Map Destruction Concept

Map Destruction Concept:

This concept involves the the player having the ability to destroy certain walls of the house as a means of quickly reaching a room, without the usage of a door, to alter the movement behavior of the enemy mum entity and permanently change the game area layout. Although this feature loses its realistic game play concept, it is intended to increase the game complexity and allowing the user to make more strategic moves and allowing more a dynamic game run.

Key points to be considered when designing a wall destructible environment:

• The player should not have the ability to destroy walls that lead out beyond the intended game area.
• There should be a limit set on the number of walls the player can destroy.
• The enemy mum should not be able destroy walls, but should treat any walls that the player has destroyed as a door entity, meaning that they can go through.
• The player should not be able to destroy door entities or any other spawnable entities, like furniture.

Implementation of Key Concepts

1. Cool down on wall destruction:

With this concept, once the user breaks a valid wall, the ability would go on a x-second cooldown before they can use the ability again. This feature effectively means that the user can use this ability infinitely until the conditions of the end game is met, and is independent of any bonuses the player may receive.

2. Set limit on the number of walls that can be destroyed:

This feature pre-defines the number of walls that the player can destroy. This implementation could be useful in the case of a small game map generation, where destroying many walls would be undesirable, and potentially lose the overall goal of the game.

3. Punishment for destroying a wall:

This option could potentially be implemented with any other features of the wall destruction concepts. Once the user destroys a wall, the enemy mum entity would know the position of the player and pathfind towards them at an increased speed. This feature would add a increased risk factor for the player and they would possibly be discouraged from using the ability too often.

4. Cracked wall concept. weaker wall material:

Similar to presetting the number of walls the player can destroy, this feature involves the idea of spawning weaker walls at the beginning of the game which the player can choose to destroy if they wanted to. These special walls would act as intractable objects with a initial physics component. In the beginning state the wall will be spawned with visual cracks in the design, and once destroyed, that floor tile would be replaced with a crumbled wall floor tile. For random room generations, the special walls, would be spawned at a lower rate to avoid the player from destroying many walls.

5. Can only destroy walls once you pick up axe.

This feature could possibly be implemented as a bonus task the player could do. They would need to locate and pick up the tool before they have the ability to destroy walls. Again there would limit set in place for any wall destruction. Potentially the item could be a one time use object.

Feedback on the concept idea:

1. Liked concept idea, but believed that it would stray away from the realistic part of the game. Is okay with idea and also suggested to implement different types of rooms, i.e. bathroom, dining room etc and additional furniture.
2. When wall is destroyed, the wall could drop stone which can be used as obstacles to stop the mum for 1-2 seconds.
3. Wants to set the number of walls the player can destory, or different colour of wall to differentiate which wall can be broken.
4. Likes the creative aspect of this feature. Likes the idea of having the ability to pick up items and place them down. Possibly through an inventory system.
5. Totally set with the idea of wall destruction so long as there are debuffs to make the game fair. Likes the concept of pick and place. Mentions that these features would revolve around the mum's AI.

Concept Designs:

• Potential designs for the cracked wall, and destroyed wall floor tile.

Design Alterations:

Removal of the mum:

• The game concept no longer aligns with the story to have the mum in the game
• Path-finding difficulties; Diffculty of implementing an effective path finding algorithm, with addition of multiple rooms and having small doorways in between.

Given these changes, the wall destruction environment will no longer be implemented in the final design. This is because this feature was relevant for blocking the mum's pathfinding and also only relevant if the mum is in the game to chase the player.