Mittens' Adventure - Top down shooter + multiplayer

Community Showcases
1

Hello Game Devs and Unity Enthusiasts, I’ve been working on a top-down shooter for a while now in my spare time and I think it’s come time that I show a little bit of it. I’d love any feedback on anything that I post here (I plan on using this thread as a sort of dev-blog for this project.).

3501917--279191--Screen Shot 2018-05-18 at 2.25.25 PM.png
3501917--279191--Screen Shot 2018-05-18 at 2.25.25 PM.png760×434 264 KB

The Pitch

For millions of years, Cats and Rats have competed with each other in the vicinity of a mysterious dome so ancient that it predates both of them. Now advanced enough to apply technology to their curiosity, the Rats have attacked a Cat temple in search of an artifact. They believe the artifact will grant them access though the barrier and explore inside the dome. It’s up to Mittens and his squad to stop them.

In this over-the-top action shooter you play as an adorable fuzzy Cat named “Mittens” and will fight your way through scores of enemies. Use a wide variety of guns, vehicles, special power ups, and your bare claws to spill as much Rat blood as necessary and discover for yourself the ancient horrors that lurk under the dome.

Play with your friends in a wide variety of LAN multiplayer modes including co-op, deathmatch, capture the flag, and many more.

Single-player Gameplay
The gameplay is intended to be fast-paced. Mittens is very fast and can be made faster by bunny hopping. He’s also very nimble, able to fall from any height, jump wide gaps, and double jump. He’s got 8 weapons at his disposal (sword, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, flame/plasma thrower, and antimatter), all of which have three upgrade modes. These as well as powerups are scattered about the levels. Some types of bullets will go straight through walls and others will bounce around.

You have to be weary of your health, as a recharging shield is a powerup you’ll not get right away. Enemies drop health when you kill them, but it goes bad quickly, forcing players to continually push forwards into combat rather than taking cover. Cover is rare and circle strafing is the intended way to fight. The player will learn this from the enemies themselves as their AI circle strafes on the navmesh and flying enemies will circle above on a custom 3D nav system.

A powerup early on also gives Mittens an infinite supply of explosives, which can be lobbed at enemies. Even though he loves his guns, Mittens is also capable of killing enemies with deadly melee attacks.

Many levels can be sequenced broken with precise platforming or advanced techniques like grenade jumping, though neither are required to beat the game. Levels have switches that activate a number of things to allow progression. The level design heavily influenced by DOOM.

Some levels have long expanses which can be covered in a variety of vehicles, which switches up the gameplay a little and makes for some intense dog-fighting in hovercrafts, tanks, ATVs, and a ridable special friend.

You start by storming a Cat temple that’s been overrun by rats, then follow them back to their tunnels to get the artifact that they stole. The artifact allows Mittens’ entrance to the mysterious ancient dome where he is confronted by an ancient being and the horror that are trapped it there in the first place.

Level progression works by bringing you through the story with cutscenes that play while the next level is loading in the background. There is an overworld map which can be accessed which allows you to go back and replay sections. This is important for completionists as some of the most powerful upgrades are in early levels, but out of reach without powers you don’t get until later. There are also a handful of super hard levels that have to be unlocked by secret exits of particular levels.

Multiplayer Gameplay
You can play the campaign with a friend. All AI are fully networked.

There are also a variety of PvP modes. The classic deathmatch is face paced. Weapons laying around slowly switch to their upgraded versions throughout the match, causing matches to become more and more intense.

Yarnball is a mode with a single ball of yarn. Whoever holds onto it the longest wins. You can only hold a pistol while holding the yarn ball, but the ball itself is bulletproof, so hold it between you and your enemies.

Capture the Yarn is a two yarn ball mode where you have to capture the enemy ball and bring it back to your base. If they take your ball, you have to kill their carrier. Then you have to bring the ball back to your base, he’s hoping your health is high enough. There are health packs in multiplayers, but you have to weigh that against the objective.

The Preview
The lack of sound is a fault of my capture, not the game. Everything from the gunshots to the blood splatter makes noise. Walls are untextured because I’m focusing on gameplay and I don’t want to have to retexture stuff if I just want to change a ledge. Shown are the base weapons (they become overpowered through upgrades.)

