Features
Collectables
Throughout the game the player must collect as many
items possible by searching throughout the different rooms
and hallways. These items consist of books, backpacks,
laptops, etc. The HUD will display how many items have been
collected in each level.
Flashlight
Your flashlight is your weapon. Be sure to use the power of light
to beam the ghosts out of existence; however, you need to be careful
not to run out of batteries because it does take time for them to
recharge. Learning the limitations of the flashlight early on in the
game will help the player conserve the life of the battery for
critical attacks.
Health
Health is the key ingredient for staying alive
because when the player's health runs out, the game
is over. This requires the player to restart from the
beginning of the level he or she was on. The player's
health is restored at the beginning of every level and
it is important to note that there are no health packs
to be collected.
Dust
The game has a dust effect that shows dust in the air
to cause an atmosphere being in a old dusty library.
Death of a Ghost
Another particle effect in the game is the death of a ghost.
When a ghost dies the ghost explode into small fragments and disappears.
Unlimited Ghosts
In the beginning ghosts were re spawned at any location inside the map. This caused the game to become impossibly hard due to ghost re spawning at the exactly the same spot that the player just killed a ghost. Since the player used all the battery to kill the ghost, he or she could not defend themselves if the ghost starts attacking. So the whole map was divided into four quadrants and made sure a ghost re spawn in random location in one of the three quadrant that the ghost did not get killed.
Stealing Items
When the second floor was added to the game, just having a ghost damage the player’s health points did not seem different than previous level. To add some flavor to the game the difficulty had to be increased. That is why the ghost steals items from the player at the second level. This is accomplished by using a switch cases with the number of items the player currently holds. To balance the game, the ghost could not steal more than once from the player. Therefore, a boolean value was added to the ghost class that would indicate whether the ghost stole from the user previously. This approach had one huge defect. If a player gets attacked right after getting an item it could create an infinite loop by creating a ghost after every time the item is picked up locking the player at the location. This was solved with adding a timer to make sure that ghost does not spawn next to an item two times without an ample time in between the spawning.
Layout
The first floor layout and second floor layout were designed to be simplified representations of Kennedy
Library. The designs were drawn from the Kennedy Library’s blueprints. Representing all of the library’s
features and rooms would make the game too difficult, so key elements were chosen to be included in the
game. The first and floor were populated by placing objects at specific coordinates.
Multi platform Compatibility
Michael was able to port a working version of our game over to the Mac OS X platform with full functionality including music/sound. This process is continuing with the slow integration over to the Windows platform as well.
Collectables
Throughout the game the player must collect as many items possible by searching throughout the different rooms and hallways. These items consist of books, backpacks, laptops, etc. The HUD will display how many items have been collected in each level.
Flashlight
Your flashlight is your weapon. Be sure to use the power of light to beam the ghosts out of existence; however, you need to be careful not to run out of batteries because it does take time for them to recharge. Learning the limitations of the flashlight early on in the game will help the player conserve the life of the battery for critical attacks.
Health
Health is the key ingredient for staying alive because when the player's health runs out, the game is over. This requires the player to restart from the beginning of the level he or she was on. The player's health is restored at the beginning of every level and it is important to note that there are no health packs to be collected.
Dust
The game has a dust effect that shows dust in the air to cause an atmosphere being in a old dusty library.
Death of a Ghost
Another particle effect in the game is the death of a ghost. When a ghost dies the ghost explode into small fragments and disappears.
Unlimited Ghosts
In the beginning ghosts were re spawned at any location inside the map. This caused the game to become impossibly hard due to ghost re spawning at the exactly the same spot that the player just killed a ghost. Since the player used all the battery to kill the ghost, he or she could not defend themselves if the ghost starts attacking. So the whole map was divided into four quadrants and made sure a ghost re spawn in random location in one of the three quadrant that the ghost did not get killed.
Stealing Items
When the second floor was added to the game, just having a ghost damage the player’s health points did not seem different than previous level. To add some flavor to the game the difficulty had to be increased. That is why the ghost steals items from the player at the second level. This is accomplished by using a switch cases with the number of items the player currently holds. To balance the game, the ghost could not steal more than once from the player. Therefore, a boolean value was added to the ghost class that would indicate whether the ghost stole from the user previously. This approach had one huge defect. If a player gets attacked right after getting an item it could create an infinite loop by creating a ghost after every time the item is picked up locking the player at the location. This was solved with adding a timer to make sure that ghost does not spawn next to an item two times without an ample time in between the spawning.
Layout
The first floor layout and second floor layout were designed to be simplified representations of Kennedy Library. The designs were drawn from the Kennedy Library’s blueprints. Representing all of the library’s features and rooms would make the game too difficult, so key elements were chosen to be included in the game. The first and floor were populated by placing objects at specific coordinates.
Multi platform Compatibility
Michael was able to port a working version of our game over to the Mac OS X platform with full functionality including music/sound. This process is continuing with the slow integration over to the Windows platform as well.