The Hare s Revenge By Michael Choppa Table Of Contents Game Mechanics 3 Overview 3 Camera Position 3 User Interface Design 4 Replaying and Saving 4 Control Summary 4 Game Play Details 5 Cut Scenes 5 Story Telling 5 Artificial Intelligence 6 Opponent AI 6 Player Collision Detection 6 Motion 7 Path Finding 7 Special Actions 7 Combat 7 Non player characters 8 Puzzles and Traps 8 Game Elements 8 Items 8 Character Bibles 9 Story Overview 9 Storyboards 9 Background Plot Summary 10 Game Progression 10 Setting 10 Introduction 11 Flowchart 12 Level Detail 13 Lessons Learned 14 Bibliography 16 Game Mechanics Overview The Hare s revenge is a game based on the popular children s tale known as The Tortoise and the Hare This game takes place after the race however After the race the rabbit feels embarrassed and ashamed to have lost the race to a turtle Instead of just asking for a rematch or trying to figure out what he did wrong the rabbit steals the turtle s lucky beanie hat The rabbit plans to use the lucky beanie hat to win the next race Playing the role of the turtle the player must go through the fields and cross the bridge to get to Harry s house There are several foxes roaming the fields for scraps and the birds are scavenging anything they can find trying to cross the bridge Luckily for our hero he isn t an ordinary turtle This turtle defeated a hare in a race and is a bit more agile than most other turtles This turtle also possesses the power to conjure up the reserve water in his shell and spit it out at his predators The blast is incredibly strong and can knock a fox out in a single hit Let us hope it s enough for our hero Camera Position The game is a side scrolling action platform game The camera angle doesn t shift from the side view of the turtle The world will scroll over to view the rest of the world and the next level loads simply by directing the turtle to the right as far as he can go User Interface Design The user interface is quite simple The three hearts in the upper left corner of the screen is the turtle s health Each time the turtle is hit a heart empties When all of the hearts are empty the game is over and the rabbit wins the next race by forfeit Replaying and Saving There is no saving feature If the turtle dies you must start from the beginning again This adds to the challenge of the game making it a bit more difficult to get to the end Control Summary The keyboard is used to play this game and the controls are as follows UP Makes the turtle jump LEFT RIGHT Moves the turtle in the appropriate direction DOWN Hides the turtle cannot be done in the air SPACE Fires the water blast cannot be done in the air or while hiding While the turtle is hiding he is impervious to all damage but cannot move or fire his blaster This feature was a necessity in this game because the turtle just isn t an agile creature Therefore this is another form of defense Trying to jump enemies may be difficult and hiding may be the only option Game Play Details The game is a side scrolling action game Starting out the turtle is confronted with the foxes roaming the fields The second level has birds swooping in on the turtle and the final level is a confrontation with the rabbit The levels increase dramatically in difficulty Cut Scenes Cut Scenes used help to illustrate the story The cut scenes are taken directly from the storyboard A cut scene is placed in between each level For further detail on the cut scenes refer to the storyboard Story Telling The story progress through the cut scenes as the turtle progresses through the levels Finishing a level will reveal another part of the story related to the task at hand Dialog is also used to progress the story in the cut scenes Artificial Intelligence Opponent AI FOX The fox s AI is simple If the fox is too far away from the turtle it will try and close on it A check is done constantly to see how far the fox is from the turtle and its movements are updated accordingly It isn t a difficult opponent to defeat BIRD The bird will fly horizontally on the screen until it has a good diagonal line up with the turtle Then it will swoop down often leading the turtle a bit When the turtle and bird are on the same horizontal axis the bird will continue its flight horizontally until it is defeated or goes off screen RABBIT The rabbit will jump up and down throwing a carrot before its jump and at the peak of the jump If the rabbit is struck by the water blast it will jump quickly to the other side of the screen and continue jumping and throwing carrots Player Collision Detection Collisions were done with the floor and the turtle fox and rabbit using a color scan function The same function was used to detect walls If the fox bumped a wall it would turn around The turtle was not allowed to pass through the wall Each enemy or projectile that collided with the turtle had to undergo two tests and depending on the turtle s hiding state something different could occur The rabbit simply pushed the turtle back until it was out of reach The carrots broke The bird smashed into the turtle and died The fox treated the turtle like a wall and just turned around If the turtle wasn t hiding when any of these bumped him he would take damage Motion The turtle is allowed to move horizontally and can jump a little bit as well The jumping was made slow to illustrate the sluggish nature of turtles Because of this the gravity function had to be lenient to allow the turtle to jump better lengths and increase game play Path Finding There weren t any path finding algorithms implemented here aside from the fox s AI which doesn t find the complete path to the turtle ie if the fox is halted by a wall Special Actions The one action that isn t completely obvious is the ability to hide in the shell It is very crucial in this game to know about this ability as some levels will be much easier with it Combat The turtle is able to damage his opponents with his powerful blast of water that he can spit The turtle can also evade any attack just by hiding in his shell The shell blocks all types of attacks making him impervious to damage The player can attempt to jump out of the way of enemies and obstacles as well Non player characters The only non playable characters are the ones trying to eat the turtle or throw carrots at him None of these non player characters are friendly to …
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