Blast 'Em By
Blast 'Em By is an arcade style bullet hell with the unique mechanic of having the player's reload be tied to movement, and their abilities tied to their ammo, making the player have to constantly move around the barrage of different attacks by the boss. This project was meant to show off my ability to design and implement different abilities based around a central mechanic, and my ability to design and create a rudimentary boss A.I. for the player to interact with.
Player Mechanics
In the project, the player is able to do one of three things. Move/Reload, Shoot, and use one of three abilities that cost ammo: Shield (which blocks the next instance of damage), Triple shot (which fires three shots at once in a cone), and Laser (fires a large beam that deals continuous heavy damage), with each ability having an indicator showing when it's ready.
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Movement was implemented through recording the position of mouse clicks and having the player's character move towards that area. However, a large challenge was that due to the 2D nature of the game the object wanted to move to the camera as that's where the click takes place. This would make the player and the boss unable to interact as they're now on separate axes. To alleviate this I made it so the player snaps back down to the proper axis upon the end of the move.
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The bullets the player fires are prefabs of a bullet object that spawn in as they get fired and end at a certain length, and the shield and laser are connected to the player object and are turned on with the abilities.
Enemy Mechanics
The enemy the player is fighting was one where I wanted to make a boss fight that gets harder as the player progresses and hits certain health thresholds.
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The enemy starts with a simple move pattern and a bullet that fires from it to the player's position at the time of firing.
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Every time that the enemy is taken down by a fourth of its health, it starts a different move pattern and will add a new move to the boss's attack pattern such as a bomb that travels out without doing damage, then explodes, a targeted area that will detonate after a short delay, and a spread shot similar to the player's.
Looking At Mouse
A unique challenge that I faced during the creation of this project was having the player facing towards the mouse at all times, and having the enemy looking towards the player at all times. While Unity does have a built in LookAt() function, it doesn't play nicely with 2D objects, especially when the mouse isn't technically on the same axis as the player.
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To solve this problem I needed to get the direction that the mouse was in relation to the player's position, and get the angle that I needed the player to be tilted towards. After that we rotate the player's model forwards and have them face the direction of the mouse. This way their forward direction is towards the mouse, and makes it so they fire towards the mouse.