Technical Manual [Zombie City]

Transcription

1 INTRODUCTION Faris Arafsha B CS1106 Section 2 Fr292015@dal.ca Technical Manual [Zombie City] Chris Hung B CS1106 Section 2 Christopher.hung@dal.ca Jason Vickers B CS1106 Section 2 jayvickers@gmail.com (?) This manual will explain the technical specifications and functions behind the Zombie City game designed by Group 5 of the Winter 2011 CSCI 1106 class. Zombie City is a 2-dimensional top-down shooter flash game where a player must maneuver or shoot his or her way through a mob of oncoming zombies on a road. The player must refrain from any form of physical contact with the zombies (where they would suffer health penalties) and survive until they reach the end of the road. Before proceeding to the technical specifications of this project, we wish to bring up a few points and thank several people for their assistance. Firstly, the only person in our group with seemingly any understanding on how to begin programming this project (Jason Vickers), mysteriously went missing after attending one project period. He was unable to contribute to the project. Due to the very complex nature of designing this project (and our complete inexperience with programming language), reference was made to the works of Sam Churney, Michael Northorp and Robert MacIsac of the Fall 2010 CSCI 1106 class. Without their tips and much personal consultation and collaboration with Sam, this project probably would not have succeeded. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to them. Also, we wish to give musical credit to Justice (for the song Stress ) and James Brown (for the song Papa s got a brand new bag ). SPACESHOOTER.FLA Background This is the background of level1 and Level 2. Bullet1 This is the bullet that the player can shoot. It is a red circle. deathsound April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 1

2 The sound that plays when the player dies and when the game over page has been displayed. Intermission This is the page that displays when level1 has ended. It allows the player to take a pause between levels. GameOver This is the page that will display when the player loses the game. deathsound This is the sound that plays when the player takes too much damage from the zombies and dies. hurtsound This is the sound that plays when the player takes damage from the zombies and health points are deducted. Level1 This is the game page layout of level1. It consists of a background and a level panel. Level2 This is the game page layout of level2. It consists of a background and a level panel. LevelPanel This is the panel that is updated with the current information on the level, kill count and health of the player. Player This is the main character and it represents the physical appearance of player. All player movement, position and other related functions call upon this. leveldisplay displaying the current level reloadsound This is the sound that plays when the player reloads. released. This plays when the spacebar is shootsound This is the sound that plays when the player fires the weapon. This plays when the spacebar is pressed. April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 2

3 stresstheme This is the musical theme of the game that plays in the background. It is known as Stress by Justice. Welcome This is the main page that displays all the user controls and a brief game description before the game starts. wintheme This is the musical theme that plays if the player wins. It is known as Papa s got a brand new bag by James Brown. YouWon This is the page the indicates when the player wins the game. Zombie1 This is the picture of a zombie and it represents the enemy or target. zombiehit This is the sound that plays when the bullet hits a zombie target and the zombie dies. MAIN.AS VARIABLES public var kills:int; This is an integer that represents the kill score. private var _welcome:movieclip; This is a variable that is called upon to bring up the welcome screen. public var _death; This is a variable that is called upon to play the deathsound file. public var _maingamemusic; This is a variable that is called upon to play the stresssound file (the main game music). public var gameover:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the game is over (begins as false). public var health:int; This is an integer that represents health points. public var _musicplayer:soundchannel; April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 3

