Gunboi GDD

Pre-Production Documentation

Introduction

Gunboi is a 3D platformer/First Person Shooter that subverts expectations of these genres by giving
the player a gun that is useless in combat and a player character that can’t jump. Instead, the player
character uses the force of the gun’s shots to launch themselves, landing on enemies Mario-style to
kill them since the slimes are immune to the weapon shots.

Level Progression

The progression of this game is built around multiple areas within the level where players will be
given a number of Slimes to kill, receiving a reward and the spawning of cloud platforms to allow
them to access the next area. These areas are designed to slowly introduce new obstacle and
enemies as well as new challenges to push the player to improve their skills at platforming and using
the multiple abilities and ability improvements they will unlock on the completion of each area.

Platform 1: 10 Slimes, Unlock Platform 2 & Charge Shot
- Very simple platforming, few areas to die or risky areas for slimes to be in.
- Only basic slimes here, and not too many so as not to overwhelm the player.
Platform 2: 12 Slimes, Unlock Platform 3 & x2 More Regular Ammo
- Some more risky and higher platforming, alleviated a little by the player unlocking the Charge

Shot on Platform 1.
- Addition of basic Traps and High Jump Slimes to diversify the range of obstacles and account for

the still very low difficulty of platforming.
o Introduces these new slimes separately to the regular Slimes so players can get used to
their difference in behaviour before trying to deal with both types simultaneously.

- The platform takes advantage of the fact players can reach much harder to reach areas with the
Charge Shot to hide Slimes in slightly more awkward spots, encouraging players to search
around and use the Slime’s audio cues to discover them all.

Platform 3: 14 Slimes, Unlock Platform 4 & x1 More Charge Shot Ammo
- A significant increase in Platforming difficulty by having multiple vertically and horizontally

distant platforms with little landing space.
o Aims to encourage players to get superior mastery over the mobility they have with
their abilities, hopefully getting them to experiment with switching shot modes in air
and shooting themselves around in more interesting ways than simply moving forward
and shooting down.

- No new slimes, but players can now encounter both High Jump Slimes and Regular Slimes
together

- Regular traps are replaced with automatic ones
o Slightly more difficult than the reactive ones, teaching players to find good timing as
well as good special awareness when platforming rather than restricting the time they
can spend on certain platforms (which is the obstacle the reactive traps provide)

Platform 4: 26 Slimes, unlock Platform 5 & Flamer
- A slightly larger scale of slime encounters here, introducing the final 2 variations with the intent

to give players large safe spots to react to how these 2 variations act. Similarly, to the
introduction of High Jump Slimes these Fast Slimes and Large Slimes are introduced individually
so players can experience dealing with them alone before fighting them together.

o Using the openness of the platforms here, players can be taught that the Large Slime’s
spawned Slimes that trigger on death can be shot off the side of platforms and into the
water meaning players have less Slimes to deal with. Players who notice this can use
that knowledge in future altercations with Large Slimes, rewarding players who pay
attention.

- The traps have been scaled up to Large Traps and Large Automatic Traps. These are here to
scare players into being more experimental and playing around with air control.
o Large segments, particularly at the start of this Platform leave little room for players to
land free of danger. Players can approach this by timing landings and make a slow
methodical route to the safe platforms. However more experimental players will try to
utilise their higher ammo arsenal to try and achieve a mastery over air control which
can help them completely avoid the traps of the area with good timing and shot
choice/direction. This is key for players who want to make the best use out of the final
weapon, the Flamer which they will gain access to at the end of this Platform. The
Flamer’s primary benefit is incredible air control, but is very easy to lose control of.

Platform 5: 33 Slimes, unlock Platform 6 & x2 Regular Shot Ammo
- A change of pace, less for atomic scaling more for a change of pace for the level’s progression.

The restrictive space and puzzle aspect of the maze provides a different method of progress for
the player; however, the atomics don’t scale much here.
- This area gives players a little break from complicated platforming after the last two Platforms
had some challenging platforming puzzles. Instead, the area is a casual maze that provides
multiple miniature encounters with all the different kinds of slimes in controlled and restricted
environments.

