Treasure Assault is the game created through the DM1122 labs completed throughout the course of semester one. It is an endless arcade style pirate game. The gameplay revolves around the player ship going around the map waiting near Islands to collect treasure/score. While at the same time pirate ships spawn around the map and attack the player. The Player then must shoot at these pirate ships to defeat them. The creation of this game required following lessons on a weekly basis. These lessons would give us the knowledge required to create each element of the game where we could then put it all together at the end in order to create a functioning game. As we progressed, we encountered challenges that pushed us to problem-solve creatively. This journey equipped us with the technical expertise required to go on and complete future work, this project was the stepping stone needed to continue along to create bigger and better projects.
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The Objective for this game project was to create a simple, fun and complete gameplay loop using the assets and guides provided within the lessons. These guides split the game up into its core parts the core part consisted of:
Since this was a guided project my tasks include all of the above list core parts. Some of these parts were easier than others. Many of these tasks were relatively simple, these simple portions consist of: an Isometric Camera and Click to move Movement, Cannon Firing and Cannonball physics, Countdown, Cooldowns, and Level Timers, Game UI. While simple there were many ways to go about completing these aspects. The most noteworthy method was that which despawned the cannonballs. As it differed from the lectures suggested method which involved the cannonballs upon hitting the water however, the method implemented instead despawns the cannonball based on a short timer, ensuring if for some reason they do not impact the water they are still despawned in time. There were still some struggle areas on complex topics encompassing the remaining parts: Finite State Machines and Enemy Firing, and Enemy Movement. These parts took significantly more time to implement, thus resulting in an increased number of bugs or in the case of the enemy movement, no functionality in the final version. These problematic issues obviously inhibit the functionality of the game and act as sources of frustration to the player.
In future during the event of a potential revisit to the project, the hope is to remedy many of the bugs that run rampant due to the multitude of improperly implemented scripts, as well as expand upon the core gameplay loop to enhance the player experience. Some of these improvements include, creating a procedurally generating world with a variety of Island types, and enemies, as well as possible upgrades for the player to obtain through a possible mission system. However if any of this were to be implemented first the bugs must be ironed out. In the current version the AI nav mesh doesn’t function as intended leading to stationary enemies, enemies are also limited to a few spawn points as a proper random spawning system was never implemented. The main issue within the game's current state is the lack of harm the enemy can deal to the player, in its current state enemies cannot harm the player meaning that only when the timer runs out does the game end. Lastly the implementation of a proper stylized UI to fit the game theme would be mandatory for any continuation of this game, this include the implementation of any settings menus and a home screen, these are vital to any game.
