Powering Up

Meet Miguel! He’s teamed up with instructor Andrew A. as part of Game-U’s New Jersey Accelerate program. Miguel’s developing a web-based sidescroller in Construct 2, a game editor, and he recently drew inspiration from Mario to create a new collectible item – a mushroom power-up!

Power-ups give players an edge as they press through each level of their games. By increasing speed, boosting health, raising jump height, or even providing invisibility, power-ups take players to new heights. Miguel used a coin spawner as a reference to create his own power-up, hidden in a question block, that responds to to a collision event with the player. When a collision occurs, the question block disappears and spawns a mushroom-shaped object (the power-up) in its place. The player then collects this power-up and “mushrooms” into a larger version of himself!

To develop the mushroom power-up, Miguel used Construct 2’s event system. He connected events, like collisions, to a set of behaviors he wanted the objects to exhibit. For example, each object features a sprite (or graphic) to give it a characteristic appearance. When the gameplay video begins, the player dodges an enemy, races to a platform, and jumps to collide with one of several question blocks. How does the player, after the block disappears and the power-up is collected, suddenly become bigger? The collision event triggered a sprite swap! Miguel prepared two player sprites, one small and one big, and programmed the game controller to switch out the small one with the big one after the mushroom is collected.

Well done, Miguel! We know your game isn’t finished yet, but you’re doing a great job learning how to design, code, and troubleshoot your projects. Be sure to keep in touch as you continue to develop this sidescroller! We’re excited to see you bring your own games to life.