Platform 6: 43 Slimes, unlock Boss Room & x15 Flamer Ammo
- The final Platforming segment provides challenging vertical platforming alongside large

encounters of a wide mix of Slimes, maximising the difficulty of the Slimes players have
encountered at this point.

o The encounters require players to use the knowledge they have of each Slime’s
behaviour and mechanics to work out the best approach to taking them out as a group.

Boss Room: 1 Boss, defeating it beats the game
- With the player having a good grasp on their own abilities and how to use them, as well as

conquering the different traps and enemies the Boss Slime provides them with a final challenge
where they must use all the things they’ve learnt so far to the test.

o The bosses moveset tests player’s timings and air control (taught by traps), reaction to
enemy behaviour (taught by traps) and special awareness (taught by platforming).

The graph below shows how the amount of different enemy types and trap types scale as the game
progresses. This shows how the level not only has the enemies and traps scaling in difficulty, but also
the number of different versions of these obstacles a player could face in one area. The number of
different enemies a player will encounter in one Area scales pretty closely with the number of
weapons the player has at their disposal. Players only face levels with all 4 variants once they have
all 3 different weapons, making the games scaling seem fair and smooth.

As a quick note, the trap variation tailors off near the end primarily as their threat is drastically
reduced once the player has more air control, and as they receive new weapon types and ammo
upgrades, they gain significantly more. By areas 5 and 6, players have enough air control to largely
negate the threat of traps entirely.

Weapon, Enemy & Trap Types (Per Area)

4.5 Area 2 Area 3 Area 4 Area 5 Area 6
4

3.5
3

2.5
2

1.5
1

0.5
0
Area 1

Weapon Types Enemy Types Trap Types

Additionally, as players get better and receive more tools, they will face more enemies per Area. This
scaling makes sure players constantly feel challenged and additionally feel like they are conquering
bigger and bigger challenges as they progress.

Weapon, Enemy & Trap Types (Per Area)

50 12 26 33 43
45 Area 2 14 Area 5 Area 6
40
35 Area 3 Area 4
30
25
20
15
10

5 10
0

Area 1

Enemies Per Area

Mechanical Matrices

Player Weapon (Atomic 1)

The first atomically scaling aspect of the game is the player’s weapon. The weapon scales in two
ways: new shooting modes and ammo increases. As the player progresses, they get access to new
shooting modes. These shooting modes only refill their ammo when the player lands. This means
once a player has left a platform, they must use their ammo and guns wisely to reach their
destination. This also means, as players get more ammo and weapon types the amount of air control
and distance, they can travel increases giving them a sense of scaling and progression.

The table below shows how the shooting types differ, and how max ammo scales per upgrade stage.

The graph below shows how the ammo increases over upgrades but also how starkly different the
ammo counts are for each weapon. While the flamethrower drastically outnumbers the other
weapons in ammo count, the amount of force the weapon apples per use of ammo is drastically
lower balancing it out significantly (as can be seen in the graph below the Ammo Upgrade graph)

Ammo Upgrades

Stage 1 1 60
6 80

Stage 2 2
7

Stage 3 3 10 100
20 100
0 40 60 80 120
Flamethrower Charged Shot Regular Shot

Jump Force Amount

Force (In Air) 265 2000
Force (Off Platform) 775

0 265 2800
1500 3000

500 1000 1500 2000 2500

Flamethrower Charged Shot Regular Shot

Looking at the previous graph, it shows how powerful a fully charged shot of the Charge Shot is as it
applies a substantially larger amount of force to the player. This is balanced by Rate of Fire, showing
how to achieve such high numbers the charge shot needs 2 seconds of charging. Something worth
noting is that the minimum Rate of Fire (aka lowest charge amount) of 0.6 seconds for the Charge
Shot, despite being twice as slow as the Regular Shot will launch the player less than a Regular Shot.
Charge Shots have the downside of being significantly weaker than the regular shot with anything
less than around 1 second of charging.

