Godot Platformer Arena Game

Thank you for your interest in my game development opportunity as a proof of concept for an upcoming game. These prototypes will display vital game mechanics to be awarded funding for continuing the project.

Absolutely no art or designs are required, colored geometric shapes are expect as seen below.

Client Player Requirements

A simple arena shooter where the player is a rectangle and wields a weapon and aims at the cursor. When clicked a regular bullet will fire and right click shoots a rocket that applies physics properties upon impact or explosion.

Camera

Standard camera follows ahead of player screen and adjusts while predicting movement.

Controls

Basic platformer controls, if player is mid air and pressed [crouch] increase gravity to land faster.

[w] [space] 	jump
[a] [d] 		horizontal
[s]  			crouch fall faster
[m1]            shoot gun
[m2]            shoot rocket

Tasks

• Player Movement Controls.
• Ability to walk through uneven terrain.
• 2 Player Weapon types.
• Ability to Crouch [shrink rectangles hitbox]
• Health & Ammo
• Unique player ID & color for each player and projectiles.

Game Enviorment

The ground is made up of many physics 2d rigid bodies in a sleeping state. While asleep the top layers of the bodies form the ground collision using a loess regression.^[1] The new collision shape formed to allow for fluid ground movement while running up the destructible surface. Upon environmental destruction, the bodies are launched and can be destroyed. Once the ground settles and the bodies are sleeping and no longer disturbed the debris is smoothed back into the top layer forming a new layer of collision for the ground.

For the test if a player walks all the way to the end of the playable stage teleport them to the start of the stage. Example if you keep walking right upon hitting the end of the stage you will teleport to the left most side of the screen as if it wrapped around.

^[1]: Loess Regression

This type of collision smoothing is not required just an idea for implementation.

• Destructible Terrain & interaction upon shooting.
• Active / Inactive Physics object states.
• Smoothing of Terrain for movement.
• Upon reaching the end of the stage the room will wrap around as if it was one continuous stage.

Multiplayer Capabilities

Basic server .io game functionalities. Simple UI needed just connect new clients to the host upon hosting a game. Players can connect to a host and exit upon quitting. Playable in the browser and exported to web/html.

• Online playable capabilities. (Starting first client allows for other clients to connect to.) Either client 1 can host the game server or can be dedicated to a provided server.
• Up to 6 clients can connect to the same server all with unique user ID controls per windowed session.

Gameplay Mechanics

Optional optimizations and performance. These are not required in this demo.

• Godot Physics server running calculations for rigid bodies.
• Optimization 2DPhysics server.
  https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/optimization/using_servers.html

Questions

All answered questions will be updated and responded below.

dev1: How long do I have for the deliverability?
One month ± couple weeks seems do-able.

dev2: Browser client and not with classic client? Or mobile client?
The preferred platform is PC. Eventualy playable on web/mobile- and then offer better support & optimization with a standalone client. For this we can start with a regular game client.

dev3: I have an idea to change the terrain. and is to change it for a texture, when it explodes over a location it makes that region of the texture transparent, then it creates rubble that is rigidbodies and throws it in a random direction, and where it falls the texture is modified to alter it. And the collision with the ground can be dynamically altered as a line, It is simply an idea that is perhaps much more efficient in terms of performance.
Yes I agree that method would be more server friendly and efficient, my only issue is it may lose the mechanic I’m looking for. Similar to the game Arcanists shown here I want the enviorment to be more fluid than the static gameplay shown in the video. If it’s possible to blend it seemlessly go for it.

dev4: Do you have the assets ? Do you want it have the background music What are the instructions for the menu(s).
No assets required just draw geometric shapes, no music art or anything. The menu can be [join server ip] (text box) and a join function.

dev5: Will it be necessary some api to save the data of the players, right? like unique ID, username, etc.
No database required or variables for the demo, simple textbox for username is more than enough.

dev6: 1. How long should the playing map be? - As I understand it, you want the map to be seamless, right?
Roughly 3x of a playable window should be more than enough space. A seamless arena would be the best so it wraps around.
2. Should the bullets of a simple pistol terraform the ground, the path of the rocket is a stretched parabola? Should there be a time of rocket reloading?
They don’t need to immediately but you could make the pistol do weak knockback for the terrain. Yes thats a good trejectory for the rocket. Just a quick 1-2 second pause between firing another rocket.
3. What kind of predictive movements should the camera make? Does the player have to pick up a rocket or they are infinite? If so, what should be the limit of rockets? The same questions are about a simple gun.
If the player moves right- move the camera more right so the player is more on the left side of the screen so the player can see whats to the right of them. You can put a rocket spawn in the center and give the player 10 rockets. Simple gun is unlimited and spawns with it.
4. Should the map be generated from scratch before starting?
The map can be static/pregenerated and the same each time its played.

dev6: One player can host and other 5 can join then they can fight with each other… With 2 types of guns… 1 pistol and 1 is like a rocket launcher.
Yes this is correct. Can also use a dedicated server I can provide for 6 clients and one dedicated server.

Last Update - 1/12/2022 15:20 MDT