Chapter 1: Introduction to My Game Jam Adventure

This past summer, I chose to venture into a realm far from my usual coding endeavors—game development! Although I've long been intrigued by the idea of creating games, the daunting learning curve often held me back. Feeling worn out from my regular job, I thought a fresh challenge might provide the perfect escape. As luck would have it, the GMTK Game Jam 2023 was just around the corner. What better way to accelerate my learning than to dive headfirst into a 48-hour competition?

In this article, I’ll share my insights on the preparation leading up to the game jam, the challenges I faced during the event, the resources I utilized, and some advice for future endeavors.

My GMTK Game Jam Submission

The theme for this year's GMTK game jam was “Role Reversal.” Like many participants, I initially struggled with ideas. Ultimately, I settled on a shooting game concept, envisioning a twist: instead of playing as the shooter, players would take on the role of the bullet! Below is the link to the incomplete game I submitted.

The idea revolved around allowing players to control the bullet's direction and adjust its power depending on the enemy type. I envisioned a whimsical theme combining elements of the Wild West and fantasy, featuring cowboys battling monsters.

1. Designing Tilemaps

The first hurdle was crafting a suitable background for my 2D game. After some research, I stumbled upon a couple of helpful YouTube videos that demonstrated how to use the 2D Tilemap Editor in Unity. Here’s one that proved particularly useful.

Setting up a 2D background with Tilemaps turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. However, I realized that the tutorial lacked information about the sorting layers of the Tilemap Renderer. Adjusting the “order in layer” value is crucial, as higher values will appear on top. If your tiles aren’t displaying correctly, try tweaking this setting.

After completing the tutorial, I needed to find an appropriate tileset that matched my Wild West theme. Fortunately, I discovered a desert-themed tileset by beyonderboy, allowing me to create a fitting 2D tilemap background in about two to three hours.

2. Creating Animated Sprites

Next, I faced the challenge of sourcing animated sprites for my “shooters” and “enemies.” I realized I hadn’t covered animated sprites in my Tetris course, so I began searching for free 2D cowboy sprite assets. While options were limited, I managed to find a fantastic sprite by samuellee that included idle, walk, and shoot animations.

After acquiring the sprite sheets, I needed to learn how to import and animate them in Unity. Several videos helped me grasp this process.

Thanks to these resources, I successfully created a prefab for my “shooters” with the animations properly set. However, I encountered a challenge: how to randomly select one of several “attack” animations. This video tutorial provided a solution.

I replicated this process for my “enemies,” using a fantastic sprite created by elthen.

3. Implementing Tilemap Spawning

I wanted to introduce defense mechanisms for my shooters, which I learned to do through some online research. I created a tilemap and placed tilesets to designate where I wanted to spawn defensive “cacti.” Here’s a code snippet demonstrating how I accomplished this.

4. Moving Characters

Next, I focused on moving my sprites from point A to point B. I had a blast experimenting with placeholders and waypoints for sprite movement. Check out this video on using waypoints.

Here’s a snapshot of my scene with waypoints (red for enemies, yellow for shooters) and placeholders (green for enemies, blue for shooters) that served as spawn points.

While I didn’t struggle much with this aspect, I realized that there were improvements to be made, particularly to prevent character overlap.

5. Enemies Attacking Defense

Another challenge emerged as I implemented enemy movement. I needed the enemies to halt in front of defenses and attack them before proceeding. This took me over two hours to figure out, as I struggled with colliders and triggers.

This video provided a solid example of implementing a melee hitbox.

To understand colliders and triggers better, I referred to this informative video.

After dedicating significant time to these tutorials, I finally achieved a functional system where enemies would stop and attack the defenses.

6. Projectile Mechanics

Next, I wanted my “shooters” to fire projectiles at enemies, a topic well-covered in this video tutorial.

I aimed for a unique bullet flight path, which required deviating from the standard raycast projectile method. I adjusted the implementation to replace mouse direction with placeholders, similar to the melee hitbox method, utilizing AimPoint and FirePoint for projectile direction.

7. Controlling Bullet Movement

With limited time remaining, I focused on allowing players to control the bullet's direction—a feature I was still mastering during the jam. I learned about events and static classes, which I combined in my game.

Essentially, I created a BulletsManager to oversee all bullets in the game. When the “shooter” fired a bullet, it would be added to the BulletsManager. The PlayerController then selects a bullet from the BulletsManager and triggers a player input event, allowing bullet control.

Unfortunately, this implementation still has numerous bugs, leading to hours of troubleshooting. If anyone has suggestions for improvement, please share!