Artifact 2 – The Obstacles in BAT the Game

Five weeks has now passed since my team 12 and I started the Space Shooter Project “Heartbeat Bat”. The original concept was designed by Team 7.

For this week’s blog assignment I thought I would tell you about the different Obstacles in level 2 (the Forest) and level 3 (the Cave) I have been working on.

Limited vision vs. Speedracing game
At first our game was being designed to give the player limited vision. Early on however we noticed with help from playable digital prototypes that this mechanic was making the player feeling annoyied by limited sight and too hard with obstacles. We wanted obstacles in our game and that was one reason why we removed the limited vision mechanic.

Since our game is a speedrun game we thought that obstacles would be a good idea to add to the game in order to make the racing experience more challenging for the player. (The player has to avoid the obstacles and if  she collides she will be slowed down to her original speed). The obstacles are placed on the middle layer where the avatar is flying. This forces the player to have to avoid obstacles that are coming in her way and makes the game more challenging than just flying through the level. 

Another reason to add the obstacles to the levels was also that they helped to create depth to the visual game environment. How? More objects and layers placed in the right order and with the right color and values will increase the illusion of depth in a 2D sidescrolling game. The third and last reason was because since the environment is looping in the background we wanted to prevent the player feeling like she is passing the same environment. By placing different obstacles for the player to concentrate on, the focus was taken from the looping background.

Forest Obstacles
The first obstacle in level 2 is the Hollow Tree. I divided the tree in two layers, the background hole part and the forground trunk part with a hollow part for the hole to stick out.
 
The second obstacle types are different Trees with Branches the player has to fly above or underneath in order to avoid crashing and loosing speed. I only had to create one branch, since the programmers are able to rotate and scale the branch to make it fit in the tree trunks, which saved me alot of time. I animated a warning blinking glow in the branches in order to pop out and clarify for the player that the branches are danger and should be avoided.

Cave Obstacles
The Cave level I felt had a lot of potential for obstacles. Since this level contains a roof, unlike the forest in level 2, I was able to make obstacles hanging in the roof in the shape of Icicles. The cave roof is an entire obstacle containing of different sizes and shapes of icicles that will fall down on the player when she is within their reach (stalactites with a jiggeling moving animation not shown here since they belong to blogpost 3 artifact 3 together with cob webs and gayzers) or the other icicle type just hanging down passive from the roof and forcing the player to avoid their position. If collided by the icicles they will slow the player down.

The second obstacle is a Ice Tunnel with the same function as the Hollow tree in level 2. It is made out of two layers that overlap in order to make it look like a tunnel passage. The overlapping and placing the objects on different layers makes it possible for the player bat to fly through. The bat is above the first half of the tunnel layer and behind the second part of the tunnel layer. This gives the player the illusion of flying through something allthough the entire environment and obstacles are flat and 2D.

That was all for this time. Next blogpost will be about the animations I have been working on for our project, and I will focus on the Traps. Stay tuned!

And remember..
             Time is of the essence!