0:02 You see your health and stats on the crosshairs, I found through play testing that your eyes are normally on your crosshairs, not in some arbitrary corner of the screen
0:04 You see group AI, attacking one caused the rest to work together, when I killed the leader, the lower ranks got scared.
0:08 You can see enemy bullets ricocheting off of walls
0:10 You see me pick up health that was dropped by the dead enemies
0:12 I switch from the pistol to the shotgun (notice how the FOV changes)
0:16 I kick and enemy to death and it goes flying
0:25 I switch to the machine gun
0:30 I follow an enemy that has surrendered into its hiding spot
0:45 I demonstrate the chain reaction of explosives
0:52 I toss a bomb to an enemy on the ledge which gibs it
0:57 I flip a switch that turns on a bridge I need to get across
0:58 The circular thing near the switch is a thruster that allows Mittens to jump very high, it’s turned on by a switch elsewhere in the level
1:01 I used a grenade to jump higher than I normally can (not a necessary trick, but a speed run strat)

5 Likes
2

Sorry about the video quality, Youtube ate all of my pixels. Here is a screenshot with actual pixels.

3501974--279199--Screen Shot 2018-05-18 at 3.45.28 PM.png
3501974--279199--Screen Shot 2018-05-18 at 3.45.28 PM.png780×439 209 KB

I’m quite proud of the amount of carnage that I can render at 60fps on my MacBook. Every kind of effect has an efficient pool, which both allows easy creation of effects but also limits them. It’s even staggered so that old stuff doesn’t get removed completely sequentially, meaning if you go back to an area you fought in before, there will still be blood on the ground, just less of it than during the battle.

3 Likes
3

I have a cutscene early in the game that features a large-scale battle. The Rat army is storming a Cat temple, and the Cats have to do their best to repel them. This was the first test round of that battle. The Rats are forced to rush up the ramps into oncoming fire and push through with brute force. Once on top, they spread out and flank. Once the area is secure, they head towards their objectives in on the second floor. They’re divided into squads and they move as a group. None of this is scripted, it’ll all AI. AI is controlled by the server, but there is a lot of client-side logic to keep everything in sync with such a large number of actors.

0:00 The Rats storm the ramps, trying to push to the top, Cats squeeze the top
0:14 The Rats push through and fan out, the Cats also spread out to compensate
0:33 On the top left, you can see a group of Rats try and take the higher ground, but are stopped by a Cat
0:50 You see a coordinated group push for the higher ground again
0:55 You see the remaining Cat retreat and the Rats run after it
1:00 The Rats return t their objective at the second floor

4

Part of what sets Mittens’ apart from other topdown shooters is it’s use of verticality. Some top down shooters may have different levels and staircases, but Mittens is a cat, so he’s extremely nimble. He can wall jump, double jump, and the level design takes advantage of this. Skilled players will use Mittens’ nimbleness to flank the enemy and reach secret areas with special weapons and powerups.

The enemies are also skilled at navigating the 3D environment, including some that fly in true 3D open space.

The focus of this game is fast-paced combat, but there will be a few sections where platforming is required. For skilled platforms though, they should be able to find multiple paths through every level which can provide advantageous positions.

You may notice a few times when an enemy right next to me will explode in a shower of blood without a bullet being fired. When you are close to and looking at a target, Mittens’ will automatically use a powerful melee, which you see in this video a few times as I actually kick then off of high places. I never meant for this to be used much except with a sword in PvP, but I found it a lot of fun and useful so I’ve been honing how it works. If you sneak up on an enemy, your melee will one-shot them regardless of their health and they’ll release extra pickups. I’m using this to continue to idea of push-forward combat and causing the player to never retreat as their most powerful attack is super short range.

0:03 I wall jump between two vertical parts to reach a high ledge
0:05 An enemy tosses a grenade at me
0:11 I drop down to gather some health from my slain enemy
0:16 I jump across a gap to an unsuspecting enemy and assassinate him
0:21 I double jump to another hidden platform, leading into another set of wall jumps
0:28 I kick an unsuspecting enemy off of the edge to his death and get a good view of enemy positions
0:31 I toss a bomb to an enemy on a wall then fire at him to distract him
0:36 I do some tight jumps to a sniping tower and melee the enemy on it
0:46 I use my height as an advantage to slaughter of the guards with my machine gun and bombs
0:57 I use quick bursts to control the spread of the machine gun

Does anyone have any thoughts on what I’ve presented so far?

