Developing "Galaxy Shooter". A 2D Web-Based Game using Unity

Abstract

Nowadays, video-game industry is one of the biggest and fastest growing around, providing jobs to many people and having a very big market. From the 1950s until now, many different video-game genres were created suiting different people tastes. Among them, Shoot ’em up games mainly consist of a player trying to complete the game while evading different obstacles which can include enemies, environmental objects, or different types of projectiles.

During my whole life, I have spent countless hours playing a great variety of video-games. I was always interested in developing one by myself, which led me to consider making this project: a 2D video-game in shoot ’em up genre, which I have named Galaxy Shooter.

By making Galaxy Shooter, I have learned how the video-games can be designed and developed by our group. This process includes the usage of different tools for graphic and audio design such as Inkscape, Audacity, Adobe Photoshop as well as the Unity engine for combining them into a seamlessly working game.

Using Inkscape, I have designed a variety of graphic objects for this game which include different space- ships made of simple geometrical figures, a big and complicated Boss ship and many miscellaneous objects used in level design and user interface. Regarding Audacity and Adobe Photoshop, they were used to create sound effects that give the player audio feedback when its ship gets damaged or an enemy ships explode. With respect to Unity, I have used it to design and develop a single working level with a careful crafted game logic, different particle effects and a complete menu system. For this purpose, I have utilized many different game creation tools that Unity offers in combination with the graphical and sound effects created before.

Keywords:Game development, Game design, Unity 2D, Graphic design, Audio design, Inkscape, Audacity, Shoot ’Em Up genre.

INTRODUCTION

Video-game industry is one of the fastest growing industries, allowing people from all around the world to play video-games of many different genres. There is a video-game for every person: from first person shooters to racing games, from fighting games to sports games, from strategy games to puzzle games, etc. Among them, this project is focused on shoot ’em up genre, which is one of my favorite ones and whose origins are explained in this chapter.

Games are played by people of all ages and genders alike. This fact provides an easy way to connect parents and children, or different people around the globe. Taking into account this information, it is easy to see why game development is a good industry to get into.

Due to its continued growth, software developing companies started making more applications for game development and, at the present time, there are many different tools that allow a single person or a very small team of people to successfully develop and sale video-games, which accelerates the market growth of this industry even more.

Origins of shoot ’em up genre can be traced back to one of the earliest computer games ever created, Spacewar . Developed in a computer lab at the Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1961, the game was running on a DEC’s PDP-1 computer. It consisted of two players controlling spaceships and trying to destroy another one by shooting projectiles and to avoid being sucked by the gravitational field of the sun.

MOTIVATION AND OBEJECTIVES

Since the 1970s, people started to take interest in using their computers as an entertainment environment, thus, the multi -billion game industry was starting to take shape. Having presented earlier the sum of money this industry produces; I decided to have a go and create a game of my own. As a kid, I was always fascinated by the idea of becoming a game developer, but, as years went by, I have realized this is not exactly what programming and computer science, as a practice, are about and I dropped the idea. However, the third-year project offered me the possibility to try and achieve one of my childhood’s dreams and I couldn’t resist the temptation.

The game is developed for full-time entertainment and enthusiasms. It teaches the Gamer to be alert at every situation. Though the proposed game is an arcade game, it doesn’t involve direct violence. No zombie killing, animal killing, or human killing is performed in the game. So, it can also be viewed as a non-violence game. Kids can also play this game, because the design of the game is very simple, controlling the game is very easy – pressing some neighbouring keys of the keyboard.

Therefore, the main objective of this project was to entirely design and develop a 2D video game in shoot ’em up genre, entitled Space Shooter, while at the same time learning different disciplines and tools needed for game development. In order to be able to achieve this main objective, I have split the project into a set of different targets from which the specific tasks were later created. These general targets include:

- Creating a player-controlled character and giving it the ability to shoot different things inside the game level.
- Making one playable level with different enemies, map objects and a final boss.
- Making different sound effects to be heard when the user is shooting or doing some other things
- Creating visual effects such as explosions.
- Making the level have parallax scroll like effect for movement.
- Making the game style have neon light like characters.
- Including some type of high score functionality.
- Creating some type of menu system.

RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESIS

Based on hypothesis relationship based on following variables we constructed a following model to describe the assumed interrelationships of following variables First, prior game experience was predicted to be positively related to perceived competence, which in turn, is assumed to predict game attitude, enjoyment, intensity of use, and achievement. Lastly, the present model predicts that achievement, as a final outcome, will be directly influenced by enjoyment and intensity of use.

