SMGDT: Prototype Edition

Space Mini Golf Death Trench (SMGDT) is a pseudo space sim / arcade shooter inspired by schmups for people who suck at schmups. Or rather for players that want something different than endless bullet hell out of their arcade style space games. Like semi-realistic physics or flying on a giant weaponized space mini golf platform originally built for trillionaire space tourism but sadly weaponized for trillionaire space wars. I mean who wouldn't want that?

Your goals are simple:

Liberate the space platform. Fight your way to the star gate to liberate the next.

And while you're at it, collect some souvenirs (blue golf balls) and stranded space tourists (jumpy aliens), because you can.

Currently the project consists of two highly experimental levels with the first being populated by mainly obstacles, turrets, and a few WIP enemies and the second just having a completed layout.

Controls:

• W - Main Thruster
• Q - Rotate Left
• E - Rotate right
• A - Strafe left
• D - Strafe right
• S - Reverse/Braking 
• Spacebar - Hop
• Right Ctrl - Shoot
• Pan Camera (mouse left/right)
• Zoom Camera (mouse forward/backward) 
  • mouse pan and zoom is intended to be replaced with a more intuitive camera controller and is a holdover from the game development bootcamp where this project was initially created. It has had significant work since then but this is still on the projects todo list.
  • for the recommended experience as is, move the mouse/camera behind your ship to a 3rd person style position right at the start of level 1, then try not to touch your mouse again unless the camera betrays you (again, this will be replaced with a real camera controller in the future) 

Flying Guide:

In SMGDT you fly an "Astro Hopper" purpose built for flight on the once prominent space mini golf platforms that until times of war, had fallen into disrepair.

 Your Astro Hopper is outfitted for combat thankfully but it's no X-wing and should not be approached like a true "Space fighter". It is more of a "Space platform fighter". It's pretty easy to turf these things so if you don't want to be compacted into the space equivalent of astroturf, be careful.

The short version: 

The Astro Hopper flies a bit like a snowboard in space with but at the speed of a golf cart.

You have a powerful main engine with less powerful maneuvering thrusters and even less powerful braking and strafing thrusters. 

The long version:

Picture Luke Skywalkers original land speeder crossed with the closed cockpit and weapons of an A-wing interceptor. But slow it down to the speed of a golf cart and still try to put a vulture like Raynor at the controls. 

While most Space fighters would be destroyed thousands of KM away, the Galactic Mini Golf Consortium doesn't consider such a sluggish craft to be much of a threat, or they'd have tighter defenses. 

SMGDT's control and flight style takes heavy inspiration from the dos era classic Star Control 2 and it's Hyper Melee combat though our controls are certainly not as good as Star Control 2, yet.

If you expect the strafing thrusters to work the same as in most arcadified space games and schmups, you'll find your strafing thrusters will suck. They are intended for small adjustments more like the real thing. 

Here's how you should approach flying if you want to have an easier time in SMGDT:

• Rotate the ship in the direction you wish to go
  • or often times lead or lag the direction as needed
• Fire the main thruster to alter your course in that direction
• Let go, adjust rotation, and repeat if necessary
• Optionally: Fine tune your movement with lateral thrusters (strafing)
• Use spacebar to hop over smaller obstacles
• Careful not to hop off the space platform! You are not a true space ship. There is no way back, and no one else can get past the space platforms defense perimeter to save you. 

Work on SMGDT began during my first game development bootcamp, continued as a hobby, and saw additional changes at Toronto Film School's Game Development program.

Notable features include:

