In Search of Treasure

The Project

"In Search of Treasure" (http://valyogenoff.eu/treasure-game) is an online game in ten levels, which tells the story of a sailor on an island who is in search of hidden treasures. While texts and title are in Bulgarian, it can easily be played by speakers of any other language. The levels gradually become longer and more complicated. New obstacles and difficulties appear for the character. To do this project, I worked on three separate programs - Gimp, Dragon Bones and Construct2. I first drew all the elements separately in GIMP. It is a graphic editor similar to Photoshop. I also drew the moving objects in GIMP, putting the individual frames in separate layers and exporting them as an animated gif. I only made the movement of the main character in a separate program, Dragon Bones, because there you can animate complex movements in an easy way. Once I had all the elements, I started working on the maps of the separate levels of the game. First I drew them on paper, and then in Construct2. It works on the basis of JavaScript and HTML5. I have studied these two languages and I am currently learning C++. Although you don’t write directly into a js file, Construct has event sheets instead of code pages where you enter commands and parameters for each object. There is also a preview, where you can also program the objects from the command menu. While my first game was related to the learning material from first to fourth grade at school and after answering all the questions, the player doesn’t have many reasons to play the game again, now I wanted to create a game that keeps the player's attention longer. So, I did ten levels with increasing difficulty. Sorting the levels by difficulty after inventing, drawing and animating them was one of the challenges that took me a while. I painted the sets on the different levels in the colours of spring, summer, autumn and winter to make the next level more interesting and expected. The game became much more appealing when I added the music and sound effects. They are the work of my father, who specializes in film and game music. I, of course, built them into the game code myself. Implementing this idea helped me a lot to improve my skills in both digital drawing and programming. I drew most of the elements by hand, on a graphic tablet. I saw how the individual programs could cooperate, complement and help each other to implement an idea from start to finish. http://valyogenoff.eu/treasure-game/

View this project on YouTube