Welcome to part 2 of this tutorial series on making a Lode Runner-style 2D game with Unity 3D. In part 1, I introduced you to a bunch of free tools and scripts that we’ll be using and showed you how to setup your project. In this post, I go over how to create the level sprites and build your first level.
Of all the Unity plugins we covered in part 1, the main plugin we’ll be focusing on in this installment of the series is Orthello 2D. Orthello was recently updated with a lot of cool new features (as I write this, 1.6a is the latest version) so make sure you’re using version 1.6a or newer.
Initial Project Setup
We need to make a few changes to the project settings before we start making the sprites.
Build Settings:
File –> Build Settings…
Click on
Web Player
and then click
Switch Platform
. (You could leave this set to PC and Mac Standalone if you prefer.)
Close the Build Settings window.
Player Settings:
Edit –> Project Settings –> Player
Under
Per-Platform Settings
click on the little world icon (assuming you set your platform to Web Player in the previous step).
Click on
Resolution and Presentation
and change the
Screen Width
to
800
and the
Screen Height
to
600
.
Render Settings:
Since you’re typically not going to use Unity’s lighting system in a 2D sprite-based game, we want to brighten things up in here by adjusting Unity’s default ambient light. This step is optional.
Edit –> Render Settings…
Click on
Ambient Light
and change the color to white (
255, 255, 255, 255
).
Initial Orthello 2D Setup
In the Unity Project tab, go to
Orthello –> Objects
and then drag the
OT
object into either the Scene or the Hierrachy tab.
In the Hierarchy tab, drop down the little arrow next to the
OT
object and then click on
View
.
Change the
Pixel Perfect Resolution
to
800
x
600
(same as we set for the Player Settings)
Change the
Custom Size
to
10
Now if you select the
Main Camera
in the Hierarchy, you’ll see that Projection is set to Orthographic and Size is set to 10. Orthello automatically changed the Projection from Perspective (Unity’s default setting) to Orthographic when you added the OT object into the scene. And When we changed the Custom Size on the Orthello View object to 10, it set the Main Camera’s Size to 10.
With a bit of experimenting, I found that with a screen resolution of 800×600 and an Orthographic Size of 10, a Cube at scale 1x1x1 will be exactly 30 pixels on screen which happens to be the exact size of the sprites we’re going to use to build the levels which should make it easy for us to stick to a grid when building levels.
At this point, your project should look something like the following image (click to see a larger image). Note that I also added a Cube to the scene for scale comparison.
Download the project up to this point.
Making The Level Sprite Atlas
Ok now that all that initial setup stuff is out of the way, it’s time to dig in and have some fun. The levels in Lode Runner were built using just a few simple tiles: Brick (digable), Concrete (un-digable), Ladder and Rope.
Download the source sprite .png’s
and unzip the file somewhere on your hard drive.
Launch
TexturePacker
and then drag & drop all of the .png files from the
sprites/level
folder into the Sprites panel.
Then select all of the .png files in the
sprites/shoot
folder and drag those into the Sprites panel too.
Texture Settings / Layout:
Set
Algorithm
to
Basic
Uncheck
Trim
Uncheck
Enable Auto Alias
.
Texture Settings / Output:
Leave the
Data
format set to
cocos2d
.
Under
Data File
, click the little “…” button and browse the location in your project’s Asset folder where you want to store your sprites (I put mine in
Assets/SpriteAtlases
), name the file “
level
” and then click
Save
.
TexturePacker automatically adds the .
plist
extension to the Data File, but Unity wants the file to be .
xml
. So in the text field, replace .
plist
with .
xml
.
The Texture File path should already be set to the same location as the .xml file except that it will have a .png extension so there’s nothing to do there.
If you followed the steps above, then your settings in TexturePacker should look like this (click the image to see a larger version):
Now if you click the
Publish
icon in TexturePacker and then switch back to Unity, you should see a
SpriteAtlases
folder in the Project tab with the sprite atlas and a sprite data files inside.
We need to make a couple of changes to the sprite atlas in Unity so that it looks correct.
Select the
level.png
file in the Project tab. In the Inspector change the
Filter Mode
to
Point
.
Click the
Override for Web
box, set the
Format
to
Truecolor
and then click
Apply
.
Making The Level Sprites
Now it’s time to dig into Orthello and turn the atlas into sprites.
