Endless Runner
This project was the second task and had the only criteria of being an endless runner. I started development in very much the same was as previously in regards to researching and trying to figure out the problems with the genre as well as the strengths. I don’t feel I achieved this too well though as I came to the conclusion that the genre was great for easy pick up and play as well as always giving the player something to do however the downside was that this type of game didn’t have any sense of progression except the ‘power ups’ and cosmetics.
My approach to this was adding a sort of dynamic story element where the player ended up being a contracted in person to deal with the police or do specific crimes for gangs. This would work much like the game ‘The Swindle’ system of earning money and items to get ready for one big event at the end which instead of being a heist would be the player attempting to leave their life of crime. This would also work like the day system of ‘The Swindle’ as each mission would count as a day.
Within the levels themselves there would have been if I had more time different types. Some would involve you making a break from a robbery and being chased, others would involve distracting the guards, e.g. making load noises and getting them to chase you etc. This would have also fixed the issue I had with endless runners which was repetition. So, the concept was good in my opinion for the game but I didn’t fulfil this.
The world map where the player selected the mission was great, it worked as intended and had all the features I wanted, different gangs, different mission types, difficulty etc and was all randomly generated. It did however lack the gang skill tress which I would have liked to add, this was a system where the player would level up within the gangs by doing missions for them and would gain special abilities/tools which they could use within the missions. I did simply this down to just a level system but even that didn’t make it into the game.
The in-mission play was lacking majorly as collision would sometimes not work, level generation worked on a technical level but didn’t give enough variation or play options resulting in most of the levels looking the same. This part of the game really needed more time to become an actual product and it could of.
In hindsight this product was too big of a task for the timeframe that was allowed and also considering the personal circumstances I was having at the time. It’s a project I would very much like to go back and visit and address the issues as I feel it could become a really impressive piece in my portfolio. Much like the pervious project I will try and revisit it over the summer.
Foundations
Endless Runner is built in
- C++
- Custom Engine
