"Third-person tower-defence/beatem-up game centered around a rhythm mechanic"
Tech
- Unity
- FMOD
Roles
- Project manager
- Game design
- Sound design
Player Design
Rhythm centric combat
To allow the player to focus on the rhythmic gameplay we streamlined the controls to support this. X and Y buttons are used to attack, A button is used to dash and the camera only rotates on one axis with an automated zoom that reacts when player enters combat.
The combat is connected to the music by having the light (X) attack animation span ¼ of the bar and the heavy (Y) attack span 2/4 of the bar.
Enemy Design
Drone
The Drone is our main enemy, steadily attacking in greater numbers as the game goes on. Attacks the player when in range.
If six Drones are engaged with the player any more instead focus on the core.
Shooter
The Shooter is mostly a threat to the core, ignores the player wholly until it is in attack range, then only attacks the player in self defence. Has one slow moving attack!
Hunter
The Hunter focus only on the player. Introduced last as the player needs some skill to dispatch this foe. Has great speed, range, HP and two attacks.
Enemies and combat
We quickly came up with the design around the enemies. The idea was to have three distinct behaviours that would bring different experiences and have synergizing behaviours.
The Hunter was first envisioned as a Boss but we quickly changed that to allow for more interesting waves of enemies.
The shooter was first designed to attack both player and Core but we changed it due to time-constraints, and I believe the game was better of.
Score and streak system
Grades and score
Together with our UX designer I designed and implemented our score system to improve the games sense of progression and add to our “Visual Spectacle” PEG.
The player collects score when attacking enemies in rhythm. A base score of 50 is always awarded and a grade is set with a connected bonus score, sent to the multiplier before being added to the total score. If the player has a multiplier of 10 and performs with PERFECT input they are awarded with 1000p for every attack.
Creating and implementing adaptive music
*a horizontal music system reacts by jumping around in the track while a vertical system adds/removes instruments and/or melodies
Reactive music
I built a *horizontal music system in FMOD around the SYNC mechanic, the power accumulated by the player when she attacks to the beat.
A float value from 0-1 determines what part of the music to play. To allow for immediate audio feedback the shift in music intensity is instant.
To spare time I opted to implement real-time-mixing with FMOD snapshots that add some effects to the music during a transition to mask the cut, instead of writing music transitions. The shift always transitions to a prelude of the coming piece to glue the parts together.
SFX implementation
Besides music, I used FMOD to design and implement sound effects. Most SFX was provided by our resident UX designer and I used those files to create our final soundscape.
FMOD also allowed us to connect the music to the gameplay with their “BeatEventCallback” method that is connected to the BPM track I created for all music events.
Average rhythm
I decided early on that the music should be 120 BPM. The average heartbeat of a person is 60bp, double that and you get 120!
When looking at the billboard hits from thelast ten years billboard, many people seem to prefer songs between 120 and 130 BPM.
Me and our UX designer composed all music and I consolidated the tracks within a template I set up to give us a coherent sound. I mixed and mastered the tracks inside Logic.