The Sprite Container:
In the Unity Project tab, expand the Orthello folders:
Orthello –> Objects –> Sprites –> SpriteAtlas
and then drag the
SpriteAtlas-Cocos2D
object into the Hierarchy.
In the Hierarchy tab, expand the newly created
OT
object and then the
Containers
object and you will see your new container with a name something like “
Container (id=-6840)
“. This is the Container that will hold all of our level sprites from the atlas we made so you can rename the Container to something obvious like “
level
“.
Drag the
level.png
from the Project,
SpriteAtlases
folder and drop it on the “OTSprite Atlas Cocos 2D” scripts
Texture
slot.
Drag the
level.xml
from the Project,
SpriteAtlases
folder and drop it on to the
Atlas Data File
slot. Now if you drop down the little Atlas Data arrow, you should see that it’s populated with all the sprite atlas data that TexturePacker generated for us.
Making An Animated Brick Tile:
The brick needs to have some animations on it that will play when it’s destroyed and when it regenerates so we need to make an Animation.
Drag an
Animation
object from
Orthello –> Objects –> Sprites
into the Hierarchy. This will add a new object under
OT –> Animations
named something like “
Animation (id=-4320)
“. Rename this object to “
level anims
“.
With the new
OTAnimation
still selected, adjust the settings to match those in the following image. To populate the Container field, drag & drop the “
level
” object from
OT –> Containers
on to the Container field.
Next find the
AnimatingSprite
object in
Orthello –> Objects –> Sprites
and drag it into the Hierarchy, this will make a new object in the scene with a name like “
Animating Sprite (id=-23050)
“. Rename this object “
brick
“.
With the new brick object still selected in the Hierarchy, drag the “
level anims
” object on to the
Animation
slot. The
Sprite Container
slot should automatically fill with a reference to the “level” container object, if it doesn’t you can drag & drop that onto the slot.
Now you should see a brick sprite in your scene and if you press Play in Unity, the sprite will animate through all of the frames in the animation. We don’t want the animation to play on start so uncheck the
Play On Start
checkbox.
Adding Collision To The Brick:
We’re going to need some collision on the brick later on so that the player knows when he/she’s standing on the ground.
With the brick object still selected in the Hierarchy, check the
Collidable
checkbox. This will automatically add a Box Collider and Rigidbody component to the sprite.
We also need to Tag the object with a specific tag and add it to a Layer. Go to
Edit –> Project Settings –> Tags
to open the
Tag Manager
.
Under
Tags
at the very top, drop down the little arrow and then type “
Ground
” (without the quotes) into the
Element0
field and press enter. We’re going to need a few more tags later on so while we’re here, add another tag called “
Ladder
” and “
Rope
“.
We need some
Layers
too so under
User Layer 8
, type
Ground
and under
User Layer 9
type
Ladder
.
Click on the brick object in Hierarchy and the drop down the
Tag
list in the Inspector and select
Ground
. Then click on the
Layer
drop down and select
Ground
from that list.
Turn It Into A Prefab:
Later on in the tutorial series we’re going to be adding some stuff to the brick object and making some changes so it’s a good idea to turn the object into a Prefab so that if you build a level with the brick and then and then want to make changes to it later, the changes will be applied
all
the prefab brick objects in your level. Making a prefab is super easy and will save you a ton of time later on.
Create a new folder in your Project and name it “
Prefabs
“.
Drag the
brick
object from the Hierarchy and drop it into the
Prefabs
folder in the Project tab.
Making The Static Level Sprites
Next we need to make the concrete, ladder and rope tiles. We’re going to use the same Container for these that we made before but instead of displaying them with an AnimatedSprite, we’re going to use the Sprite object.
Concrete Tile:
If your brick object is still sitting in the center of the Scene, move it to the side so it’s out of the way.
Drag & drop the
Sprite
object from
Orthello –> Objects –> Sprites
into the Hierarchy or Scene which will create a new object named something like “
Sprite (id=-3700)
“. Rename that object to “
concrete
“.
Drag the level object that we created earlier from
OT –> Containers
and drop it on to the
Sprite Container
slot in the Inspector.
Your sprite will appear but it looks like the brick sprite that we made before, that’s because the brick is the first texture on the Sprite Atlases index. Click and hold your mouse over the word “
Frame Index
” in the inspector (with the concrete object selected) and then drag the mouse to the right to scroll through the textures on the sprite atlas. The concrete texture is at index
14
so set it to that. The sprite should now look like a solid brick.
