Asteroid fight

Developed in 2 weeks by Tristan O'Donnell and I

Summary

Gameplay

A mining facility where the player works has invaded a planet filled by a race of insect-men, the aliens seek justice by their own hand pushing the humans away with their own weapons and equiment.
The aliens have currently invaded one main mining facility in an asteroid and have started a massacre. One last miner is looking to survive until reinforcements come.

A first person shooter with a large variety of weapons and enemies that have tactical strategies to fight the player. The player can pickup weapons from the ground and abilities to keep the fight going.
The asteroid grants the characters a low gravity movement, and the mining equipment acts as covers for both the enemies and player.

My work

I mainly designed the AI of the enemies, fix programming errors, the player abilites, and the assets of the entire project (except for the skybox). And half of the weapon systems.
I also designed, polished and made the enemies. I actually tested them in a blank room where I could see them walk around finding their path. I used to call that "the terrarium" I tested them by letting them walk free so I could immediatly find errors in their programming (it was funny to see them aim their hand as if they carried a gun).
I made the characters in a style named "Voxels" to quickly export 3D models, I was able to finnish 8 every day. That was the case of the weapons too. For the scenario I exported a large ground area with a low resolution texture so the Voxels and the scenario parts shared that lowpoly pixel look.
The hardest part of this moment was the animations as I hadn't tried the animation layers, so I learned my way in and managed to make enemies with animations for aiming their weapons and runnig at the same time.
I also designed the scenario grounds using the sections imagined by Tristan who made the diagram for the scenario.

Level design

The level design diagram was made by Tristan. Though I did the actual mapping of the scenario, in the adjacent photo is a display of all the enemy movement nodes I programmed for them to move, find the player and shoot.
The scenario was suppossed to be an asteroid with a mine, I did the work of making the scenario serve as a combat arena and a visual storytelling land.
In the scenario there can be found corpses of enemies, and humans, sometimes in tactical positions as if they were hiding or trying to survive but just couldn't.
Some of my favorite ones is one dead human character hidden in a container behind a tactical shield holding his chest, and a bunch of "Maggot" enemies dead inside the pit at the center of the combat arena half buried as if they just were thrown there.
Around the mining grounds the only visible rocks to use as cover by the player shine as if they were polished. That is because that is the mineral that was being digged in the mining grounds, serving as a storytelling irony, it is a treasure but serves as just a rock now.

My experience

Tristan and I did this as a project for school, it was astonishingly amazing how good the graphic quality turned out despite it being made in lowpoly and voxels. For a time this was my wallpaper for my computer.
Tristan and I needed a theme for the enemies, as just "aliens" were not enough, a moth stocked in my room gave me an idea to make them be insect-men, that also gave them a personality for which their behaviour could complement it. For example:
-I designed one enemy "Maggot" a larvae-man who is almost blind, jumps very little and moves slowly.
-Another enemy the "Scorpion" is an agresive monster that charges towards the player and attacks with melee weapons only.
-Also had the "Mantis" a commando enemy who can move in every direction and tries to dodge bullets, it was inspired by the "Elites" from "Halo" by "Bungie"
I did not have too many issues making the assets, using the voxel style I was basically printing them. The only complicated part was animating the enemies, as they all had different personalities. The mantis enemy was the hardes as it had to be animated by parts and was a complete enemy.
With the hurry of making this game we had to scrap 3 enemies and 2 scenarios. My favorite ones that were discarded were the "Swapper" enemy (which still did not had a design) and the "blue forest", another combat arena inside the alien planet.
Other cut content was the original title screen I wanted to make, one where there were floating corpses of enemies and humans in the space void.