D.E.R.F

This game was my second project after completing Ascension. The title is abbreviated from Dead Enemy Resistance Force. Several friends and I brainstormed the game and wrote up a design document, but given the amount of custom content necessary and other circumstances taking priority, the project was ultimately sidelined.

Gameplay

Each stage takes place in a unique arena and requires an objective to be fulfilled to continue, such as reaching a designated location in the arena, dispatching a certain number of enemies or a specific one, or surviving for a time limit. The game is of the twin-stick shooter variant.

Technical

The screenshot above shows debug info in addition to gameplay. The shaded red region represents the area of the screen that will scroll the map around the player if the player moves against it. Otherwise, the player moves normally through the free-roam area in the center. Places that the player cannot move into, such as the arena boundaries or objects and barricades, are handled via an underlying color-key map which approximates the arena layout.

The green lines and nodes represent the AI map for the enemies, to allow them to find their way around objects and barricades on the map. The red line extending from each enemy indicates the current node they're moving toward. For this particular enemy, if they are closer to the player than their target node, they break off the node map and simply charge the player.

Taking a queue from Ascension, I built a game editor for this game as well. It consists of a level and character editor, and allows construction of enemy node networks and binding of graphic assets to entity types.

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