Devlog 1: Player Movement

This is the first weekly development log for Slick Shifter. This devlog details the basic player movement and controls that have been implemented so far. It also lists adjustments that will be made to the game based on player feedback from the early game demo.

Player Sprite:

The player controls a vehicle from a side on perspective. The vehicle moves from left to right across the display. It is controlled using the ‘d’ and ‘a’ keys for forward and reverse respectively. The game demo utilises vehicle sprite from [1].

The vehicle is constructed of three different sprites. The car body, the front wheel and the rear wheel. An empty game object is used to group the three sprites. Each wheel is connected to the vehicle body using a wheel joint 2D which acts like suspension in the real world. To control the vehicle a movement script is used to read keyboard input. When player presses ‘d’ or ‘a’ each of the wheels begins to move and some rotation (torque) is applied to the body of the car. The wheel rotation is implemented using ‘motors’ on each of the wheel joints, a similar effect could have been created by directly applying torque to the wheels as is done with the car body.

Player Environment:

It is difficult to drive a car in space….

After implementing the basic movement, a simple environment was created to test the controls and handling of the vehicle. The environment was created using a closed sprite shape with an edge collider 2D attached. The ground texture is an asset taken from [2]. The texture asset was applied to a sprite shape profile with is used by the sprite shape asset. The brick asset is repeated to give the impression it is larger than it is.

Player Feedback:

Car body rotation:

Multiple players reported that the in-air vehicle rotation felt backwards, and that the direction of rotation should be flipped. It was also noted that the rotation was too strong while the vehicle was contacting the ground, causing difficulty controlling the vehicle up-hill. Lastly, while the rotation was too strong one the ground, player noted that adding more in-air rotation would improve the controls.

Control Scheme:

Some players expected the vehicle acceleration to be controlled by ‘w’ and ‘s’ for acceleration and ‘a’ and ‘d’ for rotation. Noting that this control scheme may be more familiar to them due to playing other similar games.

Playability and Entertainment:

It was suggested that a boost button be added to the vehicle to make the game more enjoyable overall.

Future Improvements:

To improve the vehicle control issues the control scheme will be moved to the ‘WASD’ format. That is, “W” for acceleration, “S” for braking/reverse, “A” for counter clockwise rotation and “D” for clockwise rotation. This should allow for more familiar experience for players and improve control precision as rotation is not dependent on acceleration. This will also eliminate the issue of body rotation while travelling up-hill.

Boost button will be added to the vehicle to make the experience more enjoyable.

In-air rotation speed will be increased to give player more control over the vehicle.

References:

[1] overcrafted, “FREE 2D Vehicle Assets by overcrafted,” itch.io. https://overcrafted.itch.io/free-paid-vehicle-car-sprites-

[2] alpha_rats, “Bricks tiled texture 64x64,” OpenGameArt.org, Jul. 06, 2015. https://opengameart.org/content/bricks-tiled-texture-64x64 (accessed Apr. 23, 2023).