Eternal Elude (October 2020 - March 2021)

Eternal Elude was my project for A Level Computer Science. I wanted to make a 2D endless dungeon crawler where you go through corridors and defeat your enemies along the way. This was the first project where I used Unity for the first time, and used C# for the first time. I was learning on how to make a game in an engine and language I never used before at the same time.

I created the basic mechanics of movement first, and learned how to create tilemaps, 2D sprites, animations, and how to implement them in Unity. Once I have got the grasp, the process went smoothly afterwards. Though the biggest obstacles I faced was the implementation of combat, the random generation of the corridors, and the A* path algorithm of the enemies.

YouTube videos helped me a lot to go through the obstacles quickly. Though the random generation was something that I made on my own. I didn't have the time to implement it using noise, so I created a snake-like algorithm which creates the corridors as it goes. Originally I wanted the corridors to branch off into multiple directions, but I never reached that point due to its difficulty of implementation.

The A* path algorithm for the enemies was something that I couldn't grasp at the time, especially trying to create it from scratch. I had to use an open-source plugin that helped my solve this issue. Though I still had to implement when they can move and attack using their detection ranges. The plugin helped to scan every map generation and detect every wall within it.

This project gave me a big insight on how difficult it is to create a game and the process of making one. I had to create a report documentating my objectives, stakeholders, implementations, what went well and what went wrong, and more. I learned how to create pixelated art for tilemaps, sprites, and how to animate. It was a worthwhile experience.