• A blend of physics and kinematic ship controls
• Configurable auto stabilizing ship gyro
• Use of Dotween for programmatically driven mini golf course like obstacles and obstacle groups
  • Obstacles may be defined in editor as any of the following with configurable movement options:
    • Stepper motor like movement
    • Swinging door
    • Swinging double door
    • Sliding motion
    • and more
  • Allows some behaviours to be performed on obstacle groups while individual obstacles within a group still have their own functional obstacle behaviour
    • Featured by the groupings of 4 obstacles near the beginning of the first area, just after the 'house' on either side of it
• Mini and full sized Stargate teleporters 'open' in an Iris like fashion based on the Iris from the Stargate TV series.
  • best seen from the mini stargate in level 1 as the larger gates tend to open before the camera controller lets you see them (may need a short cinematic in the future to remedy this)
    • just past the windmill when level 1 branches into 3 paths, take the middle path
    • on the other side of the the small house/tunnel fly directly over top of the mini golf hole to activate the mini gate
    • fly back onto it to teleport once it is active
• Cinemachine camera follow through tunnels and under mult-level areas
• A space mini golf death trench (it wouldn't be SMGDT without one of these)
  • The number of projectiles in this area may cause significant and potentially unpleasant audio distortion until a proper Audio Manager is added to manage the number of identical sounds attempting to play at the same time particularly in this area. Presently each projectile is playing the same sound on awake.
• Object pooling for projectiles
• Abstract Factory and Service Factory patterns
• A first attempt at a boss fight (middle of level 1, after the 3 branching paths converge, boss fight gates that death trench area) 
  • suffers from numerous issues but demonstrates a single phase boss fight using a simple state machine
  • the challenge is to create an AI that can fly the same style of ship as the player which means the AI needs to try to follow the same input loop as outlined in the player guide
  • intended AI behaviour:
    • Choose a trajectory that will take the boss near the player, but result in flying past them
    • Rotate to aim thruster
    • Fire thruster
    • Aim at the player (or lead the player)
    • Shoot
    • repeat movement loop to update trajectory, repeat shooting loop to try to kill the player
    • After a completed pass, retreat to a randomly selected pre-determined nav point in the fight scene
    • Rest for a pre-determined amount of time
    • Plot a new course for the player
  • Resulting combat does achieve some sense of hide and seek with the boss but is largely not engaging for a few reasons:
    • boss rests too long
    • boss gets stuck in tight spaces and becomes an easy target
    • no feedback on boss damage
      • boss should only retreat after taking a certain amount of damage to denote phases in the fight and return with some variation in combat patterns
    • enemy ships have a bug where they fire too fast so most bullets never reach the player (not compelling combat currently)
    • Bosses aim/shoot/strafe mechanic needs work

As this is originally an older project from before I was aware of editor features like vertex snapping and at present you will see some z-fighting as well as seams from poorly placed platform tiles. There are plans to address this in future revisions.

Special thanks to Kenney and their minigolf kit for inspiring this project and hopefully for the many levels and environments to come if work on this project is continued. 

Future considerations:

• plans to re-write in Unity 6
  • removes limitations on disconnected navmesh's that prevented this game from having enemies on level 2 with its current architecture
• plans for multiple environments consisting of 3, 9, or 18 mini levels each
  • each environment consists of a number of orbital platforms 
  • many environments will feature new and unique enemies
• replace the camera controller
• switch to a fully physics based character controller
• add Audio Manager and fix audio distortion
• explore scripted audio features to dynamically match bullet sounds to the volley size/delay settings of various weapon scripts
• potential restructuring of level architecture
  • it was always intended that you could see the other "holes" or "platforms" from the hole you're currently shooting on within a given 3, 9, or 18 hole course. This presents some issues with more numerous or more densely populated holes consuming unnecessary resources. Likely other holes will be replaced by a static representation of their likeness until you fly through the gate to begin the next level. 
• configurable Galaga like waves of simpler enemies
• significant refinement to ship AI including exploration of hierarchical state machines, behaviour trees, and if needed, potentially GOAP
• multi-phase boss fights
  
• tune ship controls (currently they're too slippery)
• additional ships with individual flight characteristics and potentially weapons
  
• more turret types and obstacle types with a greater variety of weapons and vfx
  • including but not limited to:
    • laser fences
    • space elevators
    • space catapults
    • Galaga like challenge segments
• couch co-op and pvp
• online multiplayer (co-op and pvp)
• General Bug fixes (including but not limited to)
  • Health bar
  • Particle fx (that don't block the players view!)
  • Add enemy health indicators
• Narrative storyline with voice acting
  • Likely in a style very similar to Galak-Z, another source of inspiration for SMGDT
• Event driven communication system for AI
  • radar/sensors/spotter enemies may enable improved targeting or other behaviour of other enemies
• Add benefits to souvenir and space tourist collection