H1:Prior game experience will be positively related to perceived competence.
H2: Perceived competence will be positively related to computer game attitude.
H3:Perceived competence will be positively related to intensity of use.
H4: Perceived competence will be positively related to enjoyment.
H5: Perceived competence will be positively related to achievement.
H6: Computer game attitude will be positively related to game enjoyment
H7: Intensity of use will be positively related to achievement.
H8: Enjoyment will be positively related to achievement

DESIGN AND GAMEPLAY

The development life cycle here refers to the development of each unique object inside this project. In general terms, the process consists in designing graphical and sound objects, and using them to create Unity objects. Then, the object logic is developed and both integrated and tested inside the full project. When those steps are finished, the project is sent to different people for testing and gaining feedback.

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This figure includes the procedures done when developing objects for this game.

GAMEPLAY

The Game has an endless playable environment in which the player has to beat their own previous score.

With respect to the keyboard controls, they are following detailed: Arrow keys are set for player 1 movement and spacebar for shoot and for second player, (I,j,k,l) keys are used for movement and mouse for shooting, menu navigation, y and p keys are set for special attacks for player 1 and player 2 respectively. Esc key is used for pausing and resuming the game. The menu provides the choice between single player and co-op mode for the player to choose from.

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HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

The hardware and software elements used in the realization of this work are detailed as follows:

The systems requirements for the proposed project “Space Shooter” game is mentioned following.

(i) Operating System: Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10
(ii) RAM: 1 GB
(iii) Processor: Pentium, Pentium iv, core i3, core i5, core i7
(iv) Hard Disk: 100 MB

Windows 10 Pro: operating system.

Unity 5.51f1: game development engine.

Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015: integrated development environment.

Inkscape 0.92.1: vector graphics editor.

Audacity 2.1.3: cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator : Designing character and background

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OBSTACLES A ND ACHIEVEMENTS

(a) The Obstacles

· Working with game engine completely a new experience for me. Normally i am working with different OO languages, DBMS, mark up languages etc.
· It is very sensible work and it demands much time because the game engines try to connect game environment with the real world.
· Creating a 3d model is very difficult because you need to work with each and every point of the model.
· The Exists game engines demands vast knowledge about its properties, sections and subsections.

(b) The Achievements

- Now i know much more about game engines. How it works? The properties, objects and others.
- I know how a model is constructed and how it is animated.
- The main thing is that as a software engineer, skill and expertise to create a SRS document and an overall software product report is now better than before.
- Develop communication skills 5. Growing creative thinking and imagination capability.

CONCLUSION & FUTURE SCOPE

The main objective of this project was to design and develop a 2D shoot ’em up video-game and learn the maximum amount of things possible while doing it. For this purpose, the different graphic elements of the video-game were designed, allowing me to learn how to efficiently use the Inkscape software in order to achieve the desired results. In this manner, each design has been done faster and better than the previous one. Similarly, I have learned how to design simple albeit necessary sound effects for the game by combining audio software, more specifically Audacity and Adobe Photoshop.

Regarding the video-game itself, all of the game logic and the objects were designed and subsequently implemented using Unity and its 2D toolset. As a result, the video-game is composed of one single perfectly playable level which includes many different objects and obstacles to overcome. This is the part that I have most enjoyed, because I really like programming and designing game logic. Additionally, coming up with different Enemies and Boss logic provided me a fun challenge, and gave me the opportunity to learn many different issues about game design and development.

On the other hand, the obtained video-game can be played at different operating systems and it has a very good performance even on dated computers. Moreover, it can be easily ported to any of the current generation game consoles.

Finally, I would like to highlight that most of the things done throughout this project were learned while developing it, as I had very little experience in the whole process of video- game development. I had made very simple video games without using full fledged game engines, and never before had I designed any sound effect or graphic material for them.

Future work

In this project, I have done all the necessary to achieve the main targets by designing and developing my own video-game. However, I already have a few ideas to extend this work and improve the video-game:

Create a complete projectile system with many types of projectiles and ways to shoot them, using different approaches.

Create more levels with different game-play options, each of them with new enemies and bosses.

Create a power-up system that allows players to get new powers, such as super-speed.

Make a different kind of reward logic, like including a multiplier to calculate the final score.

Make different types of ships that can be used as the Player.

Create a module for Unity to accept graphics in SVG format.

Create a similar video-game but using other game engines, such as Unreal Engine and 3D Graphics.

REFERENCES

- https://www.academia.edu/36672465/_Space_Shooter_Game_Project

- http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/119542/3/memoria.pdf

- https://www.edx.org/learn/unity-3d

- https://www.codinblack.com/how-to-learn-unity3d-a-roadmap-for-complete- beginners/

- https://unitycodemonkey.com/

- https://www.youtube.com/c/Blackthornprod/videos

- https://awesometuts.com/

- https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/game-development-for-beginners-unity- course/

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