5

Hey this looks really nice. I haven’t seen this style of shooter before.
Very interesting way of shooting at enemies at different heights.
Have you had any playtester feedback? I wonder how quickly new players can pick up the top down 3d concept :o Looks like it would take a bit of practise

6

Thanks for the interest. I have had some play testers. They did find controlling Mittens’ a little hard at first, but after a quick tutorial level they seem to be able to move intuitively. I’ve adjusted my game slightly in response to that. I’ve made some catwalks wider, and reduced the number of 45 degree angles. The first enemies you’ll run into don’t shoot at all and just chase you, to help the player learn movement. I have reduced the amount of platforming necessary to beat the game in response to this however.

I was worried that aiming would be too hard from this angle, but I implemented an aim-assist early on and have honed it to where it now should feel invisible. The crosshairs has a magnetic attraction to enemies, so it snaps between them, but the effect reduces over distance so as to never feel like you’re not in control over who you are shooting at. The bullets also bounce off of the floor and some guns have a fairly wide spread to help the player hit the target. I never want the player to feel like they are fighting to line up their shots, everything should be reactionary and “close enough” should count.

7

@newjerseyrunner Wow, it sounds like you’ve put a lot of work into the user experience which is awesome!
Looking forward to seeing more updates :slight_smile:

8

Love the idea , really unique.

The environment looks confusing but i feel as they get textures over time it will not be a problem.

9

Thanks, I plan on trying to have an update at least once a week, or at very least a new screenshot. I’ve done a ton of research into tricks to making the player feel powerful.

Thank you. I also expect the levels to be easier to navigate once they are textured. I also plan on adding decorative architecture which will subtly lead the player around. Lights will be the most obvious way that I make paths obvious. There are also some levels where you have allies that will help guide you to the objective. In several of the levels, the end of the level is actually visible from where you start from, they are fairly small arena-style levels. Some levels though are designed to be maze-like.

10

I was hoping to show off a multiplayer game today, but I haven’t touched that component in a month and my recent changes introduced a bug or two that I’d like to fix first. So here is a run-through of one of the early levels called Catwalk. There is more to the level than what is shown, but I’m not going to give away the secrets. One cool little feature is that if you look carefully, the enemies eyes change color depending on it’s state.

Also good news! I figured out how to get Quicktime to record the game sound, so this has audio. How’s it sound? Everything will make noise since I have a very efficient pool of audio sources which only trigger at certain distances. Every single bullet has bounce and impact sounds, I want it to feel like total chaos.

Interesting times:
0:15 I’m going after the orange Rat, because he has a shotgun which can both kill me quickly and dish out way more damage than my pistol
0:22 I clear out the bottom section and pick up some health (by killing enemies I can actually get it up to 300%)
0:42 I notice a green Rat. He’s got an assault rifle so I prioritize him. He’s actually not supposed to be down there, he jumped away from a grenade that one of his allies threw and fell
1:20 I active the switch guarded by two shotgunners, which actives a bridge on the other side of the map, but I don’t have to backtrack, I just hop down
1:34 You have to double jump across that gap, so this level forces you to master that
1:52 I sneak around a shotgun rat who’s sitting down, jumping on barrels to get back up, then blowing them up, nearly killing myself in the process
2:00 I consider rerecording because I fell, but decide to use it to show off how useful wall jumping can be
2:13 Notice that I’m still bleeding from that blast. This is useful because you can follow blood trails to injured enemies in both campaign and multiplayer.
2:15 Notice the two grey circular objects, we’ll come back to those later
2:38 I use a bomb to create an especially gruesome gib
2:51 A Rat grenade severely injures me and I’m force to retreat
3:01 Check out the amount of blood splatter and bullet holes!
3:08 I put my cursor on the wall to see that my health is at 15 and consider how to go about the next section
3:47 You see a behavior that I recently programmed, the Rat jumps away from the grenade I threw at it
4:18 I active the switch that turns on those grey circular jumpers from before
4:28 I gather ammo I left on the ground floor then use the jumpers to get back to the top without having to go around
I end at the end of the level, directly above where you started from

Does anyone have any questions about what they saw?