4 This variable represents the sound channel that plays sound clips. private var _gamepage:movieclip; This is a variable that is called upon to bring up the Level/GameOver/Intermission/Welcome clips. public var won:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the game has been won (begins as false). This is equivalent to advlevel2. public var level:number; This is a number that represents the current level. public var advlevel:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if level 1 has been passed (begins as false). public var advlevel2:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if level 2 has been passed (begins as false). FUNCTIONS Main This is a function that displays the main/welcome page, initializes the game music and calls upon the beginkey function (to allow the user to start the game by hitting spacebar). beginkey This is a function that checks when the space key is pressed to advance to level 1 off of the main menu, removing the welcome screen. checkgamestate A function that checks if the game is over (by win or loss) and if the player is to advance in a level. If the game is over or is changing levels, it removes the current game page and adds the proper win/loss/intermission screens. It also plays the appropriate win or game over sounds. It should be noted that advlevel2 is also a Boolean variable that is equivalent to a winning statement if true. replay This is a function that restarts the game to level 1 upon hitting the spacebar after winning or losing the game. Once the spacebar is pressed, the listener for this function and the game page are removed as the level is begun. intermission A function that is called upon once intermission menu is added when the player is between levels. This is a function that sets the game to level 2 upon hitting the spacebar after passing level 1. Once the spacebar is pressed, the listener for this function and the game page are removed as the level is begun. April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 4

5 intermission2 This is a redundant function that is called upon when the player passes level 2. This was supposed to be the intermission that takes the player to level 3, but due to time constraints this function was left incomplete. LEVELX.AS(X = 1, 2) VARIABLES public var advlevel:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if level 1 has been passed (begins as false). private var player:player; This is a variable that is called upon to move or store player image and location information. private var probnewobj:int; This variables stores an interger that controls the probability of spawning a new zombie public var gameover:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the player has lost (begins as false). public var _hurt; This is a variable that is called upon to play the hurtsound file. public var maxhealth:number; This variable stores the maximum health points a player can have (100 in level 1 and 75 in level 2) private var playerhealth:int; This variable once stored the current health points a player has. This was part of an old point system that no longer does anything. public var moveup:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the player will move up (begins as false). public var movedown:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the player will move down (begins as false). public var moveright:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the player will move right (begins as false). public var moveleft:boolean; This is a variable that indicates if the player will move left (begins as false). public var movespeed:number; This variable stores the pixels a player can move at a time (10 in level 1 and 5 in level 2) public var _reload; This is a variable that is called upon to play the reloadsound file. public var _shoot; This is a variable that is called upon to play the shootsound file. public var _zhit; This is a variable that is called upon to play the zombiehit sound file. April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 5

6 public var _musicplayer:soundchannel; This variable represents the sound channel that plays sound clips. private var bulletarray:array; This variable represents the array of active bullets that have been fired by the player public var targetx:number; The x coordinate increase/decrease used as a destination for the player. public var targety:number; The y coordinate increase/decrease used as a destination for the player. public var _kills:int; This is an integer that represents the kill score. public var _levels:int; This is an integer that represents the current level. public var _health:int; This variable stores the current health points that a player has. private var canshoot:boolean; This variable states if it is appropriate to fire a bullet (it begins as true and is made false until a makeshift timer completes a cycle) private var shoottimer:timer; This is a variable that stores timer information to add a delay effect between shots. public var won:boolean; This variable once indicated if the game had been beaten (starting as false). FUNCTIONS LevelX This function is called when the current level begins. It first adds the listener for the onaddedtostage function, and assigns a blank array to the bulletarray variable (although this could have been added elsewhere). onaddedtostage Initially, this function removes the listener dedicated to itself so it doesn t run more than once. It then defines all of the discussed variables such as the initial probability of spawning for the zombies, initial player health, player movement speed, initial motion states, shot recovery timings and the current level. It also adds listeners for all of the essential functions (such as player movement and keyboard listeners) listed below and adds a player (also defining initial player positioning to the lower middle part of the screen). updatescore This function updates the LevelPanel so that it properly displays the current level, the kill score and player health and also forwards the information to the Main.as file (though this purpose was for an older version). movebackground April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 6

