Missile Turtle Possession

Jamari Williams - March 24th, 2023

This week, I refined the Missile Turtle’s AI, started working on the player’s possession of him, and did various bug fixes and small changes to improve the state of the game. 

Focusing on the Missile Turtle, a bug that I noticed was that the turtle was spawning too many missiles and they weren’t getting destroyed, because I hadn’t implemented terrain collision. To combat this, I created a Projectile Manager actor component. The component holds an array of actors, and each actor has an index. When an object is created or destroyed, the Projectile Manager helps keep the Missile Turtle informed of how many projectiles it can spawn. 

I slightly tweaked how the turtle approaches the player. Before, it would always run away, but if it’s too far from the player, it will slowly approach until it’s in range. I also created the “shell” for the turtle. When it’s in its idle state, it goes into it’s shell and becomes invulnerable for a time. For user feedback, I just made it switch between the normal material and a purple one for now. 

For his possession, making him spawn a single missile for the basic attack took no time. I just made the missiles target the closest enemy. If there are no enemies, it goes in the direction that the player’s camera is facing. Spawning in five at a time for the special took a bit more time. I wanted the player to have to charge to spawn more missiles. When you hold the special and there’s an enemy in range, a UI element pops up, showing you how many missiles you have charged. When you release, the missiles chase the target. Along with that, pressing shift puts the player in the shell. 

I also fixed a number of bugs, including one where after enemies died, they continue to chase the player, one where enemies don’t die when unpossessed, and when you possess an enemy, then enter another room, sometimes the enemy health bars don’t properly update. 

I plan to continue working on the possession of all enemies to provide more player feedback because it isn’t always clear when some things are happening.