PS: Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors, autocorrect misbehaves sometimes.

11

Last night I wrote the code for Mittens’ invisibility powerup. I didn’t want to have to write refracting shaders or anything like that, so I looked to techniques from the past. I implemented what Quake did: you become completely invisible except for your eyes. Enemies can’t see if unless you shoot in this state, and it’s easy to hide as a set of eyes in deathmatch.

12

So here is a demonstration of the PvP. This is a game mode called “Yarnball.” The rules are simple: The enemy yarn ball is in their base, you spawn in your base with your own ball. You have to balance defending your own ball and going to get theirs.

You start with a pistol and no bombs, but your bomb count will recharge quickly. There is a machine gun and shotgun on the map to be picked up. To add to the chaos, the weapon pickups all get upgraded twice. This causes the game to get crazier and crazier as it gets near the end. You respawn with just a pistol again, but pickups respawn quickly.

The map you are seeing us play on will not be included in the final game. Knowing the layout of the map is a major advantage in a multiplayer game, so to fix that during my playtests, I just recreated a map that both players already knew. This is the Halo CE level “Longest.”

I noticed a few bugs during this play through, but they were minor so I just left them in the video. The system was confused about which team I was on. As of writing this, that has already been fixed.

This video should really highlight the juxtaposition of violence and cute. Here is a screenshot of Mittens model himself, isn’t he cute? (I still have some work to do like bump mapping and alignment, but you get the idea.)
3525994--282304--Screen Shot 2018-06-08 at 12.39.57 PM.png

