Game Design – Designing the enemy’s movement pattern and behavior

By: Teddy Chavez Alcarraz / March 01, 2018 /
Program: Game Design
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Hi everyone! This week I will explain the process of the enemy movement and the design for it. As the designer of group Vampire I got the task to design the enemy’s movement pattern and behavior. The game we are developing, Umibozu, originally had 3 types of enemies in the game; a crab, a squid and a shark.

Concept_art_for_the_enemiesImage 1, concept art of the enemies from the concept document

Due to lack of time, we decided to only have the squid and shark in the game and scrap the third enemy, the crab. As my previous methods when it comes to designing Umibozu, I tried to implement a realistic aspect to the game. In this case I took a further look into the animal world and analyzed the squid’s and shark’s behaviors.

I began by looking at the squid and its natural behavior, what I found was the usual what one would imagine a squid would behave. A squid has jet propulsion movement, they attack with their tentacle, they squirt ink as its defense-mechanisms and certain species have poisonous tentacles. For the shark the information was very simple, they are very fast and dashes towards their prey, they also circle around their prey to then attack them. I searched online, mostly Wikipedia and other sources. I also looked at some YouTube videos as well to get a visualization of the movement and their defense-mechanisms. The research resulted with this design decisions:

Enemy 1 – Squid 

  • Jet propulsion movement
    • Moves at medium speed
  • Attacks the ship if the player is within at a certain range
    • Stings with its tentacles
    • decreases ship’s speed
  • Low health
  • Medium damage

giphyImage 2, a gif of a baby octopus with jet propulsion movement taken from giphy

spr_squidImage 3, art for the squid enemy

Enemy 2 – Shark

  • Circles around when the player is not nearby
    • Moves at medium speed
  • Charges towards the player when the player is within at certain range
  • Medium health
  • High damage

spr_fishswimming Image 4, art for the squid enemy

The design has been implemented to the game engine, Unity, and it looks great. The are only some tweaking to do with programming to fully nail their mechanics but otherwise i am very happy with this design and I’m also curious to see how well it will look in the end.

/Teddy Chavez Alcarraz

About Teddy Chavez Alcarraz

2017 Game Design
Tags: 2017