Dev Log 2 – Movement Programming & Animation Implementation

Hello! My name is Ben and I’m the programmer responsible for the player movement & implementing the player animations. This second devlog will talk about the character controller and the state machine for controlling the player animations.

When we discussed the player movements as a team it seemed like we had a never-ending list of actions that the player could perform, but after a while we managed to bring the list down to something simpler, so that players (and us) wouldn’t get overwhelmed. The most time-consuming part about making a character movement script isn’t the programming or maths it takes to make it but rather the testing and bug-fixing required to make it perfect. Most of my time was spent testing how the character moves in the game and then making a small adjustment and then testing again, over and over. This part of writing the movement script is a bit of a chore, but it all becomes worth it when you have some form of fun character movement.

Implementing the animations that Korn makes is one of the more fun parts of my responsibilities on this project. First, I’ll receive a sketched-out animation for a player action which I can implement straight away, which brings so much life to the character and to the game. After implementing the first sketched animations I received the full shaded versions and have nearly no extra work to do since the sketches act as a placeholder that just need to be replaced.

The animations are so important for bringing a feeling of fun movement to the gameplay, which was proven when we had our first playtest of the game and received compliments on the animation and movement (and of course some great suggestions!). With our first playtest complete it’s now time for some more small changes and bug fixes. Onto another week!

- Ben (Programming)