FPS Toolkit (Programming)
At the University of Baltimore programmers and designers are required to take Coding Tools for Designers. The class requires students to take on two distinct roles for various steps of the process. Initially students are designers, concepting a type of game or project they'd like to create and writing up a document so that a programmer could create the necessary tools and scripts for the designer to bring the idea to life without having to do any programming themselves. Then we're asked to pick an idea and attempt to create the components. Towards the end of the semester we're paired up randomly, using someone else's programmed project to try and create a game. We go back and forth a bit, giving feedback on the tools we're given and bettering the tools we created with feedback from another designer.
As a programmer I chose an idea that requested a First Person Shooter (FPS) toolkit that could be used to create a game that has hordes of primarily melee focused enemies. I set about creating a toolkit that was flexible and robust, one that could be used to create interesting and dynamic FPS content. I made components to handle distinct behaviors, actions and events. Designers have the ability to create entirely new guns, having options to create automatic, semi-automatic, shotguns, and more as they mix-and-match options. Enemy AI was made to be malleable, the system handling all type of enemy AI to allow for the creation of more interesting encounters. I created two example creatures, one that uses melee and one that uses ranged attacks. The melee simply rushes the player and does physical attacks with invisible colliders. The ranged monster has two type of attacks, the gun which is a single raycast and the grenade which is a physical gameobject that explodes on impact. I made these two show how the same scripts can be used to create drastically different types of AI. Additionally I included an invisible entity, a manager class, to manage enemy attacks. The entity controls how many enemies can attack the player at once, helping manage difficulty.
The tools took design/programming trends from other popular FPS games to help inform the tools. Some of the most common tactics to create interesting encounters, gameplay, and difficulty were observed and recreated. Even the player character scripts were programmed fresh for this project, giving the designer access to values that influence player control.
You can download the entire project here
The current toolkit readme is here
(readme is included in kit)