Mathew Lessmiller - Software Developer
A.K.A. Baconation
Norfolk, Virginia 23508
About Rise 2.0
One of, if not the most, feature-complete projects I have ever made; Rise 2.0 is an infinite platformer game with a heavy reliance on procedural generation. Released on Steam and Itch.io, this project took a good deal of time to create and is the first time I was charging money for a product. Many, many things I had to deal with were brand new to me: store images, pricing, achievements, controller support, accessibility, contract artists, Unity's new input system and the list goes on.
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That being said I am very proud of this game because, while it has flaws even now, I believe it to be a well packaged product. There are lingering bugs, art assets I never implemented, updates that haven't happened, but the core of the game is stable and strong.
Procedural Generation
Every time the player starts a new run, the areas directly above them get generated in new configurations. There are 57 tiles that are picked from, each with an entirely different layout, and then placed in a 3 x 2 grid. The main gimmick of this setup is that the player is able to traverse from one path to another via pathways that are created during generation. This allows the player to make proactive choices on which path they want to progress up with their limited view.
In the above example 1 and 2 are a special kind of prefab with tags to denote their ability to connect openings with other prefabs. In generation, if a right connector (RC) is chosen, the generation will check if it has any available left connectors (LC). If so, the LC is placed to the right of the RC to create an opening but there are limitations to when and where this connection can occur. an RC can never be placed in the 3rd position as it would exit the bounds of the play area. An LC can never be the catalyst for a connection as generation always happens from left to right. In addition, RC connections are limited to the pool of available connectors as the game will only generate so many of each prefab in order to save resources. In the case that no LC's are available when an RC is chosen, a normal prefab without an opening will instead be picked.