Week 8 - Checkpoint 1 - Player Movement

Hi everyone, it is so interesting for me to post the first devlog about Cooking Academy's building process. In this devlog, I will recap the key steps of how I made my characters's movements at the initial stage and point out some drawbacks of the current implementation. Also, I will talk about how I should improve it at the end of this post.

As Cooking Academy focus on the experience of player as a chef. Therefore, the player movements will based on the four keys which are A, W, D and S. I addition, to make it easier for players, I have also implement the dash function so that players can move their character three time faster by 1 second using the Space bar. Therefore, player can move their character by using one or the combinations of these keys A, W, D, S and the Space bar as well. 

Initially, I created two eight-way animations for both Frank and his mother (the assets are found online) so that their movement will become more lively and realistic (but I only put Frank mom in the scene for testing purposes). It means that they will move around their small restaurant in the game based on all eight directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW).

In Unity, I implemented some simple movements for characters by adding a new C# script. The script defines the speed of the character in the game and a Vector2 to define the position and speed of the player. When user click the key A, W, D and S, the Vector2 element will be updated to match the new position of the player based on the pre-defined speed. In addition, the script will also get the animation so that the character can have the correct direction animation when moving. Fortunately, the result was as good as I expected. It was so exciting when my first script for this game worked quite nicely!

In addition, I have also add some interior to the kitchen as obstancles. Based on the experiences I have when working with the tutorial, I can successfully setup the kitchen environment and obstancles for the character so that player cannot move Frank or his mom out of the kitchen as well as "jumping" on the stove, fridges and tables.

Since the game version uploaded on itch.io is quite simple, feedbacks from other players in my class on it were nothing except two about my character's movement in standstill state, and I think I would like to update it in the next version.

I also had a chance to discuss the dashing with one of my friend and he suggest me that I should not use the Space bar as the key for dashing as in the future my characters also need to pick up the ingredients and it would be much convenient for player if they can use that function with the space bar. Therefore, in the first version, I have decided to change the dashing function to the shift key. In the future, if I have enough time, I would like to implement the game settings so that player can map their own preferences for the special keys to use special functions of the character. I will update my movement and implement the more functions in the next devlog. Thank you to visit my game and give me great comments and I cannot wait until the next stage of my game. I wish you can visit my site on my next stage as well. For references to my game movement, please find my attached video. Cheers!!!