Timeline:
0:00 You can see the layout of the entire map, notice how for this recording, I’m the client and my wife is the server. This is actually running over our wifi between our two MacBooks.
0:10 We’re waiting in the lobby. You can shoot each other in the lobby, but not die. Players stay in the lobby until all players have joined.
0:17 Match starts, I spawn in the red base with red armor (this game mode is a team mode)
0:23 That’s one of the Campaigns AIs. Not sure if I’ll leave enemies in the deathmatch arenas, had the idea that the arenas themselves were dangerous like The Hunger Games. I was actually surprised to see it there because I thought I’d removed it for this video. But it’s actually kind of nice because I’ve mentioned before that all the AI is networked too but I never really showed it. The other computer is the server, so no AI is running on my machine at all. These are dumb animals who’s only interest is defending their own territory, they’ll actually leave you alone unless you get to close and they’ll warn you before attacking.
0:31 Wait, did that just say she’s got my ball? I cut across the hallway and head back to my base to try and get it back
0:42 Opponent sneaks out of my base with holding my ball (I don’t actually notice her yet)
0:56 We start in a pistol fight, she can shoot through the ball, but it also blocks my shots, so I have to circle strafe around her. Not sure why she got gibbed from the pistol, that’s a multiplayer bug I think. I’ll fix it today probably.
1:02 I pick my ball up to return it (I could have just left it there if I wanted to, or taken it somewhere else and hide it). Notice how I’m moving slower with the ball.
1:10 Enemy ball reset? Oops, looks like the team system has a little bug in it. I’ve already fixed that upon writing this. The incorrect audio confused me which is why I tossed a bomb.
1:40 I kill the opponent with a bomb… weird, that’s when it should have gibbed. Probably in the same code so it’ll be fixed with the other.
1:45 Assault rifle. This powerup’s aura is green, that’s how I know which weapon it belongs to. There is also a weapon model there, I’m trying to make the weapons distinguishable from this overhead camera vantage point.
1:55 I hear gunshots so I check over the ledge to see if I can spot where they’re coming from. She’s clearly gotten into a confrontation with an AI.
1:56 You have to double jump to make that gap (I think)
1:58 “Weapon pickups upgraded”. All weapon pickups laying around the map are now an upgraded version of themselves. I make a move for what is now a double barreled shotgun. The shotgun is orange.
2:12 Notice how grabbing the ball caused me to switch to my pistol. I can switch to another gun at any time, but I’d drop the ball too.
2:20 I run right into her holding the ball as she’s killing a native beast. I hear that she’s picked up the upgraded pistol (called the Phaser) and her aim is dead-on. ( @Serinx This is encouraging to me because she’s only played a few minutes, it lets me know that the controls are easy. I’m clearly going to be better at combat than her, but a first time player can control well enough to do that.)
2:22 This is what it looks like when you die, I’m waiting to respawn in my base but I can see my body, so I’m aware that she’s pickup up and moved the ball.
3:00 You’d think your vision would feel tight with the overhead view, but because the camera tilts and moves with the cursor, you can actually see a great deal. I can see halfway down this long hallway. Some weapons (like sniper rifles) have wider FOVs and could easily see both ends of the hall from the middle.
3:05 I’m not just jumping to jump, Mittens moves significantly faster whilst bunny hopping. I want to really encourage acrobatics.
3:20 I miss horribly because I was aiming at the wall above my opponent and she killed me before I could adjust. Notice where my bullet holes are. That’s just me being bad, and my wife kind of beasting it. Notice that her pistol bullets are yellow.
3:25 I spawn right next to her and run. Notice how she can shoot straight through that pillar, but my bullets hit it. This is because she had the Phaser. There is no cover when the enemy has that so (especially since she’s behind the pillar and out of my reach) my only hope was to try to get out of her field of view and try to get to the assault rifle before I die.
3:36 Now with the chain gun (which is the upgraded assault rifle) I have a better weapon than her so I go to fight.
3:44 I get the upper hand and kill her with my chain gun.
3:54 I drop down to pick up the phaser just because. I can hold all weapons at once so it doesn’t hurt, but I’m heading for the shotgun (which has now both a double barrel upgrade and an explosive round upgrade.)
4:12 I spot my opponent heading down the hall towards my yarn ball. From the position that I’m in, she actually can’t see me (or can barely if she jumps) so I ambush her with my explosive double shotgun. I shoot it a few extra times because it’s a lot of fun.
4:34 We run into each other again. The explosive shotgun bullet has a delay so if it hits a wall right after being fired, it’ll just impact or bounce. This is necessary or else you would blow yourself up a lot, which sucks.
4:35 That’s my dead body from before. Bodies and giblets will stay the entire match. The blood and bullet decals are in a staggered pool. A lot of the blood from when I died is still there, but not all of it.
4:43 Double chain gun, this is a bullet hose with faster moving, more damaging bullets.
5:00 I notice how much time is left and try to see if I can get it to my base, but the clock runs out.

If anyone is wondering, it’s running between 40 and 80 FPS (Averaging around 60) on last year’s MacBook Air.

13

Today I did something scary: I touched almost every script in the whole game. I added one of Mittens’ final and most useful features: Time Warping. Late in the game, Mittens will encounter a powerup that locally alters the passage of time. I didn’t want to globally alter the deltaTime because I wanted it to be an entirely local effect. This is so that it can be used in multiplayer and will only affect those close to the player using the object. It also changes your motion through time based on how far away you are from the source of the field. Objects near the middle move extremely slowly and allow you to duck and weave between bullets with ease. This will help with later bosses and areas that would otherwise just be considered “bullet hells.”

Here is a small sample: Notice how bullets slow down as they enter the field, but then regain their speed once they’ve left it. Even the navmeshagents and gravity is affected.

I also plan on using this feature as a way of soft-locking you out of certain areas in early levels. I have some upgrades that are protected by turrets that will spread you very quickly, unless you’re really good or can bend time, which makes dodging the bullets quite easy.

14

So a little about me and the scope of the project: I’m a 32 year old software engineer for a media technologies company. I have a wife and am raising my nieces and a nephew. I work on this game in my free time and play parts of it to relax sometimes. I’m making a game that I want to play and have fun playing. I enjoy playing many different kinds of games for different reasons. I grew up on Mario, Contra, Metroid, DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Halo. I still go back to the classics very often either in an emulator or collector editions. Sometimes I play casually, sometimes I ramp the difficulty to the max, and sometimes I speed run. Mittens is an evolution of an idea I’ve had rattling in my head ever since I saw a top down level of Contra and made my first game in QBasic eons ago. It was my favorite level in the game and I’ve always wished there was more top down levels.

