Crystal Chaos operates on a Twin stick movement system, with movement and general control being guided by WASD/Left Analogue Stick, and Character rotation and aim being controlled by the Mouse/Right Analogue stick inputs.
Mechanic Implemented and Written up by: Owen
The aiming system works through a series of ray-casts. One that shoots down from the main camera center position and one tracing from the gun barrel. The camera ray logs the hit point of the mouse cursor, stored as Vector3 value which the Gun barrel Ray uses as its end position. A height offset value is applied to the Hit Point to raise off the hit surface slightly. This is so that the player isn’t shooting at the floor when they want to shoot straight.
This system is tied into the Character animation which allows the character to rotate to face the mouse cursor or the the place that they are aiming at. Aiming at a location higher or lower than the players current height will cause the character to look either up or down.
This system replaces the old fixed axis system to allow for more dynamic shooting and verticality implementations in the map designs.
Mechanic Implemented and Written up by: Owen
The camera can be rotated via 2 methods, quick rotate using the Q and E input buttons or a smooth transitional rotate using invisible buttons on the left and right hand side of the screen.
Quick rotate is a method to quickly rotate the camera if the player is in a pinch surrounded by enemies! It function by rotating the camera boom around the player in 45 degree increments and can go in both directions. The rotation is interpolated by 0.5secs to smooth out the rotation to the new position.
Smooth Rotate is a more precise method of camera control allowing the user to rotate the camera how they would like using the invisible buttons on the side of the screen. This system works by triggering an on hover event when the cursor is over the button which rotates the camera boom arm at a set sensitivity speed in degrees per second.
These camera rotation mechanics replaces the old static camera from previous versions of the game to allow for a more dynamic gameplay and better field of vision for the player to locate and shoot enemies as well to gain a better understanding of their surroundings.
The levelling-up system will work similarly to games like Vampire Survivor; when the player acquires enough XP, they will be presented with three options; every five levels will be a choice of three abilities, the levels in-between will be stat increases, and this will continue until the player hits the level cap that will be determined through playtesting but likely level 50 as a suggested starting cap point.
The enemies will provide a set amount of XP that will make the earlier levels more straightforward to achieve, but when the player rises in level, this number will mean less and less, so the player will need to look for other options to provide experience, this is where the optional objectives in the game will become more enticing, always providing 20-30% of experience needed to achieve a level-up.
