Adding Spikes
Here is our TilemapForground, and I will make the width 64.
So the next thing we can do, and the most common thing you can see in a platformer, is spikes. So let’s create some spikes here. We can make one here. So the thing about pixel art is that it creates such strokes.
I think that’s probably pretty good. But, on the other hand, it might be a bit too much. And you can zoom, of course; it could be too much. And, of course, we want it to be one.
Perfect. Now we can fill in.
By the way, at this point, I hope you’ve figured out the issue and realized the aesthetic of the shadow. You may have wondered why you’ve seen so many indie games use this aesthetic because it’s much more manageable. Whenever you’re an indie developer, you need to find a way to make whatever you’re doing easy to do and aesthetically pleasing. And the best way to do that is to use a silhouette because it’s simple and effective. I will do some extra formatting, which is probably pretty good now.
I can now add in these spikes.
So look at this. I can add in some spikes here.
Let’s add them beneath.
You generally want to add spikes below where the Player is. However, there are a couple of things wrong with this.
You could see that these spikes look pretty menacing. But, unfortunately, the spikes themselves do nothing.
And to make these spikes work, you may need to add other spikes, and if you touch that spikes, the Player dies, and so on. So now we are trying to create this aesthetic work. So let’s go back to the tile map.
It’s excellent. So we will change the collisions to something like this.
A collision is not perfectly straight. Then it might cost some work for the computer.
You can see that you touch the spikes, but this would allow you to add extra spikes to make it work here. And, of course, you always want to test how far you can jump. Let’s see. When you’re trying the game, you want to find the limits. So maybe let’s add two spikes.
Then we’ll delete these.
We can probably test that for now and then add the graphics later.
Let’s try again.
We did this because we wanted to check how many tiles you can make for maximum difficulty. So let’s try it again.
You certainly can’t do that. You can make it if there is not a blip there. So let’s get rid of this blip.
You can see we’re testing two things.
I don’t think you can do that. So let’s go ahead and do it again.
You can do a nine-tile broad jump if the jump is the same here.
You have to get over this jump to get to the next level. Of course, this changes if you do a couple of things. That will also change if you change up the platform, like your speed and everything else. So you want to test out your speed, which can, of course, change the type of game. Generally, it’s good to build your levels last and to do all your testing first. That’s just the tip when it comes to making platform games.