7 This function scrolls the background picture down the game screen. When the background has fully scrolled, the function stops zombies from spawning, removes all the event listeners for the functions of LevelX, and advances the level. shootbullet When called upon (when the variable canshoot is set to true), this function spawns a bullet, sets its velocity for both dimensions, plays the shootsound file, adds the movebullet listener, adds the spawned bullet to the bullet array and sets the canshoot statement to false until the shoottimer runs out. moveplayer This function dictates player movement when permitted by the state of the presskey or releasekey functions (which are based on the state of the arrow or WSAD keys). When prompted (if moveright, moveleft, moveup and movedown are true), this function sets the target position of by adding the allowed movespeed to the most current target coordinate. It corrects small steps of movement to at least half of the player width or height and maintains target positions to within the bounds of the game screen. presskey This is a function that tracks key presses for movement and shooting statements. If the correct key (arrow/wsad/space) is pressed it sets the associated Boolean moveup, moveright, moveleft, movedown and shootbullet prompt to true. releasekey This is a function that tracks key releases for movement and shooting statements. If the correct key (arrow/wsad/space) is released it sets the associated Boolean moveup, moveright, moveleft, movedown and shootbullet prompt to false. In the case of the space key, once released it would play a weapon reloading sound. movebullet This function dictates projectile motion as defined by the bullet array, information, current bullet position and defined bullet velocities. It should be noted that there is never bullet motion in the x direction in the current version of this game. shoottimerhandler When prompted (by the timer), this function allows the player to shoot. addgameobjects This function adds zombies in random horizontal positions just above the stage of the game. The probability of spawning at any given time is dictated by the variable probnewobject. This function also adds a random vertical velocity of the newly spawned zombie and adds the necessary listeners for the zombie instances (moveobject, removeobject and hittracker). If the zombie is generated outside the horizontal boundaries of the stage by chance, the zombie and associated listeners are removed. April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 7

8 hittracker This function checks for collisions between the zombies and the bullets and bullet travel limits. If the zombie collides with a bullet, the zombie and its associated listeners are removed from the game, the kill score increases by 1, a zombiehit sound is played, the bullet is removed from the stage and the bullet array and its associated listeners are also removed. If the kill score is over 20, the players rate of fire is increased. Finally, if the bullet travels to 100 pixels above the stage or beyond, it is removed from the game, the bullet array and its associated listeners are removed. gameobj This function used to dictate zombie movement but it was disabled. removeobj This function tracks collisions between the zombie and the player and zombie range of motion. If the zombie collides with the player, the zombie and its associated listeners (moveobject, removeobj and hittracker) are removed from the game, the health points decrease by 25 and the hurtsound file is played. If the zombie moves beyond the bottom of the stage, it is removed from the game and its associated listeners are also removed. Finally, if a zombie collision results in reducing player health to 0, all the event listeners in the level are removed and the gameover statement of the Main.as is set to true (ending the game and allowing the player to start over. FUTURE WORK Due to time constraints and the frequent absence of a group member, the majority of the game was left incomplete and unrefined. Much of the code contained scraps from recommendations by peers and previous attempts at hastily programming various functions resulting in many errors, inefficiencies and general code disorganization. The deficiencies listed below, among many others, could have been easily handled over the course of a day: 1. When the win screen pops up, we forgot to add a command that stopped the current game music. As a result, if the game finished too quickly, both the game song and victory song would play at the same time. 2. A lot of mysterious cryptic errors with no line reference appear in the trace when objects collide or are removed. The reason behind this was investigated over the course of a week but was ultimately left unknown. 3. The welcome menu screen does not display the game title. 4. The background we designed for Level 2 would only show up as red every time we tried to add it. Because of this, we had to use the same background as level We did not have time to add special effects outside of audio effects. Explosions, blood sprays and power up indicators could not be added in time. 6. We only had time to add code for 2 levels, despite designing Level 2 was supposed to have a horizontal component to zombie motion. Despite many attempts at changing the value of _thing2.vx, nothing would happen. 8. A final score screen could have been added on intermission/win pages. April 8, 2011 CS1106 Flash Module Technical Manual 8