First Tech Demo - Basic Combat

Progress on the initial foundation of the game has been steady. We have reached our first milestone of an early tech demo to test the basics of player movement and combat.

The goal of this tech demo is to test the following:

• Basic player movement
• Basic AI pathfinding
• Weapon system foundation

Known Issues #

Here are some things to keep in mind while testing:

• Crouching required to pickup items #

  Not really an ‘issue’ as this is simply because you shouldn’t be able to pick items off the ground while standing. However, many games do not require this, so may throw many off.

• Weapon equipping time #

  There is currently no weapon equipping and unequipping animations. However, the system is already setup to prevent use of weapons until it is ready. After switching weapons there will be no be nothing visible until the “equipping” is finished.

  It may feel like weapon selecting is broken if you do not wait for the weapon to appear when swapping.

Overview of Mechanics #

Enemy AI #

An early enemy AI was written using a state machine. The small enemy in this demo switches between patrolling and chasing. It uses a target locating system that has been developed to factor in enemy FOV, vision distance, and vision obstacles.

It will follow the player and if it looses the target, it will go to the last know location it knew the player to be going. If it still cannot find the player, it will start patrolling againg to find him.

The patrol system has been engineered in a way that will allow us to easily add enemy waypoints when designing level. These can even be placed procedually by the game engine.

Weapon System #

The early foundation of the wepon system was deigned to make adding new weapons as easily as possile. To do this it is kept very modular. We current have the ability to add weapons that shoot targets using a raycast, launch projectiles, and thrown weapons.

The player had weapons slots, which coincide with the number keys 1-4. Which makes for easy and familiar weapon switching.

• 1: Large Weapon
• 2: Medium or Small Weapon
• 3: Additional Medium or Small Weapon
• 4: Thrown or very small

The player can only carry one weapon in each slot and cannot pickup a weapon if the needed slot(s) are full. If that weapon the player is trying to pickup still has ammo in the clip though, picking it up will take the ammo.

There are currently 3 ammo types: small bullets, energy, and grenades. The ammo system is also modular and kept seperate from the weapon system. Allowing for weapons to share ammo reserves, and for us to quickly add new ammo types later.

The player’s first person view is designed for dynamic motion procedually. It will sway and produce recoil without the need for animations. Each weapon can be configured to produce a differnt style and amount of motion very easily using our built in tools.

Certain guns will also allow for aiming down the sights of the weapon. This is important because firing from the hip will produce a much higher and difficult to control recoil. This should add a nice layer of suspense to the final game. Making the players worry if they are ready or not for what may lurk around the corner.

Where do we go from here? #

You will likely notice the lack of sound in the game. Designing a system that allows for playing effects using 3D spacial audio will be one of the next targets.

Additionally, we will be focusing on developing some basic level design features. Having some items to interact with in the game world, as well as some basic objectives to accomplish.

This will put us very close to having a Minimally Viable Product.