Space Eject
Development Roles: Designer, Programmer
Engine: Unity
Summary: This personal project focuses on prototyping a new game mechanic I came up with where the player can attempt to launch themselves out of their own spaceship and onto other enemy spacheships in an attempt to take control of them. This mechanic could be used, along with other aspects of a space combat game, to add variety to how a player engages in combat encounters or even to give themselves a chance to recover from getting a potential game over and keep player engagement going. The digital prototype I created was done in Unity and I did all of the scripting for the prototype, with the exception of outlining game objects that was provided courtesy off of the Unity Asset Store. All art assets for this prototype were downloaded off of the Unity Asset Store.
Development Roles: Designer, Programmer
Engine: Unity
Summary: This personal project focuses on prototyping a new game mechanic I came up with where the player can attempt to launch themselves out of their own spaceship and onto other enemy spacheships in an attempt to take control of them. This mechanic could be used, along with other aspects of a space combat game, to add variety to how a player engages in combat encounters or even to give themselves a chance to recover from getting a potential game over and keep player engagement going. The digital prototype I created was done in Unity and I did all of the scripting for the prototype, with the exception of outlining game objects that was provided courtesy off of the Unity Asset Store. All art assets for this prototype were downloaded off of the Unity Asset Store.
Short and Simple
|
Note: This prototype was created by me and showcases the idea of choosing to eject from your ship and then boarding other enemy ships.
|
Why Even Eject?: A thought occured to me one day when I was reminiscing how much fun I had with the Star Wars Rogue Squadron games back in the day. It was: "Hey, why don't you just go out of your ship and take the enemy's ship if you like it better?" We see a lot of games where a player can leave their car behind and take another one from an NPC, and the ability to hijack other vehicles in the air like in Just Cause where the player has the tools to steal enemy vehicles flying around. However, I didn't recall many games I've played where it's done in space. The concept is the same, but how the player would do it would have to change, since there's no gravity and what would encourage the player to take other ships.
Wanting A Ship vs. Needing A Ship: My first concept around ejecting from a ship was if the player had reached zero health in their ship and if they ejected fast enough, they would get out before the explosion killed the character and then the player could try to board an enemy ship. Shortly after, I thought about if the player wanted to just jump out at any time to steal a ship for whatever reason. This opened up a lot more possibilities of what gameplay could include if the player could just jump from ship to ship. Some of these possibilities I will explore in the next version of my prototype. For now I just wanted to test the idea of voluntarily ejecting yourself out to enemy ships and taking them. The Feedback: When I presented my prototype to some people for feedback, the feedback was positive with them mentioning that they would like to see more effort involved in stealing enemy ships when you start boarding them and how they would control differently. |
