gyakoo/spooky

One-month Jam game. C++/UWP/DirectX11. 3D first person shooter. Halloween themed.

Spooky

Manu Marin
Game from scratch in c++/directx11/uwp for a one-month game jam, halloween themed.

October 31st 2016

GAME

• First Person Shooter
• Kill all enemies with treats and candies, room-by-room to open it up
• When the room opens, you can hear a sound and the doors turns green, you can pass thru.
• When all rooms are open, a boss will appear (see the dark red room in the minimap) and you'll have to defeat it. It's a bit hard!

Link to a video here (OneDrive): video

INSTALL

• This Appx bundle is not signed for Store, but for Test/Developer.
• Right-click on Add-AppDevPackage.ps1 and "Run with Powershell" (Admin mode)
• Or double-click on .appxbundle if you have certificates installed already

ASSETS

• Code, design, sprites, texture, effects by myself
• Sounds created with Bfxr
• Other sounds from Freesounds.org (see sounds.txt)
• Main title font by http://www.fontspace.com/cloutierfontes

CONTROLS

• Mouse and Left-Click to look and shoot

• WASD - For movement

• F1 - Help screen

• F5 - Toggle Fullscreen

• Tab - Toggle Minimap

• Esc - Exit or Menu

TOOLS

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition
• C++ / DirectX11 / DirectXTK (I started from scratch using the DX Sample)
• The code does not use any lib or code from any other library
• GraphicsGale + Paint.net for sprites
• https://twistedwave.com/online/# for sound editing

POSTMORTEM

Technical:

• It randomly generates all rooms using BSP trees. Randomly generate room-profiles.
• Only renders/update the room you are
• BSP Portals were generated but does not make use of it in runtime.
• Technically it is 2D (for collision/intersection against level). 3D for shotgun bullets.
• Spotlight effect achieved tweaking exp fog density depending on where pixel is
• 3 Pixel Shaders / 2 Vertex Shaders
• Uses DirectXTK lib for Audio, Input.

What was right:

• Reducing scope at right time
• Not overengineering
• Not making an engine but a game. Forgetting about internal code quality (ugly code). Just one month.
• Not data driven, all hardcoded. Iteration times were fast enough.

What was wrong:

• I made everything and spent more time on core than gameplay
• On-the-fly design changes during development
• Random level generation. It took too much time specially make all rooms connected.
  • Sometimes there are room clusters disconnected and some teleports are created

ORIGINAL IDEAS

• Originally it was going to be a light RPG where you fight against bourocracy and other issues as an adult.
• Due 5-minutes rule, I changed the design
• The second design was a FPS but more focused on Mental Illness enemies (for awareness). Original ways to kill those ones.
• Due time-constraint I changed a little de design as I wasn't sure if I was going to achieve a fun experience doing that.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Some rooms can be generated disconnected. It's a major issue, but happens few times. Restart then.

  • Algorithm to find disconnected clusters has some bug.

• Bad performance on Fullscreen on huge target sizes (4K)

  • Because the game RenderTarget is created out of actual Target and the Pixel Shader is unoptimized

-Manu [email protected]

spooky's Issues

A* grid based (if possible) or node based (edges)

There are rooms disconnected

Some rooms can be disconnected

Shoot collisions sometimes won't work with some entities

It happens specially with pumpkins, you shoot at them (sometimes) and won't hit(!?)

Candies + Life powerups

• Sprites
• Logic

sort sprites 3d by distance to camera

Door texture improved

Door texture must be improved. Can have green/reed for open/closed respectively.

Grave decorations

If you shoot at it, a ghost appears

Add cinematic/door animation when approaching

When approaching a greenlit door, it should open (horizontal or vertical) and let the player enter.

Open portal/door from the connected room, not only the current

Collision segment for doors(portals) are in the two rooms sharing the portal, right now I only disabled the one from the current room.

