Runs N'Gunners

Developed in 2 weeks, plus one more for a large update

Summary

Gameplay

The soldier with the cigar is sent to attack an enemy checkpoint, all the enemies surrounding the area are alerted and will come for him.
He will use all the resources the enemies drop to give them hell.
The only context left is just violence!

The gameplay loop is simple, the player must kill most of the enemies of the enemy wave to move to the next wave.
The player commands are simple, just move, shoot, and throw grenades. The game grants a lot of grenades and they do not ease the experience, a badly thrown grenade can hurt the player or just be inefective.
Dead enemies or starting waves can grant the player weapons, grenades, or health. The weapons last a short time but they can increase survival rate.

My work

I developed this game in 2 weeks, it was originally for school, but I modified this game later to be a release, as the game did have a great quality.
The assigment was about making a 2D shooter the professor suggested a space game, while I already had done Zal vs May by that time. The easy thing to do could had been just making a version of Zal vs May with most of the content removed. But instead I did a new project. With the requested enemy variations (plus one the professor didn't ask for) and chaotic fights. Also the game needed to have a "Nuke" (Kill everything) button, I misread that and added a grenade button. I later made a version with a "Nuke" instead of grenades.
I also did the assets in a technique named "Voxels" so I could release simple 3D models quickly.

Level design

The main game stage was designed to be just a huge decoration as combat arenas are fully open. The only important part is the spawn for pick ups, they were placed in the most open areas of the stage so they could be visible by the player at all times, most pickup spawns are at the path at the center.
The rest of the scenario was made fully open so the enemies would not need an advanced AI, they can't avoid walls, that also makes them easy to understand and fight them.
The only amazing thing about the enemy is their spawns, the enemies spawn inside trees and bushes so the player is surprised when they are suddenly in the scenario. To avoid the case where the player realizes they can camp on the enemy spawns I placed walls that only the enemies can pass through, so the player can't just make the fight easier by cheating.

My experience

The experience was a bit hard, I was able to take rests when needed but I still hurried most of the development. Most of the project was simple, all the enemy behaviours work through distance with the player. The real hard parts were:
-The pooling system: I made it so items like grenades, explosions, and pickups could be called by code instead of adding the reference for every NPC, weapon and player.
-Saving resources: The game is severely limited by the ammount of objects on screen, just using the occulusion culling would not be enough, as most enemies had a behaviour and I wanted to have 70+ enemies on the scenario and plenty bullets. Some enemies away from the screen have simpler AI so they do not eat the procesor.