Maths Maze Game Assignment Progress Week 4

By the end of this week I aim to have created most of the levels in the game. This means programming the objects and creating the level geometry. In the second level I wanted some simple enemies and obstacles to overcome so I started exploring the use of paths and objects. I added in the lightning bolts and tesla coils to add a simple horizontal back and forth moving enemy. This is the simple path of the lightning bolts

I then created several lightning bolt objects that have varied speeds but use the same path. This is a quick walkthrough of the first level. If the player is hit by the lightning bolts they are sent back to the start of the level.

In level 3 I decided on a simple maze design. My initial idea was to have the player search a maze for particular collectables such as wire cutters and then chase a moving bomb around the maze to try and defuse it. I could not make this work however as when the player collided with the moving bomb, if they got the maths question wrong then I wanted the bomb to move off in the opposite direction. I couldn't figure out how to do this and the result was when the bomb collided with the player they got stuck together and neither could move. I decided instead to have a moving bomb that the player could not interact with and when the player found the wire cutters the moving bomb would change to a regular bomb and become defusable. This is the Game Maker code for the wire cutter object.

1. The event is a collision with the BrainBox object which is the main character object.
2. First it destroys the Wire Cutter object.
3. Then it displays a message that congratulates the player and tells them that they Moving Bomb is now defusable.
4. It then changes the Moving Bomb object into the normal Bomb object.
5. Finally it ends the path of the new Bomb object, making it stop altogether.

 

I wanted to put some background music in the game and I spent some time picking out appropriate music for each level. I went for a distinctively futuristic sound. It was mainly techno and electro type music. Unfortunately when I tried to implement the sounds into the game, Game Maker didn't recognise the music properly and it sounded incredibly distorted and was not good enough. This was very confusing as I had tried to upload the music in mp3 format, which is a very recognisable format and is compatible with a large array of software.

For levels 2 and 4 I used lightning bolts with varying speeds. This meant that for each individual lightning bolt I had to create an individual object. This led to me creating about 10 different lightning bolt objects that had varying speeds. This is not ideal as it clogs up the object list and creates unnecessary assets that increase the file size and slow down the loading speed.

In level 3 there is a bug where one of the Teacher Enemies gets stuck and fidgets back and forth.

I don't know what causes this problem but I changed the dimensions of the object to make sure that it was not that the object was getting stuck on the walls of the maze. It didn't fix the problem so I decided that it is most likely due to the path of the object.

For the final level I did some concept designs for the final boss BrainBoss. He is an evil genius and is not dissimilar to the main character. I started thinking that maybe the main antagonist could be some distant relation to BrainBox himself, such as another bomb defusal robot that went rogue. Here are some of the concept designs for BrainBoss.

Jetpack Design

Walker Design

Main Bomb Design

I then did some basic level designs for the final level. They mainly revolve around the idea of collecting items from each corner of a small maze and then using these items to open doors or defuse bombs on the way to the final boss. The player will have to answer a maths question each time they defuse a bomb and then will  have to answer a series of questions in sequence to defeat the boss. If the player gets a question wrong they will have to start the sequence over again. Here are the concept designs for the final level.

 

These are some concept sketches made in Adobe Illustrator of what the last level of my game will be. It is a boss level where you come up against the main antagonist BrainBoss.

1.       Player Spawn: this is where the player starts

2.       Keys: the player must navigate the maze to find three keys

3.       Doors: the keys are used to open up these three doors to get to the boss

4.       BrainBoss: the player then has to answer several maths questions in succession to defeat the boss.

Below is an alternate version of this level where the player has to collect wire cutters and answer three maths questions to defuse each of the three bombs to get to the boss.––