Game Journal #123.5 - 8 Directional Movement? It's Pretty Easy!

Hey guys! Welcome back to another game journal entry. I'm a little early this week for the first time in forever! Well, I'll tell you why.

Recently, one of my posts on Twitter went REALLY viral. It was me talking about a game leak from the perspective of being a game developer. My tweet was used in some news videos about it, which was pretty cool. Anyway that brought a lot of people to my account, and quite a few of them thought my game was neat. Who wouldn't get motivated after something like that! So I feel like working on it again.

It's kinda funny because it feels like I'm in college again. The warm weather, desire to work on my game all the time, and abundance of free time outside of work all contribute to it. I worked on it a lot more back then because I was learning the engine at the same time. But of course, because I worked on it so much I eventually got burned out, which is why I take breaks a lot more now. Anyway, enough boring stuff, let's get into game stuff.

With characters being 2D sprites now, a lot of things have to change visually. One of these is FPS (first person shooter) mode where you can shoot monsters in dungeons. I was deciding between a Doom style angle (where the gun is in the middle) or a more standard one on the left. I think I like the left one more, if only for consistency with the other characters. Are you surprised that this is a traditional drawing? Fun fact: I do all my game concepts on paper. UI, character design, button design, all of it. It's just easier and faster for me to draw.

Another thing that has to change are NPCs. I think I'll have 8 angles for all of them, so you can walk around them like they're 3D. Additionally, this made me realize that I can have people walking around in the town now! I mean, I could've with 3D too, but I was NOT modelling that. Lol. I'll stick to environments, thank you very much.

As for what I changed, I figured out how to walk in 8 directions and change the sprite being shown. Also, you can pan the camera around the protagonist and it'll work like it's a 3D model. It looks pretty good ingame, I think. Now I just have to animate the three states (idle, walking, running) Which is 100000000x better and easier than in 3D.

Next time, I'll start on that, and I'll start on adding 2D swappable outfits. It's SO easy, you just put the clothes flipbook on top of the character one, bam. SO much easier than 3D.

Here's the video of me showing it.