. Once these images are 3d they are basically put over a base character model similar to this one although a skinner one that matches the 3d images.
Base character that the Killjoy 3d art is applied to.
Once they have added the killjoy 3d art to the Dummy they will see how it looks/works and they will make sure it looks good. Then they will have to make sure the hit box is the same size. Changing the hit box of the dummy sounds like it will require you to make the dummy itself skinnier/smaller but actually you just have to change the point of contact on the body. Which I will explain in the picture below
I drew this image to represent the differences between hitboxes. And with the hitbox change you cna see that the physical character is not affected at all.
As you may or may not know valorant will be getting a new agent named Killjoy. Killjoy is a support/defense character as she does not have many offensive abilities her main focus is to defend sights or help her teammates by placing down turrets and landmines that are invisible. First we will go over her abilities then we will go more in depth on how she was created and rendered in unreal engine.
Yes I am aware it says Stealth Drone but this is what the alarm bots concept art looks like. below is the actual in game bot. Actual in game alarm bot
Killjoys first ability is an alarm bot similar to that of razes boom bot which explodes on contact dealing massive damage. But Killjoys 1 up’s raze in this field because her alarm bot is invisible, it deals lots of damage, and it causes enemies who are caught by it to take double damage for the duration of the vulnerable effect. This alarm bot is excellent for setting up sights for your team and it makes it very difficult for enemies to plant the spike when they cannot even enter the site. Also one thing that makes killjoy unique is that ALL of Killjoys abilities can be recalled by her (except for her ultimate obviously). Meaning that if she ever needed to reposition her alarm bot or any ability she can pick it up and move it.
Turret concept artIn game turret
Killjoys second ability is a turret that she can place anywhere on the map and it is mostly again useful for defense more than offense as it doesn’t deal very much damage and it only shoots in 3-shot bursts. Just as with the alarm bot the turret can be recalled as long as it has not been destroyed. this turret is excellent for scouting ahead of Killjoy as if it is shot down then you know where at least 1 enemy is and if it is not destroyed then it will either kill an enemy or there are not any enemies there.
Nanoswarm in game
Killjoys next and most devastating ability is her nanoswarm this is similar to razes grenade but again it is a trap so it is invisible. Once it has been thrown and it hits the ground it will become invisible. If someone walks into its detonation range you can activate it and it will explode dealing massive amounts of damage and basically instantly killing anyone in its range.
lockdown killjoy ultimate in game
This is Killjoys final ability and to say the least it is OP. First of all the range as depicted by this picture of haven
Is INSANE it covers more than the entire site which means that this site will be almost impossible to attack for at least 8 seconds as any enemy who walks into this will get numerous debuffs including slowness and likely a stun that will disorient players making it very easy to pick them off.
Well this took a lot longer than i thought it would so we will go over how all of this was made, rendered, and developed in unreal engine in tomorrows blog post.
Thank you all for reading and if you want check out my YT channel @Drago Gaming
If you haven’t read my previous blogs The massively popular multiplayer game Valorant then I have already explained how Valorant was made in unreal engine and how they got the voice actors for each of the 11 characters but I haven’t gone over how the game was marketed and tested. Well the devs of Valorant did an excellent job marketing I can personally say I saw ads for the game on you tube more than 3 times a day following its release and it persuaded me an millions of others to download the game.
Also another amazing marketing strategy they used was they made it so that the game was free to install and play. Meaning that anyone could play the game as soon as it was installed and they made it so that paying to win was impossible because there were no items/abilities that you could buy to enhance your characters. Their ingame purchases however were very enticing because the skins they made/developed were AMAZING and they often had great animations and abilities that made them worth lots of money. And as a result Valorant made tons of profit.
Now one way they bug tested the game that was completely genius is they made it early access and allowed some players/streamers to play early access which did 3 things. 1. More free advertising for the game through streamers. 2. More hype for the game as all popular streamers were playing it. 3. FREE bug testing. The first 2 points are other marketing tactics that Riot Games the creators of valorant used to make even more players/people want to get their game and they used streamers and early access players help them by playing the game and subsequently discover bugs they found while streaming. When these bugs were discovered they were patched that way these would not be a problem once the game came out globally.
Finally Riot Games did an excellent job when it comes to developing a unique battle system which has to do with economy as well as FPS skill. Because even great FPS players will lose to players with a superior economy because this will allow them to spend their credits wisely when buying guns each round and as a result they will never run out of credits. Also this plays a role in team strategy as you do not want your team to be low on credits EVER as this gives the enemy team a considerable advantage. And buying your teammates guns and requesting guns is a good way to help the poorer players in a round and a way to balance a teams economy.
As i mentioned in my previous post Valorant was made with the coding language c++ and in the unreal engine developed by epic games. As you likely know valorant is one of the most popular games out there right now and you can learn how to make a game like this as well! Thanks to programming courses and engine like unreal engine
With this engine you can design characters and code for your very own game. the developers of valorant worked countless hours making the designs and outlines of all 11 characters in valorant phoenix, sova, breach, raze, reyna, jett, brimstone, omen, sage, cypher, and viper. It took lots of time to come up with the final designs in unreal engine.
The developers next task was to create voice lines for each character and then finding people to fill these roles. For phoenix they chose Afolabi Alli, For Brimstone they chose Steve Blum, For Viper they chose Ashly Burch, For Cypher they chose Nabil Eluoahabi, For Omen they chose Jason Marnocha, For Breach they chose David Menkin, For Raze they chose Carolina Ravassa, For Sova they chose Aaron Vodovoz, For Jett they chose Shannon Williams, For Sage they chose Naomi Yang, And Finally for Reyna they chose Carolina Ravassa once again.
