🟢 Airspace Invaders (Stef)¶

1. Concept¶

This concept is an expansion on this game’s concept I made ealier in the school year.

And is further inspires by these ‘Bullet Hell’ concepts

Story¶

In the year 2038, the United States Air Force (USAF) has adopted the use of artificial intelligence to operate aircraft as a standard practice. As the protagonist, you assume the role of ‘Thomas Voyage’, a traditional pilot-in-command within the USAF who has consistently opposed the implementation of A.I. technology in the Air Force.

With world tensions high and rising, it is not unexpected that A.I. networks would become the primary target, and unfortunately, this is precisely what occurred.
A statesponsored cyberattack, has successfully infiltrated the data centers of the USAF, taking control of the fleet that is controlled by artificial intelligence. It’s up to ‘Thomas Voyage’ to eliminate as many hacked aircraft until allied pilots can provide assistance.

Target Audience¶

The game consists of levels that can be beaten in less than 10 minutes meant for casual. The player can select from various difficulty ratings, ensuring a constant level of challenge regardless of skill level. The highest difficulty level is exceedingly difficult and will be nearly unbeatable.

Core Mechanics¶

Player can switch between 3 different aircraft that all have different dodge mechanics and attacks.
Player can perform low damage attacks indefinitely and high damage attacks if the player has ammo. Ammo can be picked up from defeated enemies.
Enemies range from yellow (1) to dark-red (4) in how difficult they are, more difficult enemies fire more attacks and have more HP.
Player can choose between easy, normal or hard. The difficulty increases enemy difficulty by 1 level.
Player is warned of incoming attacks from enemies.
Player must survive dozens of small waves of enemies until one side is defeated.

Moodboard¶

Prototype¶

2. Game rules¶

Wave Mechanics¶

Gamelevels are split up into many waves consisting of enemy aircraft that spawn offscreen and enter the screen from the sides, these waves are indicated with a number and on a UI bar that progresses with each wave. The color of the wave on the bar indicates the level of difficulty of that section.
These waves are spawned in every so many seconds apart from each other. If you manage to take out all the enemies from the previous waves, the next wave will appear earlier. This ensures that the game stays fast-paced, without any downtime waiting for the next wave to show up.

Aircraft Mechanics¶

There will be 5 different aircrafts, 3 are normal aircraft that can be flown by the player and enemies, the other 2 are boss types that are bigger, with more dangerous attacks.
The 3 normal aircraft the player can chose from all have 2 different attacks, one of these is weaker but can be used indefinitely, while the other attack is more powerful, but can only be used if the player has enough ammo for it.
The player can collect ammo from defeated enemies, more powerfull enemies drop more ammo. Ammo travels downwards so the player is needs to grab the ammo before it moves offscreen. Collected ammo is shared between every player-controlled aircraft, but will have different amounts per use depending on their strength.
The player-controlled aircrafts all have different mechanics for escaping enemy projectiles, such as: teleporting, becoming temporarily invincible & gaining a temporary speed boost. This means that players will need to switch between different aircraft types depending on the situation to effectively evade difficult attacks.

Highscore Mechanics¶

Defeating every wave results in a win for that level.
The player has 10 lives per level, the player will turn temporarily invincible when hit (invincibility frames).
Defeating higher difficulty & boss type aircraft result in more score.
Being fast to complete a level results in less points being deducted.
Missing a projectile you fired results in points being deducted, resulting in the player not being able to spam the whole level whilst not even looking at theit targets.
The higher the player scores, the higher the rank they get on the level, this ranges from f-tier to s-tier.

3. MDA¶

Mechanics¶

Switching between aircraft types for advantages in certain situations.
Collecting ammo for shooting the second more powerful weapon.
You can get a higher score by:
1. Missing less projectiles you fired
2. Beating higher difficulties
3. Beating the level in less time
4. Beating the level with more lives remaining

Dynamics¶

Dodging projectiles
Usage of more powerful weapons on more difficult enemies
Saving up ammo for more difficult waves

Aesthetics¶

Challenge: Players are encouraged to aim for high scores & ranks by selecting a higher difficulty and striving to minimize their errors and completion time.

4. Formal elements¶

Player
Player Projectiles
Enemies
Enemy Projectiles
Ammo
Warning Indicator

5. Level design¶

Enemies are categorized into four levels of difficulty, represented by different colors from yellow to dark red. However, only difficulty levels 1 and 2 enemies are spawned, with their levels increasing with the chosen game difficulty.
This means that in the Easy mode, only difficulty 1 and 2 enemies will appear, while in the Hard mode, players will face difficulty levels 3 and 4 enemies.

The game will consist of no more than 10 levels which can all be played from the start. These levels are different in:

Wave count
Wave intensity
Next wave delay
Enemy difficulty (1/2 + difficulty rating)
Choice of enemy type

6. Feedback loops¶

The player is encouraged to defeat enemies as fast as possible, so that the next wave doesn’t spawn while there are still enemies on screen, increasing the challenge.

The player’s level-ranking increases based on their performance (ranging from F-rank to S-rank) being awarded for more flawless gameplay, thus motivating the player to strive for a better rank.

7. Difficulty control¶

On the level selection screen, players can pick between Easy, Normal, or Hard difficulty ratings. The chosen difficulty determines the strength of the enemies that appear, with increased attack speed and health points. Additionally, each level is designed with specific enemy types and wave mechanics in mind, so the final level might only feature boss-type enemies while the first level may not.

8. Game phases¶

The game only has one game phase whereby more and more enemies spawn on screen and the player has to defeat these enemies before there are so many that the player can’t dodge their attacks anymore and loses.

9. User interface en transitions¶

User Interface¶

Level select
Difficulty select
Overall level difficulty rating
Highest score achieved on levels
Start button

Game level¶

Ammo count for weapon #2
Ammo usage per shot for weapon #2
Wave count & current wave count
Wave intensity bar & current intesnsity pointer (based on wave count)
Lives

Transitions¶

After choosing a level with your desired difficulty rating, you may press the start button to enter the selected level.

If your HP drops to 0, your score will not be saved and you will be taken back to the Main Menu.

Proof of Concept¶

Technical Achievability¶

One reason why I decided to build upon my previous work from ‘Blok 1’ is that I incorporated object-oriented programming back than in p5js using classes. This is easy to remake in Unity’s C# since it’s also object-oriented.

Drawing custom plane silhouettes will also be easy to recreate by connecting different points to form the contour of the shape.

I have faith in this concept being easy to create in a short time, meanig we’ll be quick to reach the Minimal Viable Product (MVP). But the concept also has a lot of potential to improve upon: - Adding unity’s light System so rockets emit light to objects near to it
- Adding smoke particles to rockets & downed aircraft

Financial Achievability¶

Our game has to be free of charge for this school project, but itch.io does allow developers sell their games for a price or for free with donations being available.

Terms of Service¶

It’s important for us to not use copyright infringin material, this is what the itch.io’s Terms of Service has to say:

The Company does not endorse copyright infringing activities or other intellectual property infringing activities and violations of may result in the removal of content if the Company is notified of such violations.

Quality Guidelines¶

The Quility Guidelines are pretty straightforward, but here are some guidelines on your gamepage.

Uploading game¶

Sources¶

itch.io ToS
itch.io Developers page
itch.io Quality Guidelines

Last update: April 25, 2023