Jouster

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  Raven the Rabid flies over Barnyard Bob during a joust

Inspiration

Jouster is a player vs computer game inspired by a wide variety of arcade games of similar style built in the 20th century like Pac-man and Space Invaders. However, I would say the game that had the largest impact is Tekken 2, with its combat style and implementation of different fighting tactics (hence my inclusion of power-ups). And then of course, the actual content of the game, jousting, was directly inspired by Heath Ledger's A Knight's Tale.

What it does

As a player vs computer combat game, jouster consists of three characters jousting for the right to become general of the Emporer's army. The users continue to move their horses back and forth, accurately timing their joust to decrease the health of the opponent. After five runs, the power-up button loads, allowing the user to use the character's unique power which increases the abilities of their character for one stretch.

How I built it

With the help of Amazon Q Developer, Unity, and my own coding skills, I was able to build a jousting game. There were a variety of necessary functions to build including animations, power-ups, and defenses, but step by step I was able to implement the features. Additionally, it is important to thank Piskel for making self-designed pixel art such an easy and quick task.

Challenges I ran into

As more and more features were added, it began to get difficult to unify all of the moving parts. For example, the first feature I added was the horses moving back and forth, changing directions when they triggered the box collider. But then I had to add the attacks, the defenses, and the powers, which each had their own animations different than the classic run by the horse, so I had to disable those for the relevant ones.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I've been told that the hardest part about building a game is actually finishing it. And on my first-ever attempt, I actually finished building the game. At times the code got ugly, the art got messy, and the Unity classes became too overwhelming, but I didn't waver, and I was able to find solutions to each of the tasks.

What I learned

I learned a lot of different things while building this project. For one, I took note of the overwhelming capabilities of Unity 2D: the technology gave me the ability to do so and implement so many different animations into my game, hence making it far better, and more complicated, than I imagined. This led me to some confusion, so now that I know the abilities of Unity 2D, I will have a more concise plan. Additionally, I learned how helpful AI coding assistants can be. Amazon Q was unbelievable in helping me solve specified problems across my game. While I avoided using its live suggestions, its chat interface was extremely accurate in fixing issues.

What's next for Jouster

I hope that I can start adding more characters to the game over the next few weeks so that the competition becomes a bit more difficult. Since this was built over about 10 days, I did not have the time to construct the animations, power-ups, and more for other characters, but I should have time now. Also, I hope to add a live-play feature, where users can joust against each other on a live game.

Built With

• amazon-q
• amazon-web-services
• c#
• github
• piskel
• unity