Check the
Collidable
checkbox to add collision to the object.
Drop down the
Tag
list in the Inspector and select
Ground
. Then click on the
Layer
drop down and select
Ground
from that list.
Drag the
concrete
object from the Hierarchy into the
Prefabs
folder in the Project tab to create prefab from the object.
Ladder and Rope Tiles:
The Ladder and Rope tiles follow most of the same steps as the Concrete tile.
Move concrete tile out of the way if it’s still sitting in the center or the Scene view.
Drag & drop a
Sprite
object from
Orthello –> Objects –> Sprites
into the Hierarchy or Scene and rename the object to “
ladder
“.
Drag the
level
object that we created earlier from
OT –> Containers
and drop it on to the
Sprite Container
slot in the Inspector.
Change the
Frame Index
to
15
, the sprite in the Scene view should now look like a ladder segment. That’s all we need to do on the ladder tile for now.
To make the Rope tile, duplicate the ladder sprite in the Hierarchy and then rename it “
rope
“.
Change the
Frame Index
to
17
so that it looks like a black cube with a white line across the top (that’s our rope tile!).
Now make prefabs from the ladder and rope by dragging each of the objects from the Hierarchy into the Prefabs folder in the Project tab.
Making The Bottom Border:
Now we have all the sprites necessary for making levels, but before we start we need to make a border object that will sit at the bottom of the screen. The border will give the player and enemies something to stand on if there are missing bricks along the bottom row and it will also give us something to snap to so that the levels will adhere to a nice grid.
Go to
Game Object –> Create Other –> Cube
and rename it to “
border bottom
“
Change the Transform Position to X: 0, Y: -10.3, Z: 0
Change the Transform Scale to X: 26, Y: 1, Z: 1
Drag and drop the border bottom object from the Hierarchy into the Prefabs folder in the Project tab to turn it into a prefab.
A small amount of the cube should be visible above the bottom of the Game view and it shouldn’t quite be all the way to each edge. The cube is pretty ugly with the default white material, so let’s make a material that matches the color of the bricks.
Create a new folder in the Project tab and name it
Materials
.
Right click on the
Materials
folder and go to
Create –> Material
and then rename the new material “
border
“
Select the
border
material and then in the Inspector click on the white area beside the little eye dropper icon, this will open up the color picker.
Change the RGBA settings to R: 159, G: 2, B: 0, A: 255 and then close the color picker.
Drag the
border
material and drop it on to the
border bottom
object in the Hierarchy to apply the material. The border should now be the same color as the bricks.
Change The Background Color
We’re almost ready to make a level, but first lets change the background color to black.
Select the
Main Camera
and then click on the color swatch next to
Background
.
Change the RGBA settings to 0,0,0,255. The background in the Game window should now be black.
Making A Level:
Whew! It took a few steps, but now you have everything you need to build a bunch of levels. Well almost everything – you still need a player, enemies, a pickup and a few other things which we’re going to cover later on in the series.
At this point you can just start duplicating the brick, concrete, ladder and rope tiles around the scene to make a level. BUT before you do, here are a few tips:
In the Scene view, click on the drop down list directly under the Scene tab – it might say something like “Textured” and change the option to
Tex-Wire
.
You can use
Vertex Snap
to easily align objects – in the Scene view hold down the V key and hover the mouse over any of the 4 corners on one of your tiles and you’ll see that the manipulator will snap to the closest corner. Click the left mouse button when the handle is over a corner of the sprite that you want to snap from and then drag the object to another sprite corner to align it tightly with that tile.
Remember that bottom border cube we made before, well you can use that as a base line for snapping your cubes so that you can build the entire level on a grid. Grab one of your tiles and snap the lower left corner to the upper corner of the bottom border object. Note that you don’t have to worry about snapping on the Z axis since Orthello doesn’t allow you to move objects along the Z axis.
You can also select several tiles at the same time either with shift+left click or by dragging an area around a bunch of tiles. Duplicate those tiles and then use Vertex Snap to snap them to other tiles in the scene.
Here’s what my initial scene looks like as I start by building the level from the bottom border object (click to see a larger version):
And here’s what a finished level looks like (click to see a larger version):
Conclusion:
I hope you enjoyed this post and learned a little more about how to make 2D games with Unity. In the next post we’re going to be adding a playable character so you can actually run around in the levels.
