Nova Star

Project Type
Engine Used
Languages Used
Primary Role

Internship Project
Unity
C#
Gameplay Designer and Programmer

Nova Star was a project that I helped develop as part of the GameDevHQ Internship program. I worked on this project with a team of 5 members. Following the completion of this project the game was published to game hosting site itch.io. The playable version of the game can be found at the itch.io page here.

Contributions

Player weapon behavior programming

I programmed the behavior of the way the player fired their different weapons as they leveled up, how the projectiles moved when fired, as well as how they interacted with the enemies in the scene.

Shot types in the game include:

  • Small fireball: Deals 1 point of damage then despawns. Appears in single, double, and triple versions.
  • Wave fireball: Deals 2 points of damage and passes through multiple enemies.
  • Large fireball: Deals 3 points of damage and passes through multiple enemies.
  • Charge laser: Player holds the button to charge the beam and fires upon release. Deals 1 point of damage every 0.25 seconds, passes through multiple enemies, and firing duration is relative to charge time up until a limit.
Co-programmed player weapon system

I worked with my teammate, Mar McRae, to develop the system that changes the players weapon whenever they pick up a power up and reverts their weapon to the base level upon taking damage. My part in this was designing the weapon implementation to allow this system to be easily expanded to add any newly created weapon types.

Designed and programmed behavior for basic enemies

I developed the behavior of the basic enemies to allow them to fly into the screen, fire their weapon at the player, then fly off the screen. If the enemy was not destroyed by the time they flew off the screen they would then repeat their attack cycle after a few seconds.

Audio sourcing, editing in Audacity, and audio behavior programming

I programmed the audio behavior for most of the game music and sound effects except for audio related to the boss enemies. I also worked to source the audio and music used in the game from royalty free sources and ensure they were credit properly. I edited the audio was edited using Audacity.

Created and edited some of the graphical assets using Photoshop.

I created the custom assets for the charge laser firing and charging animations using Photoshop and then imported them into Unity.

The charge laser in action.
Facing the capital ship.
Enemy variety ranged from small small and speedy ships to large durable mini-bosses.
Navigating a horde of speed cruisers
Our team designed custom formations to go along with the random spawn placements of filler enemies.
%d bloggers like this: