Year: 2017

Getting the character to climb up onto the platform and then jump back of the platform was a key game mechanic that I wanted in the game. It was difficult as the animations that I created of the character climbing and jumping in blender were not ‘treadmill’ animations like the walking and running animations. This meant that they moved the character physically in 3D space when called. This posed a challenge as because although the character ‘appeared’ to be moving, physically she wasn’t and so returned to her default position once the animation had been played. I also had to disable the characters running and walking animations/movement whilst the climbing and jumping was taking place to avoid issues, and then re-enable it once she reached the top of the platform. On top of all of this I had to ensure that the character rotated to face the right direction when climbing and jumping.

I had to use ‘events’ within the characters animation itself to define when the animation had been completed so that I could then manually move the characters position in the Y and Z axis. This causes some glitches in the engine as the characters offset does not keep up with the movement very quickly causing her to flicker between her movement. This is an issue that I hope to solve later but for now isn’t of the greatest concern as the basic principles of the movement work.

Here is a test of the animations on my character so far. I have also added several other elements to the game such as a rock with a ‘box collider’ on it so that the character is unable to move past that point. I have also added more decorative features such as the background, some decals to break up the tunnels and other game objects such as the radio. Slowly I am building up the ambience of each tunnel but introducing more details such as lighting.

I have imported my animated character and tunnel model from Blender into Unity.

I have started to code some of the animation to transition from the characters IDLE state to the RUN state. Including the speed and movement from left to right, and right to left.

I am now in the process of coding the character so that when she runs back and forth her direction flips to face the correct way.

After implementing the animation into the character I decided that I wanted the character to walk at a normal pace when the arrow keys are pressed and if you wanted her to run you have to hold down the shift key at the same time. This adds a bit more interactivity into the game and gamifies it by making the player have to put in more effort to make the character run.