Unicorn Training Dungeons Mapped Out

    These dungeons play out more like obstacle courses and the puzzles really won't take longer than a few seconds to figure out. The point here is the set pieces. There are multiple colorful dungeons to explore. Bosses are big and interesting. Dungeons have enough enemies and traversal to take a decent while to get through. I accomplished those goals set for my first RPG and now I can start making all these levels.

    This bothers me and relieves me at the same time. On one hand I'd like to take the time to flesh out more intricate zelda style dungeons because those embody everything I like about level design. On the other I'm glad it's straightforward and feasible so I can finish this project on time and start another with a stronger foundation. I want to make complex dungeons with themes more interesting than "open the door and reach the boss" but not with what I have here. The core of the game is too different from something more manageable and like I said before, I wish I could start over with my idea for Unicorn Quest because halfway through making this I learned so much. With every project I shake my head at the last, thinking about how I would have done it better with everything I know 'now'. But I suppose every creator does that right?

    With the way the dungeons are setup I should be able to practice with tile mapping by making each room in 2D Toolkit's tile map editor. Once I have stages I can place walls, gaps, enemies, spawn points, and treasure over them then save the whole thing as a prefab to load at playtime. Next up is sketching all the enemies I'll be using and a finalized title screen.

Unicorn Training World Mapped Out On Paper

     Another boost to morale here. With every room of the game drawn out the exact way I want it, I can clearly see everything I have yet to create. I had to shrink the map even further into a 4x4 grid, made most rooms fit into the same walls, and connected the rooms in a way that made the forest feel varied and not like a bunch of filler space. I made it so each of the 5 caves have different gemstones in them making exploration necessary to purchase items from the store. I made it so that each room will take multiple minutes to explore as well (assuming you fight at least a few enemies).

     There's markers for enemy placement, gem dig spots, every chest, every flower, every bush, and every rock. I even got some ideas for story pacing with the placement of things in Clover's house. Using text and the environment to lead the player along is much easier than puppeteering and coding everything which I'd rather do with a Pokemon-style grid based system where things are easy to move around.

     If I continue this with the dungeons (which I'll be doing next) I can have it so I won't need to create a cutscene creation pipeline. Making cutscenes with my current setup would be a nightmare, so if I can sidestep that then the hardest parts of making this game are done. I really feel like I can finish this thing now and once I sketch all the dungeons I bet the feeling will multiply.

2D Toolkit Tile Map Research

     I curious about how tile maps worked so I looked it up while eating breakfast to at least get the idea running in my head. That way, when the time comes to make my next game I can go into it with the knowledge of how level building is going to work. Once again Unity (paired with the 2D Toolkit) floored me with it's simplicity. Here I was ready to take notes and review the tutorial multiple times and it turns out to be as easy as every other aspect I've used.

    Like Game Maker I just make a sprite sheet, create the game object, and edit a tile map. I can even easily make Day/Sunset/Night versions of each map for my Pony RPG which I thought I wouldn't be able to do! It really is that much easier than the hard-coded stuff I'm used to.

    This is the tutorial I read and this is the tutorial I watched (to see it in action). I feel pretty silly about the way I'm going with Unicorn Training's level building but like I said, there's no stopping this train now. I'll just take everything I just learned into account and make grid based worlds from now on. Fewer collision problems, a more neatly designed world, more efficient space usage, leading to bigger games.

     This stands as an example of how I learn things and why I don't like how schools charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach things that may come in handy while I'd need to go out and find immediately useful information on my own like I always have. I won't get too into rant mode now, but I just learned something very useful and it took 30 minutes. I can now make better, more efficient games.

I Think I Prefer Working With Grids & Tiles

     You know how in games like Pokemon you can only move along a grid of squares? How you can count each step and know where you'll end up? I think I'll be working that into my RPGs in the future. Collision boxes are always a headache and especially so with Unicorn Training. It's a good lesson and experience but I really want to work with something simpler to code. Most of my bugs come from collider box issues and it's what I've spent a large amount of time working on. I'd rather put that care into adding new things instead of fixing the simplest of features (the ability to walk around and not go through walls).

     Like TriGrid, I can just keep track of all the squares around an object and know if it's okay to move an exact amount of pixels each step. I can even snap to the next position with a little algorithm. Unicorn Training depends on free movement for it's arcade shooter style combat so there's no going back now, but it's really something I want for my future titles.