High Noon

Explore a condensed, but intricate Wild West town for weapons and items to survive before holding out against an endless onslaught of enemies. How long can you survive?

Control Diagram:

WASD – Basic directional movement

Spacebar  – Jump

Shift – Sprint

E – Interact/Buy

1 – Swap to pistol (if rifle is unlocked)

2 – Swap to rifle (if rifle is unlocked)

R – Reload current weapon

LMB – Fire weapon

How to Play: 

Explore the western town and prepare yourself to survive as long as you can against the endless waves of cowboy enemies. Collect coins, use them to purchase services from NPCs and/or collect a powerful rifle, and outperform your foes on the battlefield to prove yourself worthy of making a name for yourself in the wild west. In this kill-or-be-killed world, remember that your actions have consequences. 

What Went Right:

• Looking back at our initial plans, we succeeded in implementing the majority of features that we had hoped to add for the game, including level design features, base game mechanics, and other forms of interactivity for the player.
• We also succeeded in achieving the specific aesthetic of the overall game that we aimed for: a western shooter based in a town in a desert. The assets we found on the Unity Asset Store worked well to accomplish this goal.

What Went Wrong/What Problems Did You Face:

• One of the main problems we experienced as a group was communicating timely and efficiently. Whether it was explaining what we were working on, or what we had planned for each milestone, this is somewhere we could have worked on greatly. 
• Another problem we faced was trying to come up with a true goal for the player to work towards, rather than just surviving; we didn’t want to implement something that was half-baked, or didn’t fit into the aesthetic or mechanics of the game, so we decided against a boss or other major finish.
• Mechanically, there were many problems that arose due to bugs within the game, errors with committing changes among all of our versions, etc.

How Did You Overcome Those Problems:

• To overcome the problem of communication, we tried to do better at sharing our goals for the project; for example, we put into a document the things we individually wanted to work towards for the coming milestones, as well as ideas we might want to think about incorporating into the project if we had the chance. 
• To overcome the problem of creating a final goal, we decided to focus more on just giving the player more interactivity within the level, such as more NPCs. This solution felt more right for our game rather than trying to implement some kind of boss level, since the main idea we had to start was survival against endless waves of enemies.
• To overcome the mechanical bugs for the game, we did our best to do relentless testing, focusing on our individual implementations and working to make sure they functioned as smoothly as possible.

What Changes Were Made and Why:

• Not many major changes were made from the original image we had in mind for the final version of our game, but we did make changes as to how we would go about incorporating our ideas. For example, deciding the best ways to make the NPCs function; going from the plan to make the healing NPC have unlimited chances to heal to rather increase the player’s max health a single time made for a more punishing game style, which we were striving for.
• Another change we made was how the player was able to collect coins. The original plan was to have some coins throughout the level as collectibles and then also the chance for an enemy’s death to spawn a collectible on destruction as well. We kept the original coin collectibles throughout the level, but we decided to rather automatically increase the player’s coin count on a random chance when an enemy dies, mainly to reduce visual clutter. The implementation of the NPC the player can steal 5 coins from was also an addition to give the player a chance for more coins but at the cost of some health.
• Other than those major changes, we were continuously changing things like the level design and functional scripts in order to resolve bugs, increase fluidity, and also just increase the user’s experience to prompt a positive response.

What Did You Learn:

• There were many learning experiences throughout the development process of this project. Some of the biggest lessons learned were punctuality and the importance of communication. Had we strived to do better in these areas, our project could have turned out a bit more concrete and fleshed out.
• We also learned many of the mechanics that go into the development of a game like this, as well as all of the skills necessary to do so. Whether it be UI, scripting, or level design, we all increased our grasp on the subjects to a higher level. 
• Besides the ideas we learned in class lectures, we also did individual research into complex ideas we needed in order to accomplish our goals with this project, especially in regards to creating the scripts for things like interactability and other mechanics. 
• Overall, our main learning is just the main layout of the timeline of a game’s development, the nitty gritty involved in every step along the way, and the obstacles that we needed to overcome in order to get our final version to a position we were happy with.