Entry/exit points

Idea of the demo mission that I am working on is simple: you squad is dropped in a rat-infested industrial district of the Capitol, and your mission is to scavenge as many resources as possible - and then to evacuate yourselves.

So the team needs to start somewhere on the map, and then make their way to the other part of it, where the evac/exit point.

I didn't want these start/exit locations to be fixed. Therefore, the map has a set of possible locations that can be used either as an entry or an exit point. These are being randomly chosen, with one rule in place: the exit location should be relatively far from the starting location.

Such randomization will mean that even though the demo mission contains a single static map, it is possible to have different walkthroughs due to different start points.

And then of course the enemy pod locations are randomized as well. I mean there's a static list of all possible enemy locations, but when the map is loaded only a part of them is being added.

In the end the maps will be semi-randomly generated (to be more precise, they will be created from smaller building blocks). Right now however I am not putting any effort in this - there are more important issues to address.

So, there's an entry point and an exit point. The gameplay is not purely about reaching from point A to point B though. It is all about collecting stuff. There is a number of randomly generated (well, semi-randomly; they are again predefined, but only a part of them gets added) loot points on the map. The player needs to stand on the loot point and invoke the "search" action.

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Now, I was having difficulties to present the information about loot points (and the exit point) to the user. Therefore I decided to use floating markers that point the player in the general direction, and it seems to get the job done.

Remember that I aim to release a tech demo as soon as I flesh out the gameplay and have all the visuals ready (and sound, maybe...?). If you'd like to be informed first-hand about the release consider signing up for a mailing list that I've created.