Background
Poly Tanks is a local multiplayer turn-based strategy game that can be played by one to four players. Once the game starts, the players' tanks drop down on an island surrounded by water. A player makes their move, traversing the map with very limited fuel. The player chooses a projectile to fire, and aims their tank gun using an angle and force, which will determine the projectile's trajectory. Most projectiles explode on impact, dealing damage to any tank within its radius, and destroying parts of the island. Turns are taken until only one tank is left standing!
My contributions to this project include document management, camera movement, user interface, menus and navigation, player system, and inventory and item system.
Camera
The camera is designed to be controlled automatically, but can, although very restricted, still be controlled by the player. To have the camera be controlled automatically, it must know what to look at; this was done using a separate game object called focus point.
The focus point is a position in the world, which can be positioned at a specific location, or attached to another game object such as a tank or projectile. It is moved around and relocated via script, following what is important at the moment. The camera will automatically adjust its position and/or angle to make sure the focus point is centered on the screen; which is done differently depending on which view the camera is in.
The camera has three different views with different settings, but most importantly different ways of interpreting the focus point. The views are: side view, focus view, and first-person view; with side view being the most commonly used.
Aside from the camera control, the camera also has the ability to shake, as a result of explosions. This was made possible by implementing a Perlin noise generator, which was used to calculate translational and rotational offsets for the camera. The amount of shake is determined by the level of trauma, a value which is increased by explosions, but decreases over time.
User interface
My second major contribution to this project was designing and implementing all user interfaces. This includes the main menu, inventory, hotbar, health bars, and floating text.
My vision for the UI was for it to be easy to understand, with a minimal, but friendly and playful aesthetic. It was designed and developed with graphic design principles in mind. The color scheme, together with menus and interface layouts, was first designed in Adobe Illustrator before being implemented into the game. This allowed for quick development and testing, without having to use Unity’s UI element system.
Poly Tanks is heavily inspired by flash game TANKS available here
