Week 7: Designing the Taurush
8/13/19
Hourly Breakdown:
- Implemented new EnemyMoveComponent for Taurush (doesn’t use NavMesh): 3.5 hours
- Taught Kat how the Enemy systems work: 1.5 hours
- Code review: .5 hours
- Sell Presentation: .5 hours
Total: 6 hours
This week was light on development, as we had to prepare our Sell Presentation (a pitch we’d give to potential producers). However, I did manage get some work on the Taurush (we argued a lot about this name).
While it’s nowhere near worthy of showing in a GIF yet, I started laying the groundwork for its unique movement-based behavior. The Taurush will charge at the player in a line, forcing the player to dodge out of the way. Two things are important here: the player must be able to evade its attacks, and it should continue past the player until it hits a wall/obstacle. The impact will leave it dazed momentarily, giving the player a chance to attack.
a crude artistic representation
This means we can’t use our previous player-following pathfinding approach! Rather than following the player’s movement, the Taurush should draw a line from itself towards the player and follow it until colliding with the player or an obstacle.
Additionally, it means we can’t use an approach using NavMesh-based collision avoidance, as colliding with obstacles in the level is exactly what we want!
We want the Taurush to crash into obstacles, rather than avoid them
So I went and created a new SimpleEnemyMoveComponent that just moves in a straight line towards its destination.
Next week me and my teammate Kat will be working together to implement the Taurush, so I sat with her to walk her through the enemy codebase in depth. Doing this helped me realize that I forgot how some parts work, and found some others to be obsolete. I wish I had more time to clean up my work, but we’re nearing the 10 week deadline so I’ll have to work with what we have.