DLOG 1: Creating a 2D World
- Aidan Melville
- May 22
- 2 min read
Updated: May 24
Ready to dive into the creative process behind my projects. The Developer Log Series (aptly named DLOG) takes a deeper dive into the more intricate elements of creating the games I have worked on.
For my first DLOG, I wanted to kick off with the concept of Crystal Heist. Now Crystal Heist is my first ever fully developed and released project, it is available to play via Itch.io and there are multiple links scattered around the site and on the project page if you want to go check it out (there will also be a link a the bottom of this post).
Character Design
Se Yeon is the main character, designed in Libresprite by myself. When creating Crystal Heist the concept was to have a twist on the usual 2D platformer. I wanted the player to be playing the antagonist of the story rather than the hero.
I thought of having the player steal from a kingdom and I knew I wanted to have a ninja as the player.
Art is not my strongest area so this was a big learning curve, I had watched tutorials before, and done more lessons on 3D modeling over 2D art but after several days of YouTube I was finally in a position where I could create the main character.
A lot of this project was done to test my skills, practice what I knew, learn more and ultimately find out what I wanted to do in the gaming industry.
Starting with the silhouette, I modeled and mapped out a few based designs before settling on a shape and concept I liked. From there I moved on to colouring and designing the character. Once I was happy with the general design I blew up the character and added in details as well as the shading.
Finishing up with animation and designing the character poses for running and jumping.
Having learnt so much already I was pleased with the final result and moved on to the tilemapping and design for the rest of the games scene.
Level Design
Continuing with Librespite I designed the tilemaps for the game that are shown below.
The left one serves as the background and base for the game, it provides a theme for the game that I wanted to convey. I chose a Japanese style with Ninja themes, and to emphasis this I picked cherry blossoms and pink themes. With the background done I moved to the scene tilemap which included the buildings and platforms, image on the right is showcasing this. Again to keep in theme I wanted to design castles and dojo buildings using Japanese architecture.
Next DLOG we will be diving into Unity, looking into designing the scene and scripting the level. Below is a link to check out the next DLOG, and a download button taking you to Crystal Heist's Itch.io page for you to check out.
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