Heal or be Heeled - Game Dev Blog
This game is designed keeping three levels in mind, where the player comes together with other characters by combating or synergising with them to increase the overall health for everyone involved. An adventure survival game where healing is the only favourable option.
Interested in studying the tools Unity has to provide for bringing together such a game, this blog post covers how the game design is layered to meet its potential vision, followed by the technical nuances that did and did not work during this ‘Heal or be Heeled’s phased development.
The player begins on their own island, interacting and discovering collectibles that affect their health batteries. The collectibles also offer instructions on how to explore the game further and get to the next level. The goal for Level 1 is for the player to stabilize their health by curating their spaces, picking up items, and creating the means to get off of their islands. The player explores Level 1 in third person view mode, with the exception of gauging other character islands using specified telescope prop to shortlist destinations for Level 2. Based on the player’s selection, the darker the island is in the telescope filter, the lower the battery will be of the Non-Player Character (NPC) residing on the island.
Level 2 is where the player learns to navigate the sky map and make it to the other players, while also learning the ways of using their own machines. The player is restricted to a third person view in this level. This is a racing intensive level where the player is racing with their timelapsed selves that makes the level itself highly self destructive. The visual technicalities of self-racing are worked around by using overlapping cameras stacked over each other, serving the desired post processing effects, and scripts working in the background to calculate the scoreboard duration of level two, based on tallying the recurring attempts set at a certain frame rate interval. The optimization of code for this vision has not been met yet.
Level 3 brings the core of the game at play. Once an opponent island has been reached, the player is encouraged to keep up and restore their health by exploring the enemy island for more health collectibles.
The NPC opponent on the selected island is engineered to be a NavMeshAgent AI Enemy within Unity, customized with varying difficulty from other NPCs on the other islands. Using Unity’s Enemy AI feature gives more flexibility in defining the traits and engagement behaviour of NPCs. The lower the battery of either of the players in a close quarter combat, the tougher the healing battle will be, and the longer it’ll last. The lower the battery of the NPC opponent character is, the higher the damage cost will be to the health of the main player during battle interactions. The attack damage will increase exponentially if the player does nothing.
Once the players make it out of combat mode, the dialogue systems and decision-making logic step in to lead them into the following levels. A big part of the game is to work with other characters in the game unique to NPC responses and interactions. The decision-making logic of the game can be enhanced using NPC state machine encoded behaviour.
This is an open-ended level for this prototype gameplay design, designed to lead the player to move forward with other characters alongside them on following game quests. The game mechanics at work here are multiplayer combat interactions, environment quests, cinematic cut scenes, post-processing, and Unity AI agents.
References
Jojik. (2022). Setup Animations - UNITY 3D RPG COMBAT SYSTEM using FSM & Input System (pt.1). Retrieved September 23, 2024, from https://youtu.be/oyJN53HjExg?si=Moe_B87A4U1yXKsq.
(2022). 3D ENEMY AI in UNITY - (E03): TAKE DAMAGE & DEATH. Retrieved September 23, 2024, from https://youtu.be/75wFFvfcBH0?si=mgyn0gm6fT4KpYk1.
(2017). #01 - Make a Boat Controller in Unity. Retrieved 23AD, from https://youtu.be/FtcdkfvrQv0?si=fWIZ49xUqHCrmkQn.
(2020). How to Set Up Dynamic Water Physics and Boat Movement in Unity | Ship Buoyancy Tutorial. Retrieved September 23, 2024, from https://youtu.be/eL_zHQEju8s?si=F4fb75sgHJbkF9Uq.
(2019). Boat Controller - Unity Ocean Tutorial 4/4. Retrieved September 23, 2024, from https://youtu.be/gdW_rXFE1Gk?si=1dicaWoL_EDy364D.
