Necrosis (Console Game Development Module)

Developed in a group alongside my friends James Bland and Temujin Tansey for our Console Game Development module in our final year at university. Despite being developed with console platforms in mind all console code and features that are covered by the respective console manufacturers NDA have been removed in the playable build and the reason no GitHub has been provided for this project. However the general concerns and techniques used to target lower end equipment will be discussed.

Final Grade for this project: 84%

Necrosis is a Two Player PVP Tower Defence game in which you two must seek the destruction of the enemies base by collecting resources strewn around the map and within drop pods in order to summon forth your demonic beasts to do battle on your behalf. 

This game was developed within the Unity Engine and given a PSX low poly style from the outset as a precaution when developing for lower end consoles where a consistent frame rate of 60fps would be paramount to be considered a success in our own eyes. Additionally the themes for this game being Tower Defence, Strategy and Puzzle were selected at random in a sort of game jam-esque way of getting us to think of unique ideas for our project.

Each level has it's own unique features and style to it we developed individually:

My Level, inspired by the likes of BioShock contains deployable tesla coil pylons that will slow down and damage any enemies demons that come into contact with their sphere of influence. 

James Level, inspired by the Dune series has a few features. The first is a black sun inspired shader that while purely visual ads a very nice flair to his level. The other mainstay mechanic of his level is a bug drone the player can pick up and begin flying around with its own custom night vision shader that highlights the player and their enemy among the landscape and is able to tase them to stop their advance on getting resources.

Tem's Level ,inspired by occult aesthetics and body horror such as scorn contains a huge heart in his level that the player can sacrifice their lifeforce towards in order to gain buffs for their side.

Development Setup

Given the complicated nature of group work our first task after the initial conception of the games design was to create a GitHub projects board on our already existing team GitHub and divide up the work equally but also in a way that suits our existing strengths. Additionally we decided to add a priority to each task so we didn't suffer from feature creep during development and knew exactly what we should be working on at any given moment.

After that in order to pass the initial pitch past out lecturer's we constructed a Gannt Chart in order to prove that this project was possible within the roughly 12 week timeframe our modules each have. 

This chart proved very helpful in keeping ourselves accountable alongside the projects board and while visual elements may have suffered and been the things we didn't get to within the project as much as we would've liked feature wise we completed everything we needed to do in accordance to the Gannt chart as well as getting it to run well on a modern consoles architecture.

Personal Contributions To The Group

Since this is a group project I feel as though highlighting the contributions I made solely of my own efforts should be stated clearly with a few in game screenshots or code snippets below.

- The summoning scales system that checks what items for summoning you currently have placed on the scales and if the amount matches or exceeds what you need your ally will spawn in.

- I made all the pickup objects have physics so they can be thrown around with ease and easily thrown from the drop pods around the map.

- I implemented the split screen in a couch coop setup you might see in halo campaigns that are split horizontally. It can also check when a controller has been plugged in or unplugged so that the player will stop and start taking inputs according and not mess with the second players controls.

- To unlock a drop pod for resources you need to complete one of my two puzzles on the terminal attached to them. The first requires you to press the start button or space bar when the red bar is within the green rectangle. The second puzzle will display a picture of a dpad or arrow key direction that you must press on your respective controller to unlock it.

- I also created the spawning of the objects that spew out of the pod upon puzzle completion.

- The shocking of the player that gets applied when they are shot or hit by James' drone was also done by myself.

- I created two guns. An Eoka styled shotgun for short range and a Rifle that could be used long range and have a custom shader to highlight their appearances on the map.

- The final feature I created was my Pylons which shrink down to fit in the players hand like a weapon and can be thrown out like a grenade to be deployed. If the enemy players demons begin to walk within its sphere of influence they will take tick damage and die.

Install and Play 

A pretty simple set up in regards to playing. All you need to do is load up the executable file provided and have fun. If you want to have two player controls you'll need to have two controllers but you can simply play through the game solo for the purpose of experiencing our features. You can change the resolution, volume levels and languages at will in the settings menu and use the level select to play whatever level you wish. Have Fun :)