Mittens’ Adventure itself will be 42 levels long, 34 of which are involved in the story. 25 of which are currently built. None are finished because I’m purposely holding off on texturing because I still move things occasionally, but several are ready for that step, all enemies have been placed and triggers are set.

The game starts in a Cat area. Structures are very Cat-like: Buildings either look like jungle-gyms or like their made out of cardboard boxes. Everything is happy and fluffy. You will work across varied terrain to the area civilized by The Rats where the levels get more maze-like and there are lots of interconnected tunnels and little holes for rats to scurry around in. You’ll discover an ancient relic which allows Mittens to follow the Rat army through the until-now impenetrable energy barrier. Under it, the levels change again and head in a sci-fi direction as you explore the ruins of the advanced species that erected the dome in the first place. There are two major plot twists here so I won’t post much about these levels, so if I have long stretches where I don’t post any updates, I’m probably working on them. The final section takes another turn in level design as you encounter the downfall of the advanced species. The 8 levels that are not involved in the story have to be found. I’m calling these the “Kaizo levels” and they will be orders of magnitudes more difficult than the rest of the game. They’ll require tight platforming and combat and lots of tricks like grenade jumps. The last of these levels is the game’s true ending and reveals another twist, but I expect very few people to see this ending.

The levels are fairly small. I have multiple reasons for this.

First and foremost is that it’s expected to be fairly difficult and dying and starting the level over I expect to happen to a casual player at least a few times and I don’t want it to be frustrating. The levels are laid out so that I expect it can be completed casually in less than ten minutes. I die plenty in Mario, and it doesn’t feel back to retry those levels, even if I died right at the end. The levels are also small enough that you can remember the whole thing while you’re playing it. This is my template in terms of die-and-retry mechanics. I haven’t decided, but I may also leave doors unlocked if you die, sort of like a checkpoint. I’ll playtest that and see.

Secondly, all of the levels double as multiplayer arenas. In campaign, I keep levels fairly linear with locked doors and jumps that are too high/far. In multiplayer, I unlock most of the doors and activate jumper platforms to allow completely free flow around the map. Maps are also specifically designed to have two “ends” where defensive bases are. Usually this is the beginning and ends of the map, which maps sense, in campaign, you start out in a defensive position and push out, ending in the most heavily guarded enemy area. That’s already perfectly laid out for asymmetric capture the flag.

Third I require that my game is fun for both a quick sitting and a long stay. Lots of gamers are adults with stuff to do. If I’m going out in a bit and just wanna play something while my wife’s getting ready, I’ll fire up Mario because I can have fun with it in five minutes where a game like Halo requires that long just to get into it.

The game moves forwards automatically with cutscenes, loading the next level in while the cutscene is playing. But there is also an overworld, much like the Mario games. This allows you to go back and play any level at your discretion, as well as just roam around the map looking for clues as to where the hidden levels might be.

15

I’m building a few more weapons this weekend. I do expect them all to be completed by the end of the week. I’ve had some people ask me when I described the game how weapons such as sniper rifles would work in the top-down. Here is a demonstration of the sniper rifle.

The higher FOV allows you to see significantly more of the map than any other weapon. This allows you to take out enemies in the campaign from high above or far away. It also allows you to pin down and take out opponents from long range during multiplayer. I’ve designed the maps for sniper spots so a well positioned sniper isn’t invincible, but can hold a team off for a short period while teammates respawn or cross the map. The bullets move way faster than any other too and hit with enough power to one-shot a player without a powerup. It will require some skill however, because it has no auto-aim where all the other weapons do. Close enough is not good enough for a sniper shot.

16

This weekend I did some iterating on some of the levels, rounding out a lot of the corners. I fixed places where the camera would clip into walls, and moved some things that felt claustrophobic. I’m always jumping around the levels to make sure all the movement is fluid. All of the modeling is done in blender, and I’m keeping from baking any lights or texturing anything so that I always feel free to adjust geometry.

