Project Nova Weekly Devlog 1

Following on from Project Nova's recent Community post I made earlier this week, I've gone back to working on the game. This week was all  about completing two tasks : creating an Enemy Turret and re-designing the game's current level.

First Task: Enemy Turret

Implementing the enemy turret was pretty straight forward to do. I had to create two scripts "TurretController.cs" and "TurretShootCallback.cs". 

Inside the controller script i've setup the turret's shooting and looking at the player when in a certain range as well as its own reload mechanic (which is time based).  The other script will let the controller know that the player is within range to be fired at and when it is outside of said firing range. 

Image 1: Turret's gameobject structure in the Hierarchy                                                                                                                                                                                    

I've kept the "Gun" and "TurretShootCallback" objects as the children to the base so when the base is looking at the player they'll be keeping to the same rotation etc. 

  Image 2:  Enemy Turret in scene 

Here is the enemy turret in its current state. The sphere collider(Trigger) around it is the "TurretShootCallback" object. Obviously it's a little small compared to the Player gameobject but that is subject to change once the level is being re-created. I will also be trying to find the balance with its range when it comes to testing.

Second Task: Level Re-Design

The current level only consists one part due to the game's version being a Vertical Slice (Demo). This gave me the perfect opportunity to re-design the level completely as it is a mess. 

Image 3: Old level design 

This version of the level was created when I made Project Nova for a module in University. Originally each section was going to have two rooms each. As well as be more difficult as the player progresses through to try and reach the main exit. 

I didn't include a tutorial room in this design as i didn't think about adding one untill it actually came to working on the game at that time. Not only that but each section didn't really have a set theme which should of been linked to my game's story.  

Image 4: New level design 

This new take on the level design. Cutting down 2 rooms to 1 room for each section. On top of that the sections will have a theme to it which will relate to the game's story. 

TLDR: The facility has gone haywire and the player needs to make it to the main exit before the timer runs out, if unable to, secret exits will be opened up and the player will have to re-trace their steps just to find one but it will be harder to do as alot of enemies will be spawned in by then and enemy turrets will be active as well.

Each section will also include 2-3 keycard spawns, everytime the level is played a keycard for that section will be in a different spot.

Enemy androids will have one spawner that will be placed in each section too.

Next Week Goals

- Create the base for the level from the new re-design

- Implement a random spawner for the keycards

I'm gonna try to release a Devlog every Sunday just to keep you posted on what I have been up to with Project Nova.