Conflict Zones Design Process

Probably the biggest single piece of the game that I worked on was the conflict zones (CZs). These are the areas of interest that encourage players to explore the procedurally generated world and reward them for doing so. They also eventually summon the boss of the game.

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CZs sprouted from a problem we found in playtests where many players simply wouldn't leave the area they were started in. We wanted a way to get them to move around and engage enemies in different areas as well as add another layer to the gameplay loop.

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When CZs became the solution we wanted to work towards, I started on it immediately. I started with a list of short encounters that I hoped could get the player to change how they were playing, even just a little bit. Some put the player on the offensive, having to hunt down enemies, while another requires them to defend a structure.

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I started with coming up with an overall loop for how the player would encounter the CZs and what they would lead to. The CZ spawns, the player approaches, the CZ gets chosen at random, the player completes it, then the cycle starts over. None of them were intended to be particularly difficult or take more than a minute or two. They were supposed to be quick and simple.

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From there, I started work on designing the the different types, ending up with 5 in total: Assault (kill enemies), Demolition (destroy buildings), Hard Target (miniboss), Factory (defend a structure), and Ambush (similar to Assault, but a smaller area and different enemy composition). Each of these were allowed specific enemy types to spawn, so that the experience would be recognizable when repeated. Ultimately, the Conflict Zones are an optional part of gameplay. However, they are essential to the player being able to survive for extended periods of time, given the rewards they hand out.

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Postmortem

I am immensely proud of the work we did on World Eater. I look at how the final build for the game came out, and I see a completed product. But I also see the potential for so much more to go into it to make it better. The Conflict Zones specifically are something that I'm happy with. I spent a lot of time looking through the code for the enemy manager and learning how that was handling things in order to make the CZs work properly. They have a timer that counts down for each type that lets the manager know which one it should try to spawn. The manager then looks at the environment for places that can hold that CZ type specifically, chooses one at random, and initiates it. The CZ then waits for the player to enter it (or for the activation timer to run out) and starts it up. Each CZ has a different task for the player, and rewards them with upgrades to their snake to make them stronger. Working my way through this taught me a lot about scripting and how C# and Unity work.