Game Design Blog #2
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For two weeks I have worked on the full implementation of the pick-up powerup called the flare. A powerup in any videogame is there to make the player feel powerful while also trying to ease them out from a serious situation. The reason our group chose this kind of a powerup is caused by the similarities it has with the flashlight mechanic which essentially is a light that when held upon a blurry sprite, reveals what the actual sprite holds which either is an enemy sprite or a powerup sprite, thus making the players experience easier to handle time to time. The first idea was that the way the flare works is when collected and fired with the required button press, it sends a single red particle that becomes larger until a limit which essentially stays around for 5 seconds. This reveals most of the blurry sprites on the playable screen. The process of me making the flare started with figuring out the particle system. Firstly I made a single particle move towards the camera, as our unity project is in a 3D world it made it possible. Then growth was also added to the particle giving the illusion where the flare gets high up in the air in a top-down view. The next step was to actually making the flare reveal the blurry sprites which I were able to do by copying the flashlight mechanic. But instead of using a cone hitbox I used circle hitbox which took over most of the screen. After the input was done where the “q” button would be used, a slight problem was brought up by the project manager. The problem was that when enemies got in touch of any light hitbox they got into a aggro which made them move towards you to attack. When the flare was used it made less of a powerup and more of a suicide button as hordes of enemies suddenly moved towards the player. This was fixed by making the enemies hit by the flare hitbox to not change status to aggro but rather stay where they are.
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