BTH: The Prequel

Design Process

Concepting

This project was my second school assignment and my third game project that I did for university. The task that I was given was to make a fully working Shooter Game, either horizontal or vertical.

When the assignment was given, I had already planned to do a vertical shooter game, and the theme for this game, I decided on it very early on. A university senior of mine made a game called "BTH" and it was also a vertical shooter game where the player would play as a regular dude, beating up the homeless by throwing bricks and coins at them. 

Wanting to create a sort of sequel game for that, I decided to make a game similar with the theme of homelessness and thus decided to do a prequel story to the BTH game made by my university senior friend.

The theme and story is also loosely based on the original story intention I had for my first game project: Subterranean Bomb in the Bayou. In that game, you would also play as a homeless defeating enemies throwing bricks at you. However due to the time constraint and lack of experience, I wasn't able to get the results I wanted and therefore decided to use this project as an opportunity to fulfill my original goals.

Pre-Production

During this stage, I had planned out the mechanics I would want to have for my game. The original planning was to have 3 different powerups. One powerup will upgrade the player's bullets, one will heal the player and give extra health, and the other powerup will add a shield to the player.

However, later in production, I would only be able to achieve 2 out of the 3 mechanics I wanted.

I also had to implement a regular score system into the game. But I decided to opt for more by adding in a high score system. This will prove a bit problematic for me when I have to do the 2 separate modes later on.

It was also here where I decided to have my enemies spawn using a random interval basis. By this point of time, I have properly understood how to add in a random spawning system that wasn't able to add for my 2nd game project, and therefore used that for my enemies. Thus every 5 seconds, either the first or second enemy will spawn in. I did the same for the enemy drops as enemies may either drop either powerups or nothing at all. 

Game Mechanics

Power Ups:

• Beijing Corn: When a player picks up a Beijing Corn, they will start to shoot out Beijing Corns instead of throwing rocks. Fire delay is completely removed when shooting Beijing Corns, and this power up can be upgrade another 2 more times. When another Beijing Corn is collected, players will start to shoot 2 Beijing Corns diagonally by 20 degrees on both the left and right side. Collecting 3 or more Beijing Corn will have the player shoot up to 3 Beijing Corns, essentially a combination of both the level 1 upgrade and level 2 upgrade. Max level of upgrades is 3 and any more collected after will not count towards anything. However, upgrade level will be reset whenever player takes damage.

​

​

​

​

• Mushroom: Essentially serving as a healing item for the player. When picked up, it will either heal the player or grant more health to the player depending how much health the player has. If the player has less than 5 health, then it will heal the player; if the player has exactly 5 health or more, then it will give extra health to the player. Since it can be powerful, I decided to reduce to spawn chances of mushrooms.

​

​

​

​

Game Modes:

• Normal: For this normal game mode, players will be fighting enemies up to a certain time. When that certain time arrives, players will then have to fight a boss. They must kill the boss to win the game.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

• Endless: As the name suggest, it is a game mode where enemies spawn endlessly. As the game progresses, the enemies spawn timer will be shorter, causing enemies to spawn more frequently. A third kind of enemy will also spawn in this game mode where they will travel faster and shoot faster too. These special third enemies are also guaranteed to drop a Beijing Corn upon death.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Score System:

• When a player kill an enemy, they will get 10 points added to the score. 

​

• When a player's score surpasses their current high score, the high score will follow the new score until the player dies, setting a new high score.

​

• A boss will award the player a 100 points to the score when it dies.