Transformation

Game development is not always about roses. Recently, I started working on the transformation sequence. After all, a magical girl is not a magical girl if she can't transform. This is one of the things, combined with other struggles, that really challenged my ability, discipline and creativity.

Development difficulties

Creating the transformations proved to be much, much more work than initially anticipated. I opened Aseprite (software to make pixel art animations) and started working on the first sprites of the transformed player. Then, I made everything needed to create a smooth transition, and when ready, the real struggle started.

So in Unity (the software I use to write this game), I took a completely wrong approach. I spare you the technical details, but basically I couldn't figure out how to achieve what I wanted using the animation tool provided by Unity so I started writing a script myself. The script worked perfectly, but I later realized this was not the correct approach because it resulted in a lot more work.

Sometimes, you have to take a step back. This was one of the moments for me I had to rewind quite a lot of work and continue from an earlier version. Thankfully, I use Git (version control software) so I could easily rewind back to a point from where I could continue working.

After thinking for very long, I finally came up with a solution that allowed me to implement transformed versions of the player using the built in animator of Unity.

So, what is the status now?

The first version of the transformation sequence is ready and working. I'm currently creating the sprites for the first transformation, which I am roughly halfway in.

You might be asking: "first transformation? will there be more?". The answer is yes, I will create more transformations. But that's all for the future; for now I will keep it at a single transformation because I want to make the game demo-ready as soon as I can. The full game will have all transformations available, of course!