Following up on our shooting overhaul, we decided to look into a lock on system that would simplify shooting so we could let the player put a lot more focus into dodging obstacles, an aspect from our previous version that we didn’t want to lose.

I started to delevop a system that automatically fired bullets using pooling (to further reduce lag through the use of recycling). The way this worked is that the bullets would only fire when the mouse is over an enemy.

 

I created this lock-on animation in Flash through the use of classic and color tweens. This animation would follow the mouse while locking on and then stay in place once it had locked on. While this is a good step towards visual feedback of locking on I still feel like we need something more impactful to go with this to let the player know that they have locked onto the enemy, I was thinking possibly we could have it so the enemy flashes white for a brief second once they’ve been targeted.

Bullet firingcode:

	void Update ()
	{
//FIRE ON MOUSEOVER
		Ray ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay (Input.mousePosition);
		RaycastHit hit; 

		if(!Physics.Raycast(ray, out hit))
		{

			canFire = false;
			LockToggle = false;
			CancelInvoke ("Fire");
			return;
		}
		else
		{
			Debug.Log (hit.collider.gameObject);
			canFire = true;
			LockToggle = true;
			SpawnLockOn ();
			lockOnEffect.SetActive(true);
			Invoke("Fire",fireTime);
		}
//FIRE ON CLICK
		if (Physics.Raycast(ray, out hit) && Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
			{
//				canFire = true;
				Debug.Log (hit.collider.gameObject);
//				LockToggle = true;
//				SpawnLockOn ();
//				lockOnEffect.SetActive(true);
				Invoke("Fire",fireTime);				
			}
			else	
			{		
//				canFire = false;
			}
//
	}

	void Fire()
	{
		GameObject obj = NewObjectPoolScript.current.GetPooledObject(); //fires bullet

		if (obj == null) return;


		obj.transform.LookAt (EnemyDie.markedObject.transform);
		obj.transform.rotation = transform.rotation;
		obj.SetActive(true); //fires bullet

		firing = true;

	}
	
	void SpawnLockOn()
	{
		if (LockToggle == true && ReLockOk == true)
		{
		Debug.Log ("Spawned lock on");
		LockToggle = false;
		ReLockOk = false;
		}
	}

 

EDIT: 20/11/15

We had to scrap this idea due to a bug – bullets would ricochet between enemies (example: a bullet would fly through an enemy destroying it, then the bullet would change direction after another enemy is clicked). Also sorting out storing the marked enemies and shooting more than one of them was proving to be too time consuming, we didn’t want to have that working and nothing else. I am going to have to change the shooting system a third time and come up with something simple for the time being; I may be able to edit the ‘Fire on click’ section of my code to salvage something though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since two of our team members have been unable to make it in to work on our game we’ve decided to downscale the scope of the game as we are unable to meet our initially desired outcome.

From now on development of our game is going to continue with a slightly altered vision.

Arcade theme focus

We are aiming to make the game have a very arcade-style influence gameplay wise. This means heavy focus on accumulating score and varied play session length depending on player skill.

Endless runner gameplay

Instead of having multiple levels we will have one endless level that varies in speed and difficulty depending on distance travelled/current score. However we plan to incorporate a stage select that lets you jump to different difficulties if you’ve unlocked them, similar to Tetris. If we are able to get this perfected ahead of schedule we will move onto creating a boss battle sequence as a stretch goal.

 

 

Initially we wanted to have the shooting fire directly ahead of where the player was, similar to space harrier and the special stage in bayonetta.

Space Harrier

Bayonetta special stage

This posed some problems as the player would have to put themself in a position that did not align with the enemy to successfully shoot it, which didn’t play well as you had to guess a rough area where you needed to be to shoot the target accurately.

The way around this was to switch to orthographic view, but this ruined the look and feel of our game that we wanted to achieve as there was no perspective in the scene.

Upon finding this out we decided to do an overhaul of the shooting system. We decided to look back at the previous shooting system and make some changes.

Here is the one sheet for the game.

In the previous version of Ikarus we used texture scrolling on a  plane to create the illusion of movement.

We wanted to continue this illusion of movement in this second version of the game but expand upon this to make it a bit more immersive and believeable to fit with our new concept of contrasting visual themes.

We decided to use a ‘level block’ system that spawns a prefab of a level space that move towards the camera at a rate that connects all levels seamlessly. The prefabs are destroyed once they move past the camera to reduce lag.