AA shooter: Turrets and particles

With Richard absent this week, I worked on my AA project with the time given. I had a great idea in mind for my two player objects. Player one would have control of a machine gun turret that would fire lots of bullets very quickly, that would be controlled by aiming with the mouse and pressing LMB to fire. Player 2 would have a slower firing but harder hitting rocket launcher that used the Xbox 360 controller, with the right stick aiming and RT firing.

This contrast in weapons means that players will need to co-ordinate themselves and work together in order to win the game and not let the generator be destroyed. The faster firing player 1 needs to worry less about accuracy as they're firing a huge amount of bullets, but also deal less damage, whilst the rocket launcher is slower so needs to be more accurate and packs a much bigger punch as result. 

Picture of turrets next to each other

AA Shooting game: AI path-finding

For my game I'd like to have enemies that move up towards the player from cover to cover, before finally approaching the generator object and attacking it. In order to do this I need to use a navigation mesh and set points for the enemies to move between. I've created an array of points for the enemies to choose from, where they're limited to choosing from groups of four at a time. With the checkpoints set in rows of four, the enemies move from row to row advancing towards the players and generator.

rows of checkpoints

Unfortunately when all areas around the generator are occupied by enemies, even though I tell the next wave to wait until they're free, they try to occupy the spaces and cause a huge stack overload. Hence for now I've been forced to step back from the AI path-finding and had to stick with simply spawning them at set points around the players. I would like to play with this again when I have more time but for now, I have to give up on it.

Brand New Game Idea

Following on from my demo session on Monday, the last person to go over my game was my module instructor. When he played through my game he started talking about an entirely different game concept to the one I'd planned and constructed. Rather than talking about my original idea of the western themed target based shooter, he brought up the idea of an anti-aircraft style shooter. My characters are locked in place so can't move, yet can still look around and shoot from those positions. He said this reminded him of an AA turret style and that idea would probably be far more interesting and immersive. Originally I was skeptical of this idea but the more I thought about it and went over it in my mind, the better it was sounding and I've now decided to take this concept forward as my new game.

The new idea revolves around each player being in command of a turret and trying to defend a generator from swarms of enemies. Player 1 will control a machine gun turret which fires very fast but doesn't do a huge amount of damage. Player 2 will control a cannon like turret which fires slower than player 1 but packs a much bigger punch with it's shots. Both players must defend the generator from oncoming waves of both ground infantry and air forces. Infantry will be easier to kill, therefore there will be a lot more of them rushing the player, whilst aircraft are far tougher and in fewer numbers. If the enemy destroys the generator it's game over.

AA gun appearance I want to recreate

For extra mechanics I thought about airdrops every now and again to buff the players or hinder the enemy in some way shape or form. These will float down from the sky and players must shoot them before they land in order to activate it. On top of these, players will level up based on how many enemies they've killed. Leveling up allows players to add extra weapons, increase their fire rate/damage and increase the generators strength for example. I will be going through the entire design process for this game shortly in order to come up with a more refined and complete plan.

Airdrop that players can receive 

I think this game concept will be more successful because it's far more immersive for players compared to my original idea. I liked the Western game but I could see how people could become bored very easily, especially since I made it quite slow and the need for precision is necessary. This new idea is much faster paced and has far more explosions, which everybody loves in games. I was sold by what little my instructor suggested and feel what I've built on top of this is nothing but an improvement.

Demo Results

So Monday marked the first presentation of our games for the development module so far. For the past 2 weeks or so I've been working on a variation of the Western themed shooter that I've been designing. The mechanic of target shooting has stayed the same however I've chosen to lock the player in place and situate both players next to each other. I made this change because if both players could see each other then I would need to spend a lot of time making character models and animations. Locking the players in place together meant I could have a nice looking game without the need to make character models.

In preparation for the game demo I made a google form with some questions on it to record peoples feedback for my game. I asked questions about everything I'd currently implemented such as the characters shooting ability, the targets and the dual wield power-up.

Character Shooting - Overall the feedback for the shooting was that to firing was too slow, even   though it was meant to represent a revolver, and that the aim sensitivity was far too high. Changing each of these is very simple and just involves adjusting a few variables in the inspector. Other feedback around the character was that UI elements were too small to notice.

Targets - The size of the targets was commended however many people said adding a variety of sizes worth different points would be a good idea, which is something I was planning to do. Moving targets was also something that was suggested that I'd planned to do meaning I'm along the right track in terms of targets for the game. The only suggestion I hadn't planned was to vary the spawn rate throughout the game. Either a random time generator or perhaps more spawning as time goes up to ramp up the pressure of hitting them.

Re-sized targets

Dual Wielding - A common comment about this idea is that the controls are confusing. I'd set it up so that LMB fires the right hand weapon, like in most games but then RMB fires the left gun when active. This was a bad move because it confused most people, even myself at times. A few comments suggested sticking to LMB alternating the shots rather than 2 separate buttons which I agree with. One person suggested adding tougher targets to make use of the extra fire power which I quite liked the idea of.

Enjoyed - People seemed to enjoy the whole concept of shooting targets in a shooting range style.

Disliked - The things that cropped up the most were the using alternate mouse buttons to fire, the sensitivity and the small UI messages.


Taking everything into account I have plenty to work on to make the game smoother and more enjoyable as a whole a few of which I've already started on. Refining the shooting is the feature because it is the main element of my game.

Re-sized UI text