Game Dev Blog

03-02-2015

Made some significant changes to the map layout. As you can see, I have changed the room tile that each “cabin” uses to a larger tileset. This is so I could add the aesthetic props such as the bed and tables into each room.

You may also notice that the “death room” has been removed. This will be explained later.

The majority of these props have no actual use aside from aesthetics, but after some experimentation with the computer prop, I have figured out how to display text and other images onto it. This is extremely useful, as it enables me to use billboards and room signs as directional tools.

I also added lamps that can be turned on and off by clicking. It doesn’t add anything to the overall game, but it is a nice effect. It should be noted that each cabin is slightly different, but follow the same prop scheme.

Room Changes

Using a combination of billboards/room signs and popups, I am now able to create signs that the player can read in order to navigate easier around the map. This is extremely helpful, especially with the addition of the side quest. The main drawback of these signs is that they use popups to work, which means they have to have a background to actually show up. There are only a limited selection of backgrounds available inside the program and none of them quite match the design style of the level. The backgrounds I am currently using are the Sci-Fi and Parchment ones, top to bottom respectively.

Billboards/Room Signs

The main thing I worked on during this session, aside from the map/room changes was the optional side quest. This is a small quest built within the level that the player can complete in order to gain extra loot and also visit the secret room. The quest is multi-tiered, requiring the player to backtrack through the level a few times in order to complete. Due to it being completely optional, the player can simply bypass it and finish the level straight after beating the boss if they wish. To combat this, I added a series of popups that would tempt the player to continue with the quest. The picture on the right shows the first popup, that plays after the player opens an empty safe at the end of one of the cabin corridors.

Side Quest

The player can also speak to an NPC in a small room before reaching this point who will ask for help finding a pet robot. This ties into the questline, but gives no clues as to where the robot is hidden.

Once the player backtracks through the level, they will see the door to the newly named (Thanks to the room sign/popup combo) “computer room” is now open. This was done thanks to a simple rule where the door is opened at the same time as the safe. Inside the room they will see an egg, which when clicked, will reveal a small robot who will follow the player when clicked on. The player must then guide the robot back to its owner, who will promptly reward the player.

There is a slight issue that the robot seems to be slower than the player if the player sprints, and can also get stuck on corners fairly often. This is due to the AI in the follow command and there is not much I can do to fix it. However, the AI seems to figure out how to get around it if the player simply waits a while.

Currently, the NPC will “see” that the robot has been returned to her once the robot enters the room where she is stationed. I may change this if a better option becomes apparent, as if the robot lags behind the player a few inches, meaning the player may not get credit for returning the robot if they do enter the room fully.

Side Quest

Once the player has returned the robot to the NPC, the popup on the left will show up, giving the player directions on how to find and enter the stash room. This step is also multi-tiered in an effort to force the player to explore the entirety of the level, instead of rushing through and missing sections. As a result, the player will now find that a room in the cabin area is now open that was previously locked. This will direct them to a console that will open the stash room door when clicked.

I am considering added “respawning” enemies for this quest as well, as currently, once the player has eliminated all of the aliens, no more will spawn, which means that they could potentially kill all the enemies on the level then come back and do the side quest. This will mean the entire quest will just be running back and forth which isn’t fun. It could be done quite easily by simply having inactive aliens that become active after a certain task has been completed. This will raise balancing issues however, as the player will need additonal resources (ammo/medpacks) to deal with these new enemies, however if they skip the side quest completely, they will have an abundance.

Side Quest

Once the player has activated the console, the “Maintenance Room” door will be open and the player will be given a series of powerful items. There are currently three, singular use medpacks and one multiuse. There is also a combined 40 ammo for the ray gun. The big item is the “Cubic Device” which is the highlighted item in the second picture. The player needs this item in order to access the secret room at the end of the level. The mechanism for this is not quite finished and the secret room has not been made as I am still struggling with how to add custom music clips to the game, as the computers we are using seem to be lacking sound drivers. Hopefully this will be fixed soon however.

Side Quest

Something I discovered when conducting small playtests of the side quest is that the triggers that are used to trigger the lore popups work both ways. Meaning that when the player is backtracking through the level, they will activate these triggers a second time. A quick fix to this was made, where the trigger becomes inactive as soon as the player walks through it. It still activates the popup though.

Trigger changes

Before today, there were 3 main ways in which the player could open a door.

• Providing some kind of input, e.g Keycard/Lever

• Walking up to the door e.g Spatial Triggers

• Clicking on the door

I felt that this constant change was confusing and overall badly done. As a change, I have removed all doors that open via spatial triggers and now all doors open either by clicking on them, or by providing some sort of input. The screen to the right will show up after the player beats the first combat room, after which all doors will open by clicking on them, aside from those done by an external trigger.

Door Changes

Yes, I did notice the typo in “able”, this has been fixed.

As speech is still broken, I have revised to using speech to serve as a dialogue option. As this doesn’t allow the player to reply, it is one sided, but does provide the context I wanted to include with dialogue. The picture to the right shows what the NPC in the room immediately following the spawn room will say when clicked. It also contains a small reminder to the player to pick up the weapon found in the drawers in the spawn room.

This revision is used at several points, particularly in the side quest, and whilst I am hoping for a fix, it seems to work quite well, so I may just leave it as it currently stands.

NPC Interaction Temp Fix

Some small revisions have also been made to the health values in the game. The max health has been brought down from 300 to 150, with the player starting on 100. This was because due to the regeneration function, the player could essentially wait on the spot, to regain health to max, and it would take 30 direct shots to kill the player, not factoring in regeneration in between. With a max health of 150, this has been mostly eliminated, however it will still take 15 shots to kill the player from full health. This may not seem like a lot, but the targeting AI on the enemy NPC’s isn’t very good and they only actually land around 30% of their shots. This may make it too easy for the player to simply “tank” through the shots.

Health Revisions

A small change has been made to the teleporter at the end of the level. Now a “teleporter” effect will be visible at all times as shown on the right. This is further convey the aspect that the player is to walk into the teleporter, without directly telling them to do so.

Teleporter effect additions

One final change made today, was the changing in the death script. Previously, once the player died, they were teleported to a room away from the main map and told to restart the game manually, to address the problem that I have discussed previously. After a search of game functions, I have discovered that it is in fact possible for the game to restart itself once the player has died. Currently, I have a popup that will be shown as soon as the player dies, informing them that they have died and that the map will restart in 5 seconds. The map will then restart and the control popup will show.

Death changes