Week four self study + tutorial

This week for self-study we had two tasks. The first task was converting our scene into a simple game. We had enemies spawning and chasing the player, enemies colliding with the player and dying (with health dropping), health packs to restore health and a game-ending screen. The second task was coming up with 2-3 different game ideas based on the change theme: "Could be evolutionary, revolutionary, through iteration, or however you think change is expressed most interestingly". 

The first task was quite easy as all the functionality was basically already there, was given to us or was simple to implement.

The first feature was implementing the spawners. I edited the script to include the player to chase and the amount of damage to do on collision. I set the damage to 1 health unit.

Next, I added health packs using this model Simple Medkit/First Aid Kit by pomarf (itch.io). I made it so health packs bob up and down and rotate to make the generic game health pack. When the health pack touches the player the player's health increases by 2 units. 

Lastly, I made it so if the player's health hits 0, they despawn and a simple game over screen is shown.

The basic functionality of these features relies on events. When the player collides with a health pack or an enemy an event is triggered. When an enemy collides with the player the same event is triggered. Now that the event has been triggered a different action is performed. When the player touches a health pack their health increase. When the player touches an enemy, their health decreases. When an enemy touches the player, they despawn.

Using event-driven architecture allows easily reusable code because I don't need to check for the same circumstances to happen, I just see if it happens once and everything that listens to that event does its own thing.

The second task required me to use my brain which was a challenge, but luckily the theme wasn't difficult to work with. The hardest part was thinking of a game that could work in 3d and wasn't too simple or too complex; 2d games are a lot simpler to make in my experience having made no 3d games.

I asked my friend ChatGPT and he suggested a game where you try to rebuild nature by planting trees. Different trees would come with different animals. The basic premise would be a desolate world that you arrive to in a rocket. The world would be tiled blocks like Timberborn (Timberborn on Steam (steampowered.com)). Placing plants would turn the dead grey/brown earth into lush green. You earn points and win by turning the entire world green but certain plants bring different types of animals so your points can go up and down based on how the ecosystem would work. For example, adding a whole bunch of bears and deer would lower the score if the bear-to-deer ratio was too far skewed against the deer. The audience would be people looking to play a chilled laid-back no risks game where you can experiment around without worrying about economy management. The game's genre would probably be simulation and strategy. I think the game would be played simply where you just try placing random different plants to see how high a score you can get. The prototype would have solid brown blocks with slightly differing heights and placing a tree would spread life down and around the tree.

The other idea I came up with was a simple shooter with powerups. You spawn in a colosseum and face waves of enemies and after x waves you face a boss. Killing enemies rewards points and rarely rewards an immediate upgrade. The enemies can be anything from a typical fantasy game (slimes, goblins etc etc). The upgrades would increase in cost further down the line and increase that upgrades power. Some powers would be shooting more bullets. Increase bullet damage. Decrease bullet cooldown. Explosion on hit. Slow enemies on hit. Summon a vortex on hit. Lifesteal on hit and many more. There is no end to this game and the goal is just trying to get as many points as you can. The intended audience is those interested in first-person shooters who want to experience a bit of a power fantasy. The genres would be action and strategy. The prototype would be testing bullet effects against multiple immortal no damage enemies.

In our tutorial, we built up a "navmesh" of our environment and building so entities can move around the world with awareness of obstacles.

We had to have a moving obstacle in our world so here is mine:

I disabled grass to try to keep the gif size down. Didn't work.
Here I click on the screen spawning small characters who follow the larger character.

i.imgur.com/N3EB81b.mp4 

Not much happened this week but it still took around the same time to finish everything 🥲