Team 12 Game Development Report 1 – Traps and mechanics

What I made: This week my big focus was on making traps and obstacles for the player to dodge.

The spider: The spider trap is a trap that will be somewhat hidden for the player and once the player is within striking range. Once the player is within striking range the spider will lunge downwards towards the player, the spider will charge downwards really quickly and once the spider has completed its charging cycle it will slowly reel back in to its original position and resetting its attack.
The spiders speed and and trigger distance is directly related to the players speed. This is so that the trap will not become obsolete if the player is traveling really quickly or really slowly.

How I made the spider: I made the spider in Visual studio in c++. It has several functions that are dependent on the players properties, I did by linking the players values to the spider so that the spider can read the players values.
The spider measures the players speed and distance and triggers once the values are optimal. Once it triggers an internal timer inside of the spider starts that decides how long the spider will charge. The timer starts at 0 and counts up to 9 seconds, the spider charges for 3 seconds and the reels back up for  6 seconds, once the 9 seconds has passed the spiders internal clock will reset and it will go back to 0 so that the cycle repeats.

Why I chose to implement the spider: I chose to implement the spider into the prototype because it is a trap that would be more interesting than just normal falling traps. Before I started to work on the spider I had made a falling stalactite and the choice was between the stalactite and another enemy and I made the decision to make the spider.
Why we wanted to have a spider inspired enemy inside the game: The team wanted a spider themed enemy because it would match the aesthetic style in the game. A lot of power ups are based on fireflies and a fireflies natural enemy is a spider. From a coding perspective I chose it because it would be an interesting challenge to have make an enemy that would have a charging attack and timer implemented into its trigger mechanics.

The end result with the spider was an enemy that was somewhat scary looking with and unpredictable behavior

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About Kim Gripenberg

2014  Programming

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