Pillager - FPS

Controls

Action	Primary Control (M+KB)	Secondary Control (Joystick)
Quit	ESC
Start Finale	Equals Key (=)
Use	E	X, or Left Face Button
Reload	R	X, or Left Face Button
Next Weapon	Scroll Up	Right Bumper
Prev. Weapon	Scroll Down	Left Bumper
Go To Weapon 1/2/3/4	1/2/3/4	D-Pad Up/Right/Down/Left
Ability Bottom	Shift	Left Stick Press
Ability Middle	F	Y, or Top Face Button
Ability Top	Q	B, or Right Face Button
Ability Slot 1	G	Right Stick Press
Ability Slot 2	Middle Mouse Button	Select

Introduction

A first-person shooter designed from the ground-up to be a co-operative roguelike, although it never got its footing. The goal was supposed to be to build up strength to fight waves of enemies when some timer ran out, making the game a race against time; instead, the player can just start the finale sequence whenever they're ready with =.

The terrain is static, but the buildings ("landmarks") are randomly selected from a pool of possible landmarks for that size plot of land on the terrain. Each landmark may have an item within it, usually in the form of a red sphere. Some landmarks spawn enemies when a player approaches, while others may spawn enemies continuously and will only stop once the item is collected. Item effects include extra jumps, bonus HP when killing within a certain range, stat boosts, and ammo on kill, as well as some items that provide special abilities, such as the ability to dash or mind-control enemies.

Features

• Co-op: press WASD or click to spawn keyboard player, press any button on the controller to spawn the controller player
• Four weapons, two of which with unique 3D models and animations
• Eight items
• Four enemy types
• Ten landmarks

Details

• Weapon projectiles may be hitscan or slow, and may obey gravity (although none obey gravity in this build)
• Projectiles may explode
• Enemies that spawn from the brown cube landmark spawn as a Unit Group, whose given objective is to hunt a player. They move as a team and only break formation when one group member aggros onto a player (or other enemy of theirs). Unit groups may also patrol, move to a point, take over landmarks, and reinforce landmarks, but none are implemented in this build
• Landmarks are spawned by selecting a random one from a pool of landmarks of that plot's size. There are six plot sizes: 5x5, 10x10, 20x20, 40x40, 60x60, and 100x100. Only the first three have more than one landmark to choose from, though
• Enemy units have an aggro range, a desired target distance, and an attack range. They will shoot the target when they're inside the target range and will close/retreat to be at the desired target distance away from their target
• Enemies also usually lead their shots and may use the same SMG the player has
• Enemy pathfinding is baked into the terrain and each landmark. To go between a landmark and terrain, NavMeshLinks are generated during runtime between them. This doesn't work very well and this project was abandoned halfway through making the whole navmesh bake during runtime (which also didn't work well)
• Status effects have been made, such as poison and bonus defense, but there isn't any way to cause them in this build

Conclusion

The reason this has been abandoned is because it's not fun. Walking around a large terrain to landmarks could be fine if the combat was better for long-distance combat and the enemies in the landmark actually came to engage the player in the field, or if they could be contained to the landmark and fought in close-quarters. The enemy AI isn't sophisticated enough to pose an interesting challenge like, say, DOOM enemies or something. Overall, the game went in the wrong direction to tackle an open-world roguelike FPS: no ADS or scopes, no vehicles, no pressure, no direction. If there ever was another attempt to make this game, the first thing to do would be to make long-distance engagements fun, then add the landmark stuff after that.

About

Abandoned summer 2021. Made in Unity.