So here is a demonstration of the tank, which is the first vehicle that the player will encounter. There will be a few different vehicles and the end of the game is a mad dash on a high speed scifi vehicle after the final boss. You steer with the mouse and can go forwards and backwards. Each vehicle has different types of weapons, the tank tosses a powerful explosive, which detonates on contact. You can also hold the “jump” button which will lock the vehicles trajectory and allow you to fire your guns in any direction. You can see me run an enemy over at the end of the video too.

The tank gets introduced before the first boss, so I want the player to feel powerful leading up to it.

17

Yesterday evening I was tweaking my rocket launcher. I’ve had it built for a while but I’ve been changing how it works slightly.

The rockets are programmed to head in the general direction of their target for half of their flight, taking slightly random paths. During this phase, they move more or less on a flat plane, but slightly up. Then, they dive-bomb straight to whatever the crosshair was on when it was launched. There is a powerup that allows you to also guide your rockets and have them chase your cursor. During this video I have a quad rocket upgrade attached, which allows me to fire up to four rockets in rapid succession by holding the trigger down. This allows you to sweep across an area and light then whole thing up. The rockets also have a safety mechanism where they’ll only partially detonate if they hit something before the delay is up. I find it quite easy to accidentally fire into a wall so this helps with that.

*I didn’t notice the mouse cursor there, I think it’s an artifact of switching to Quicktime to start the recording. It’s not normally there. That’s actually good because it demonstrates how the crosshairs is magnetically drawn towards enemies. Most of the time the crosshairs is right on the mouse, but not when near enemies, I’m just moving my cursor in their general vicinity. I don’t want my game to be about precision shots, but more about movement and feeling powerful.

This is a demonstration of the homing missiles. I fire and as long as I hold down the trigger, they will follow the crosshairs. When I let go, they’ll home in on the last thing it was on. They’re quite maneuverable: I can make them orbit or even turn around and blast myself.

1 Like
18

I had to work today but after work I finished a first draft of my tutorial level. I put t off until after more than half of the levels are already built because John Romaro said to do it late when you’re good at level design.

The tutorial starts with a set of narrow bridges to get the player used to controlling the character. If you fall, you climb up a ramp and try again.

An attack dog creature will jump down at you and try to knock you off the bridge at the last minute to try and rice the player to go over the bridges at least twice and see the enemy behavior in relative safety.

Then comes a series of jumps, each higher than the last so that the player understands that the longer they hold jump, the higher they go.

You then loop around to a high bridge where you can see the start of the level below you (and can fall to.). This shows the player that verticality will play a role in Mittens, which normally isn’t very important in a top-down shooter.

That then leads to a boss battle. The boss isn’t difficult, it just charges you but it’s got very high health. This engages the player until a group of allies show up. They fight with you in a big showpiece then the boss runs off, ending the level.

I finally got all of this working today and look forward to play testing it.

1 Like
19

I’ve created three new levels this week, all of which are later levels in the game. One is full of lava, which has to be evacuated before the lower section of the level is accessible. There is some platforming, meaning you’ll have to jump between rocks in the lava, but the rocks are large and not far apart. The main danger is the enemies that are shooting at you while you traverse.

The second is a run down area designed for playing ontop of a special type of vehicle. The vehicle moves fairly quickly and is nimble. It has no long range attack, but you can use your own gun, and it’ll automatically kill anything tat gets too close to it.

The last is a rat level. It’s the only level that’s explicitly a maze. It’s not huge, but I do expect the player to be lost in this level and make several wrong turns and have to backtrack.

20

I have all of my weapons create shockwaves for a number of reasons:

  1. It helps players determine where off-screen shots are coming from in both multiplayer and campaign
  2. It helps you identify the weapon your enemy has (each weapon’s shockwave are their own color and correspond to bullets, flashes, and the weapon itself.)
  3. It creates a lot of nice graphical effects on the screen while being very cheap to process, as everything is in a pool. (Basically a low-level Skinner box.)

Movement is key to playing this game and I really want to emphasize that so I have a fairly large movement set. As fast as Mittens is normally, you can make him nearly twice as fast by bunny hopping. While bunny hopping, you get a shockwave and a perkier “meow” to let you know that you’re doing it right. By doing three bunny hops in a row and then maintaining that, most of the maps can actually be crossed in a few seconds, which is perfect for multiplayer.