1 00:00:04,160 --> 00:00:04,600 Okay. 2 00:00:04,610 --> 00:00:05,450 You know the drill. 3 00:00:05,480 --> 00:00:11,030 Before we jump into unity and start building our project, it's a good idea to create our game design 4 00:00:11,030 --> 00:00:11,840 document. 5 00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:16,640 And with Laser Defender, we're going to be making a slightly larger project this time than we have 6 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:18,350 done so far in the course. 7 00:00:18,350 --> 00:00:22,070 And so our game design document is going to be slightly more detailed. 8 00:00:22,160 --> 00:00:25,460 So let's think about our need for Laser Defender. 9 00:00:25,820 --> 00:00:29,840 And to start with, let's just cover off the basic concept of this game. 10 00:00:29,930 --> 00:00:35,480 First up, it's going to be a space shooter, so we can think of it in terms of the old arcade games 11 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:37,400 like Galaxy Ion and R-type. 12 00:00:37,670 --> 00:00:43,460 The general premise of the game will be to avoid waves of enemies for as long as possible and to shoot 13 00:00:43,460 --> 00:00:44,990 enemies to score points. 14 00:00:44,990 --> 00:00:48,650 So it's going to have a really old school arcade vibe to the game. 15 00:00:49,560 --> 00:00:52,560 Because our game is slightly larger than before. 16 00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:56,540 We're not going to be constrained to a single scene in our project anymore. 17 00:00:56,550 --> 00:01:01,890 So the general flow is that our game will start on a main menu screen where we can decide to start the 18 00:01:01,890 --> 00:01:03,880 game or quit from here. 19 00:01:03,900 --> 00:01:05,650 Once the player clicks on start. 20 00:01:05,670 --> 00:01:09,600 We're going to transition into a new scene, which is going to be our core game. 21 00:01:09,930 --> 00:01:14,490 And then once the game has finished, once the player has died, we're going to transition into a final 22 00:01:14,490 --> 00:01:15,750 scene, which is our game. 23 00:01:15,750 --> 00:01:21,300 Overseeing this scene is going to display our score and give the player the option to either play again, 24 00:01:21,300 --> 00:01:25,740 going straight back into our game scene or loop back around to our main menu. 25 00:01:25,770 --> 00:01:29,970 So that's going to be the general flow of how the player interacts with our game. 26 00:01:29,970 --> 00:01:34,320 But now let's take a closer look at what's going to happen within the game scene itself. 27 00:01:34,710 --> 00:01:38,010 So on this screen, there's a little bit going on, so let's break it down. 28 00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:43,140 First of all, we're going to need a player that we can control and we're going to need enemies that 29 00:01:43,140 --> 00:01:45,160 we can avoid for our game. 30 00:01:45,180 --> 00:01:48,000 The enemies aren't just going to move around randomly. 31 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:53,760 We're going to get them following a fixed path, and we're also going to get them spawning in waves. 32 00:01:53,910 --> 00:01:58,410 Now, at this point, we've essentially got a game, we've got a player and some enemies for that player 33 00:01:58,410 --> 00:01:59,270 to avoid. 34 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:03,780 But it would be great if we could start shooting at the enemies and they could shoot back at us. 35 00:02:03,780 --> 00:02:06,030 So on this screen as well, we have some projectiles. 36 00:02:06,030 --> 00:02:10,550 We have the blue projectiles from the player and the orange projectiles from the enemies. 37 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:14,190 We have the remnants of an enemy here with a particle explosion. 38 00:02:14,190 --> 00:02:17,100 So we're going to learn all about the particle system for that. 39 00:02:17,250 --> 00:02:19,790 And then down at the bottom of the screen, we have the UI. 40 00:02:19,800 --> 00:02:25,230 So we have a health slider and we've seen sliders before and we've got some score text. 41 00:02:25,230 --> 00:02:29,400 So quite a few moving parts there and we'll come back to that in just a moment. 42 00:02:29,820 --> 00:02:33,900 For now, though, let's consider the general game design for the theme. 43 00:02:33,900 --> 00:02:36,420 I'm going to make mine a space shooter. 44 00:02:36,420 --> 00:02:40,410 So think of a good thing for your particular version of this project. 45 00:02:40,410 --> 00:02:45,600 For the player experience, I want the player to feel very frantic so there's going to be lots of enemies 46 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:49,950 on the screen, bullets flying everywhere and explosions happening all over the place. 47 00:02:49,950 --> 00:02:54,660 But the core mechanic really just comes down to shooting enemies and dodging bullets. 48 00:02:54,660 --> 00:02:59,040 So I'm kind of going for that easy to learn, difficult to master kind of gameplay. 49 00:02:59,460 --> 00:03:05,910 As for the general game loop, we're just going to have a single level with endless enemy wave spawning, 50 00:03:05,910 --> 00:03:10,770 so the player is going to have to shoot the enemies to score points until such a point where their health 51 00:03:10,770 --> 00:03:12,870 reaches zero and the game ends. 52 00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:18,270 Now, because our game is a little bit bigger than what we're used to so far, it might be a good idea 53 00:03:18,270 --> 00:03:22,100 to do a quick feature analysis to see roughly what we want to build. 54 00:03:22,110 --> 00:03:26,970 So I like to break down all the proposed features that are going to go into my game to see what's really 55 00:03:26,970 --> 00:03:29,580 essential and what's just kind of nice to have. 56 00:03:29,850 --> 00:03:35,250 So all of the essential stuff we call the core gameplay, and for this game to really function, we're 57 00:03:35,250 --> 00:03:41,220 going to need to have a player that can move, but a player moving on the screen doing nothing isn't 58 00:03:41,220 --> 00:03:43,380 really exciting or frantic gameplay. 