Reduce shoot time

Reduce time you have to wait to shoot again

Bullets traces

Bullets traces

own sprite on screen (no sprite batch)

Fix allowedMoves when cx or cy == 0 (EnemyGhost/EnemyGirl)

Makes the enemy to die with no shoot (as stuck).

decals on walls

Sounds

• girl will scream
• every enemies they shoot
• explosion on kill
• heart beat on damage
• explosion of pumpkins
• candies falling ground after shoot?
• room is finished, all clear
• owl in open rooms

Menu, credits, splash screen, HUD

• Splash screen with logos and disclaimer. Scarejam, Msft and Gaming Garage logos.
• Menu. Single animation, spooky Adulthood logo
• HUD, life, bullets, minimap
• Help window on menu

White Fog for specific rooms

Try this

Skybox for outdoor rooms

skybox for GRAVE and WOODS

Teleport logic

When to show and what to render otherwise

More animations on candies/treats

• When shooting
• When candies impact

[ANXIETY]

• Parameter to change spotlight radius
• Sound processing, heart beats and fading others
• Decal messages
• Floating messages that disappears when looked at
• Drugs that changes you. Collision radius. Moving along paths.
• Things coming to you
• Kicking
• The Monster! (A*) must work
• Hands trying to catch you
• Test how lighting in rooms might work in PS ?

Optimizations

• Order sprites 3D by texture (already sort by distance). For this, we need to keep m_spritesToRender[] cached frame-by-frame rather than clearing it.
• If time, all sprites atlas and the index is to array of rects in the atlas
• Use BSP properly not linear
• frustum culling and other visibility tests to render

Skulls as decorations

Se pueden destruir. Tienen caramelos y vida?

Light/Darkness environment per-room basis.

When a room is finished, it should be clearer from lighting perspective, so everytime we enter/leave a room we should check if has been visited to make everything clearer.
New rooms are darker.

Cat sounds when it should not (teleport?)

Cat sounds when it should not (teleport?)

Receiving damage, die

• We have to receive damage.
• Way to express we're dying. Heartbeat. Blinking bar.
• Life bar

Level generation and entities game logic

• room-only entities
• detect when room can be open
• room profiles
  • cementerio (sin pilares)
  • normal con pilares
  • bosque
  • pila de cuerpos
  • gárgolas
  • manos por doquier
  • mensajes de miedo
  • campo de calabazas

Animations for enemy down

• puky dies
• pumpkin explodes
• [ ]

Bullets against floor

Make the bullets hit against door and create animation there.

EntityCheckBossReady does not detect correctly

Even when it appeared to be ok

Time-permitting

Ideally if any of following features is going to be implemented, extract a new issue/task or it and remove it from here:

• black hands enemy path line movement logic
• traps, spikes, killer bullets
• key for boss and other doors
• particles effects
• treat/candy bombs
• user can turn off the light (game design impact)

Pause

• for when player dies
• for before starts
• for pause itself

Thumb map discovering

[ART ASSETS]

Things to collide with:

• Pillars
• Tables, chairs, beds
• Spider cobs
• Billboards:
  • statues
  • hallow pumpkins
  • lamps

Gamepad support

Game pad support.

Boss logic + sounds

Boss

Pumpkin enemy logic

Explodes when it's close to you. There's two radius. Outer is to blink in red. Inner is to explore.

Mask on screenspace to scare the sh** out of you

[GAME FLOW]

• Simple state machine
• Simple menu
• HUD
  • Minimap
  • Compass
  • Life bar
  • Messages on screen, kida console
• Progression in the game (levels completed...)
• Credits

Doors

Add enabled flag to Collision Segments.

Black hands. Add logic

It also throws you a hand when you look at it and you're closer than radius. But this time won't loose any hand.

Minimap sizes and colors

• Change yellow for green for player
• Remove portals (green)
• Size is too small for high resolution, compute as relative to resolution and aspect ratio
• Boss' room color

Player life bar position horizontal wrong when updated

when updated, life bar horizontally wrong

[DEPRESSION]

• Gray/Sepia toning
• Move/Turn less and less with time
• Elements that kills you::
  • Cogs, spikes, lots of claws, bottomless pits...
• Decals (with multitexture?)
• Happiness drugs, colors interpolation...
• Spots of help
  • Parents, funny/colorful stuff that moves away and appears/disappears here and there
• Countdown

Pumpkin boy (enemy)

El niño de los otros, pide caramelos y tiene trapo en la cabeza

How to crack skulls when no bullets?

When you don't have bullets?

• Die?
• Crack the skulls another way? great would be punch, kick or something

Ghost enemy logic

It tries to avoid you. Disappears when you see it, or when you shoot at it.

[SOUNDS]

• Whispers
  • You are going to die
  • Ey yo!
  • You turn around
  • You won't get any better
  • Give up
• Environment
  • Walk
  • Heart beat
  • Breath
  • Wooden cracks
  • Whistles
• Music
  • Disturbing simple piano note

ceiling wall on doors

Minimap size on resolution

three modes, None, small, big