Shell Shocked
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Overview
Shell shocked is a real time strategy game made by 4 people including myself over the spring semester of 2015. The game was made for Interdisciplinary Game Based Learning Design class where we were tasked with making an educational game. Since the class was interdisciplinary there were 2 Computer Science majors (including me), 1 Education major and 1 Communication major on my team. The class was a great learning experience, particularly with working with other disciplines. As the only undergraduate on the team, I had a great opportunity to learn from the other members. I brought the only experience in making games and since we had quick iteration time, the game was made in GameMaker: Studio. The ultimate goal of the game was to create a fun and engaging experience that taught students around the 7th grade level how innovations in WWI changed warfare drastically. The team presented the game at an end of the year showcase open to the public. Reception for the game was overall good and we were offered a chance to have the game used in Wake County's 7th grade curriculum.
My Involvement
For Shell Shocked my focus was on building the in game combat simulation. I was responsible for creating the AI for each soldier, implementing each innovation and ultimately creating a robust simulation system that could be tailored to the educational content. With my experience in the RTS genre, I set up the combat system using a hierarchical structure that created template units which were given various statistics at run time. This allowed us to easily create a upgrade system since each unit was loaded at the start of a battle.
With a focus on combat simulation, my goal was to maintain player engagement in order to better facilitate player education. Since simulation games can get boring, I wanted to make the battle fun to watch and as interactive as possible. This is why the pre battle setup was included in the game, so that the player would have something to do each round. In addition, instead of allowing units to automatically fight each other, some units were purposely designed to require player interaction, being labeled as "clickables".
Other than the combat system, I helped facilitate art creation and animation. I also contributed to the dialog and upgrade systems as they required input from the battle simulation. Lastly, I created and implemented all of the sound effects in the game.
Controls
The games controls are heavily mouse oriented like a majority of PC based RTS games. The battle is split into two stages, one being setup and the other being simulation. The other parts of the game involve spending morale to buy upgrades in battle, going through story content via dialogue, and looking at end of battle statistics. The story has a finite number of battles and three different end states. Most of these controls are explained in game, but they are listed here for convenience.
Universal
Escape - Quit Game (Windows and Mac OSX only)
Battle Setup
During this phase the player is prompted to place military innovations on the battle field. The innovation will follow the mouse cursor and have a colored box to indicate placement validity. When valid, the innovation can be placed onto the battlefield.
Innovation is Green - Valid placement
Innovation is Red - Invalid placement
White Box - Valid area to place innovation
Left Mouse - Place innovation (if valid)
Battle Simulation
During this phase the player is able to affect the battlefield by activating clickable innovations. An innovation is clickable if it is flashing yellow on screen. Once used, some innovations have cool-down times that will be displayed by a slowly disappearing circle.
Left Mouse - Activate all innovations of type (if not on cool-down)
Right Mouse - Activate single innovation (if not on cool-down)
Clickable Innovations
Trenches (no cool-down, change soldier movement direction)
Machine Guns (cool-down, start burst)
Poison Gas Canisters (no cool-down, one time activation, create poison gas cloud)
Artillery Targets (cool-down, fire artillery)
Tanks (no cool-down, start and stop tank movement)
Shell shocked is a real time strategy game made by 4 people including myself over the spring semester of 2015. The game was made for Interdisciplinary Game Based Learning Design class where we were tasked with making an educational game. Since the class was interdisciplinary there were 2 Computer Science majors (including me), 1 Education major and 1 Communication major on my team. The class was a great learning experience, particularly with working with other disciplines. As the only undergraduate on the team, I had a great opportunity to learn from the other members. I brought the only experience in making games and since we had quick iteration time, the game was made in GameMaker: Studio. The ultimate goal of the game was to create a fun and engaging experience that taught students around the 7th grade level how innovations in WWI changed warfare drastically. The team presented the game at an end of the year showcase open to the public. Reception for the game was overall good and we were offered a chance to have the game used in Wake County's 7th grade curriculum.
My Involvement
For Shell Shocked my focus was on building the in game combat simulation. I was responsible for creating the AI for each soldier, implementing each innovation and ultimately creating a robust simulation system that could be tailored to the educational content. With my experience in the RTS genre, I set up the combat system using a hierarchical structure that created template units which were given various statistics at run time. This allowed us to easily create a upgrade system since each unit was loaded at the start of a battle.
With a focus on combat simulation, my goal was to maintain player engagement in order to better facilitate player education. Since simulation games can get boring, I wanted to make the battle fun to watch and as interactive as possible. This is why the pre battle setup was included in the game, so that the player would have something to do each round. In addition, instead of allowing units to automatically fight each other, some units were purposely designed to require player interaction, being labeled as "clickables".
Other than the combat system, I helped facilitate art creation and animation. I also contributed to the dialog and upgrade systems as they required input from the battle simulation. Lastly, I created and implemented all of the sound effects in the game.
Controls
The games controls are heavily mouse oriented like a majority of PC based RTS games. The battle is split into two stages, one being setup and the other being simulation. The other parts of the game involve spending morale to buy upgrades in battle, going through story content via dialogue, and looking at end of battle statistics. The story has a finite number of battles and three different end states. Most of these controls are explained in game, but they are listed here for convenience.
Universal
Escape - Quit Game (Windows and Mac OSX only)
Battle Setup
During this phase the player is prompted to place military innovations on the battle field. The innovation will follow the mouse cursor and have a colored box to indicate placement validity. When valid, the innovation can be placed onto the battlefield.
Innovation is Green - Valid placement
Innovation is Red - Invalid placement
White Box - Valid area to place innovation
Left Mouse - Place innovation (if valid)
Battle Simulation
During this phase the player is able to affect the battlefield by activating clickable innovations. An innovation is clickable if it is flashing yellow on screen. Once used, some innovations have cool-down times that will be displayed by a slowly disappearing circle.
Left Mouse - Activate all innovations of type (if not on cool-down)
Right Mouse - Activate single innovation (if not on cool-down)
Clickable Innovations
Trenches (no cool-down, change soldier movement direction)
Machine Guns (cool-down, start burst)
Poison Gas Canisters (no cool-down, one time activation, create poison gas cloud)
Artillery Targets (cool-down, fire artillery)
Tanks (no cool-down, start and stop tank movement)
Windows
Mac OSX
HTML5
HTML5 is not mobile compatible