Goblin Must Die

Goblin must die is a tower defence game inspired by Theater Mechanicus which is a mini-game in Genshin Impact. I worked as the lead game programmer and was responsible for version control, development framework building, feature development and some other tasks. The feature I implemented include:

• Basic game structure such as tower building, upgrading and selling

• The function of tower and bullets

• Element reaction on enemy

• UI

• Save and load(JSON)

• Audio

• Super Mario: Odyssey - style level selection

• Miscellaneous like options and pause menu

 
Responsibilities:

• Built basic code framework of the game.

• Implemented some game basic functions and system modules, including but not limited to the audio system, node manager, and tower functions.

• Designed and built game UI, ensuring it worked well.

• Version control of the project using Git.

Devlog

 

Project framework

At first, we detailed the game mechanics with the designers. Then I made some empty necessary asset managers to control game logic and game objects like bullets and towers. We clarified the hierarchy and logic between major modules and objects. As most of my teammates don’t know well about interface and SOLID principles and our project is small-scale, I decided to use singleton in most manager classes. But I made the mistake of underestimating the number of managed classes, otherwise, it would have saved a lot of time and reduced the number of bugs if I had used template classes at the beginning.

Level Select

Super Mario: Odyssey is one of my favorite games, so I want to make a similar level selection as Odyssey’s Kingdom selection. I used some pivots to control the earth and level point’s rotation and location and then adjusted the camera based on Euler angels to make sure the camera points at the selected level. At last, I wrote a show Gizmos function to show level points in the editor for the designers to adjust level points.

Tower Function

For the purpose of making nodes and towers modularized and easy to adjust, I set the proper composition and inheritance relationship. We improved code readability and reduced coupling by programmed functional logic in the manager classes.

Element Reaction

Element reaction is one of the core mechanics in Genshin Impact which is our inspiration. I summarized and simplified the rule, made it fit our project. I kept the rule of element power and decreasing, and removed some complex rules in the phase of reacting. In terms of implementation, I used the component pattern and made element reaction a component in the base enemy class. It made element reaction independent from the other modules and others do not need to know this part to continue their tasks. 

Saving & Loading

Because there’s too much data needed to be stored in a tower defence game level, I didn’t use PlayerRefs to save the game. I create a save data class and saved game data into a JSON file.