The title says it all! In my first week of spending most of my day working on my game development portfolio, I realized that movement, and movement options, are not only the things I look for in the games I play, but the thing that I am the most particular about coding.

I am almost finished with my game that I started from scratch last week, which is a mini roguelike/platformer about climbing buildings. Easily the part of the process that has taken me the longest is working on the movement, and trying to make it feel perfect! I restarted my whole player script probably three times before deciding that it was good enough…. Between that, and the Rivals 2 beta taking place this weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about 2D movement, and what makes a game feel good.

Ultimately, Built 2 Scale is a small game, and the more interesting part of it is getting to upgrade and choose your abilities, not the movement itself.

With that said, I have two important takeaways. First, I have a really great collection of resources for anyone looking to get really deep into 2D movement:

• A good beginner overview from GMTK about 3D and 2D movement
• Very in depth lecture from Kyle Pittman about how to determine good movement feel preemptively & with math, rather than guesswork & constant adjustment
• A short example of the kind of project I am setting out to make
• Another more in depth example, this time with an explanation of the code

Secondly! I have my next project! I want to, from scratch, create the perfect 2D movement system for myself, so I don’t have to restart from the beginning every time I want to make a platformer. It’s something I’ve seen a lot of game dev YouTubers do, and it looks really satisfying. All of these “perfect base movement” videos I have seen are missing a thing or two from the system I would want to make, and I don’t want to touch any code I didn’t write for the most important part of these games. When I finish Built 2 Scale (hopefully by Friday), this project will be up next!

Anyways, I made some major upgrades this week in other regards! I got a new computer, and while it was emotional leaving behind the only machine I’ve ever used to code (I got it in 10th grade, right before my first CS class!), the difference is incredible. Having free storage is a game changer–I had a good laugh when I realized I can leave GarageBand installed on this new device, just because! Every small interaction is just a bit faster, which feels so much nicer.

I also started using the Odin inspector in Unity, which is a game changer. I did a lot of UI work this week, and while it doesn’t look great yet, all the UI in my old projects is very clearly thrown in last minute, so I’m glad to be taking this much more seriously. Being able to view Gizmos and toggle animations makes it actually fun to code instead of a headache–another change I can’t believe I just made!

To sum it all up, I am feeling far more professional in my work flow and knowledge, just within the week. I can’t wait to actually get some stuff up on this website!

Until next time,

Graham.