Project Neontilt
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Team size: 10
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Dev time: 2 weeks
My Contributions
Contributions Details
This system was basically the first bit of code contributed with in a project ever!
There is 2 different types of powerups, Speed & Bulldozer. They both use the same prefab and the designer will decide wich one this perticular instance should be.
In a nutshell
When collision happens with a PlayerBall the powerup will activate a visual effect on the player to indicate that the PowerUp is now Active. The PowerUp will then check to see what it is tagged as, It can be tagged as either either "PoweUpSpeed" or "PowerUpBulldoze", Depending on what "mode" the PowerUp is in, It will change the PlayerBalls Speed, Weight & Material to the one associated with the PowerUp type for the duration.
The collision will then as it's 3rd step disable the powerup so it cannot be collected again. As it's last step it will start the countdown coroutine. When the timer has run out the PlayerBall is reset to it's default state.
I realised that the best part of this game was when you unexpectedly got a really big sequence of bouncing between blocks. Thats why this combo system favours point collecting in short bursts. If the player don't collect their next point within the timeframe they will lose their combo-multiplier.
Thus incentivizing them to keep their tempo up!
In a nutshell
When the PlayerBall collides with a Block I start a timer called comboWindow, We also add one to the number of times the ball has hit a block. If the current bounce reaches a threshold (comboTarget) the difficulty increases, so the next comboTarget is slightly harder to hit. I also increase the comboTier by one (this is later on used to multiply the players score). We also spawn in some VFX to indicate that a new combo tier was achieved.
If the comboWindow timer runs out before player has collided with a new block, The player loses their multiplier. Their current bounce gets reset and the comboTarget threshold gets reset back to default. After this the comboMultiplier gets set to the same value as comboTier.
Seeing how the game mechanics are quite simple it was very important that breaking the blocks and collecting points felt impactful and that the player got the right amount of visual feedback from doing so.
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Camera shakes when crashing into a block
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Blocks flash when struck
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Blocks plays small visual effect at impact
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Block dissolve when destroyed
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"Combo+" marker spawns & vibrates