The goal of 'Critical Mass' is to secure the highest score you can, however in order to 'bank' your high score you must self destruct. The player will start the game as a small player avatar with hordes of creatures scattered around the level. As the player hits each creature they will gradually grow getting bigger and stronger, the downside of this is their speed will decrease to account for the size increase. The larger the player is the greater score they will gain once they decide to self destruct, the explosion caused by the self destruction will also wipe out surrounding creatures with the explosion size increasing with the size of the player. If the player should get hit by one of the creatures on the other hand the player will decrease in size, thus reducing their projected score. The crux of the game is that the player must decide whether to bank their high score to be safe, or to gamble it by continuing to play and hit more creatures for a higher score.
Throughout my learning process in Unity my fellow masters student Barry Soilleux has been assisting me with the interface and most importantly the scripting. With Barry's assistance I have worked on the basic movement script and a script to decrease mass upon contact.
Though I still have a long distance to go with regards to learning Unity I feel I have developed my knowledge and plan on continuing this through further experimentation. I have also planned what other scripts I will require for the game:
- Script for the player to shoot projectiles
- Script to increase player attack power and decrease speed when growing (Could be added to growth script)
- Script for the movement of enemies
- Script to increase the players score (Could be added into the growth script)
- Script to self-destruct (and register the high-score)
- Script to reduce score upon contact with enemy
- Control Script
These are the only scripts required to get the game to a 'playable' level , however upon doing so my plan would be to add enemy variations as per my original concept document and a menu system. With the eventual goal being the capability to play on mobile devices.
In order to provide myself with basic assets to use in Unity and also to give me a refresher course in Maya I decided to spend a little time modelling some low res models to use in 'Bulk'. I created a basic enemy model which could also be used in 'Nightfall' should I require it (as i planned for the enemies to look the same in these two projects).
Though the creature is still in development and requires textures, this provided me with a useful foray back into Maya as I had gotten rusty after not using the program in a while. The creatures is also intended to be basic as I had decided the more basic the creatures and player the less narrative they present.