59 00:03:43,380 --> 00:03:47,040 So we're going to add some enemies and they're also going to have to move. 60 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:52,020 But rather than working out some complicated A.I. or just having them randomly move around, we're going 61 00:03:52,020 --> 00:03:54,990 to have them move and spawn in enemy waves. 62 00:03:54,990 --> 00:03:59,820 So the enemy movement and the enemy wave system that we're going to build are very closely related to 63 00:03:59,820 --> 00:04:02,400 each other, and we can't really have one without the other. 64 00:04:02,700 --> 00:04:08,520 The final piece of core gameplay, in my opinion, will be player health, because if the player can't 65 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:14,370 die, then the game can end and then also not be any real stakes or point in playing if the player can't 66 00:04:14,370 --> 00:04:14,920 die. 67 00:04:14,940 --> 00:04:20,459 So with that, we have a functioning game and you may be wondering how the player can die in this kind 68 00:04:20,459 --> 00:04:21,420 of situation. 69 00:04:21,420 --> 00:04:26,010 And we could just make it that when the player collides with an enemy, then they lose health and die. 70 00:04:26,340 --> 00:04:31,590 But to make this game a bit more fun and a bit more frantic, we wanted to be able to shoot enemies 71 00:04:31,590 --> 00:04:32,940 and dodge bullets. 72 00:04:32,940 --> 00:04:37,020 So for our secondary features, the big one is going to be shooting. 73 00:04:37,020 --> 00:04:42,480 And you may argue that this should be a core feature for our game, but by adding shooting, we also 74 00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:45,000 add some extra mechanics that we need to worry about. 75 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:47,250 And the main one is enemy health. 76 00:04:47,250 --> 00:04:51,180 So now that we can shoot back, we need a way of destroying enemies. 77 00:04:51,180 --> 00:04:55,890 And then finally, for our secondary features, we're going to want a scoring system so that the player 78 00:04:55,890 --> 00:04:58,650 can see how well they did on their last run. 79 00:04:59,160 --> 00:05:04,860 Now, with our core and secondary features all planned out, we do have a working game, but it's very 80 00:05:04,860 --> 00:05:06,420 much lacking Polish. 81 00:05:06,420 --> 00:05:11,580 Polish will generally be added at the end of development, but to keep game development interesting, 82 00:05:11,580 --> 00:05:15,570 it is nice to do a little bit of polish here and there as you build your game. 83 00:05:15,690 --> 00:05:21,960 So polish for our game will include things like visual effects, so enemies exploding into showers of 84 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:22,860 particles. 85 00:05:22,860 --> 00:05:27,990 We'll have some sound effects for when the enemies and the players shoot at each other and explode. 86 00:05:28,320 --> 00:05:31,270 We'll have our menus and additional game screens. 87 00:05:31,290 --> 00:05:36,360 And finally, our last piece of polish will be extra content and tuning of our variables. 88 00:05:36,360 --> 00:05:41,550 So this will be adding additional enemies, additional waves, and generally making it to the game is 89 00:05:41,550 --> 00:05:44,460 playable without being too easy or too difficult. 90 00:05:44,940 --> 00:05:49,110 Now, with our feature analysis out of the way, we know roughly what we need to build. 91 00:05:49,170 --> 00:05:55,470 And also because we've stacked these into individual boxes, we kind of know roughly what type of script 92 00:05:55,470 --> 00:05:57,540 we're going to need to create our game. 93 00:05:57,540 --> 00:06:01,980 So we might have a player movement script and a shooting script and so on. 94 00:06:02,640 --> 00:06:07,650 So with our feature analysis done, let's finally look at the assets that we're going to need for our 95 00:06:07,650 --> 00:06:08,250 game. 96 00:06:08,310 --> 00:06:11,190 And these might come from a pre created asset pack. 97 00:06:11,220 --> 00:06:16,860 You may choose to use the same ones that I'm using, or you may want to create your own, but the ones 98 00:06:16,860 --> 00:06:19,980 we're going to need are going to include our player ship. 99 00:06:19,980 --> 00:06:23,100 So we're going to need something for the player to move around the screen. 100 00:06:23,100 --> 00:06:24,990 We're going to need some enemy ships. 101 00:06:24,990 --> 00:06:29,550 And this may be one or more depending on if you have different types of enemy in your game. 102 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:34,170 Since we're going to have the enemies and players shooting at each other, we're going to need something 103 00:06:34,170 --> 00:06:38,940 to act as a projectile to save us playing against a blank black background. 104 00:06:38,940 --> 00:06:41,520 Then we're going to want some sort of background sprites. 105 00:06:41,520 --> 00:06:44,970 So I'm going to be using a nice starfield for my space theme. 106 00:06:44,970 --> 00:06:49,080 But again, you can choose whatever works for your particular genre that you've picked. 107 00:06:49,170 --> 00:06:54,270 We're going to need some fonts for our score text and for our main menu and end screen. 108 00:06:54,690 --> 00:06:59,520 And finally, we're going to need some UI sprites for things like our buttons and any other objects 109 00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:01,590 that we want to add to our canvases. 110 00:07:01,860 --> 00:07:08,430 So that's all slightly more in depth guide for this section, and now it's time for your challenge. 111 00:07:08,670 --> 00:07:11,010 I want you to go ahead and choose your theme. 112 00:07:11,010 --> 00:07:14,820 So it may be a space theme like mine or something entirely different. 113 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:20,370 I then want you to create your game design document and share your document with the community. 114 00:07:20,370 --> 00:07:25,440 So go ahead and complete that challenge and I'll see you in the next lecture where we go ahead and set 115 00:07:25,440 --> 00:07:26,430 up our project. 116 00:07:26,430 --> 00:07:27,840 So I'll see you there.