Spite: Enter The Ratacombs

This project is a Diablo 3 inspired dungeon crawler with a focus on atmosphere and satisfying combat.

My Contributions

Throughout this project I focused on building the systems required for the gameplay to work. I worked on the Enemy AI and summoning framework, the boss fight, some parts of the players abilities and states, and a tool that allowed our artists to construct and export menus that could then be loaded into the game.

All of the enemy behaviour was controlled using a finite statemachine. The normal zombie enemies had an aggro range and simply tried to get close enough to attack, the exploding enemies did the same but stopped and exploded after a few seconds when they got close. The most complicated enemy was the summoner, which needed to create other enemies. To make this happen I devised a system that makes a copy of a gameobject that the level designers designated in the editor. That way they can change what is summoned with little issue. This system was then adapted for the holes in the walls that enemies crawl out of.

The boss fight was designed to be quite complicated. The boss would start on top of a platform looking over the arena as you dealt with his minions. When the minions died the fight started and he jumped and landed in the arena. While in the arena he would chase you and try to strike you, occasionally summoning more minions. When he summoned minions he would either summon a pair of summoners or a swarm of exploding enemies that would form into a pattern in the room and explode. For the precise positioning of the various explosion patterns I designed a simple solution involving colored markers that the level designers could place, which was also the system used to make sure that the boss knew where to jump.

The HUD and menu designer was a relatively simple tool that allowed you to place images and buttons and then save their positions to file. There was also the possibility of adding a shader to an image so things like the loading indicator could be tested and implemented through the tool.

Raveyard members:

If you would like to play this game the button below takes you to its itch.io page. There you can download it!