BGP – Medium Enemy

This time I’ll write briefly about one of the enemies in the project I am currently working on.

Of course in the game there will be different enemy types, but we are doing out best to create at least some sort of context as to why they are there and why they are dangerous. It may appear a bit odd to discover a hostile welding laser in the middle of a corridor, but hey, the maintenance bay may be right around the corner, and if it’s hostile then surely there must be some nasty little robot-minions that moved it there.

Anyway, the one I’m gonna talk about is the Incinerator. Once it served to inceínerate anything its masters desired, be it masses of garbage, outdated files or on weekends helping out at barbeques.
Now it however fails to differentiate the players from average garbage, making it a little bit less nice.

The Incinerator-type enemy.

Becuase we can’t use red and blue too much since they represent the magnetism mechanic of the game, I had to go with something different to illustrate danger. After looking around at furnaces and heat warnings (where blue bodys with yellow details appeared to be fairly standard in industries) I eventually decided to go with easily recognized warning stripes. This may not traditionally be used as much to indicate danger from heat sources as preassure or falls, but I believe that players will be able to read it as a danger indicator regardless.

To make the enemy look a bit more interesting I experimented with heat discoloration on the top part od the “head” part. To create the correct transitions from yellow->purple->blue I determined that too many different shades would have to be used, clashin a bit with teh otherwise rather simple coloration of enemies, characters and interactable objects. Therefore I went with a slightly different approach, trying to create the effect of discoloration still, but more along the lines of paint giving way to the heat.

The enemy is in total split into 10 or so separate pieces that are placed in a hierarchy in Unity to allow the depth needed to be animated the way I want it to (like the hatch opening and revealing a smoldering interior as it starts to chase after the players) as well as to allow the glowing effect of the incinerator.