Rate of Fire (Seconds)

RoF (Charge Shot Fully Charged) 0.05 2
0.3

0.05 0.6
RoF

0.3

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Flamethrower Charged Shot Regular Shot

Enemies (Slimes) [Atomic 2]

The 2nd atomic of the game are the Slime enemies. The slimes atomics are a little more complicated
than just offensive and defensive increases. Instead, most of the changes include slight changes to
the way Slimes act. These include the height of their jump, the speed they can chase the player but
also small special abilities or behavioural changes that increase the difficulty of the player hitting
them or other disadvantages to the player (as can be seen below on the table)/

Below are a few of the scaling atomics of the enemies presented in graph form. Comparing these
show the numerical specialties of each slime and how each slime has its pros and cons, although its
worth noting of course that the Fast and Large slimes have additional differences beyond these
numerical scalings.

Damage Jump Force Amount

60 2500
50
2000 1950
50
1500 1250
40 35 35 1000
500
30 500 350
20
0
20 Jump Force

10 Regular High Jump Fast Large

0
Damage

Regular High Jump Fast Large

Traps (Fly-Traps) [Atomic 3]

The traps are probably the simplest scaling atomic in the game, mostly providing different levels of
challenge based on how they are placed in the level. The colour coded table below shows how as the
traps scale they get access to a single additional superior atomic as they progress.

Boss (Atomic 4)

The 4th and final atomic is the final boss of the game. Its scaling is a little different to everything else
in the game is it scales as its being fought. As the player reduces the health of the Boss it enters new
phases were it gets access to more abilities and improves upon the abilities it has.

The graphs below are interesting to compare as it shows how not only does the boss get more
moves and abilities to use as its health decreases furthering the challenge for the player, but also the
window of opportunity players have to fight back against the boss is reduced. This simulates the
boss becoming more aggressive and desperate as the player shows mastery over them, giving it their
all to try its best to stop the player succeeding.

Vulnerability Attacks Available

9 4.5
8 4

8 4

7 3.5
6 3

6 3
5
2.5
5 2
4
2
4
1.5
3 1

2 1

1 0.5

0 0
Vulnerability (In Seconds) Attacks Available

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

The graph below shows the above atomics again rising and falling as player health drops.

Health, Vulnerability Window and Available Attacks (Per
Phase)

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4
Phase 1

Health Vulnerability Attacks Available

Additionally, the boss doesn’t simply get new moves in its moveset as it progresses but also
improved versions of moves it already has. The boss does this by doing the same attack more than
once before its vulnerability window opens. The Jump attack for example involves the boss jumping
and slamming down once before an 8 second vulnerability window in Phase 1. Compare than to a
Jump attack in Phase 4 where the boss jumps and slams 3 times simultaneously before a 4 second
vulnerability window.

Attack Amount per Trigger

3.5
333

3

2.5

2 22
2

1.5

1111
1

0.5 00 0 Phase 4
Phase 2 Phase 3
000
0

Phase 1

Jump Attacks Spit Attacks Charge Attacks Enemy Spawn Attacks

Production Plan

Here is the production plan for the project. The plan is to finish everything by Week 10 giving more
than enough leniency for delays that should occur as it will only delay the playtesting of the final
game over the final 2 weeks.

Comparison & Justification Document

For this project, early on I decided I wanted the atomics to scale in interesting ways. It would’ve
been very easy to simply have enemy, player and player weapons have scaling health or damage
that increase the difficulty of enemies and the effectiveness of the players abilities as the level
progressed. Instead of this, I wanted the progression in difficulty and player abilities to give access to
new playstyles and enemies that act different as opposed to a bland increase in stats.

Player Weapon
For the players weaponry, they gain access to three different weapons as the level progresses. All
weapons have pros and cons, and are useful for different types of traversal however the player also
feels their character gradually getting stronger as new weapons mean more air time as they can use
all weapons’ ammo without landing. For example, once the player unlocks the charge shot, they can
use the full ammo for both it and the default blaster. This alongside ammo pickups mean unlocking
new weapons not only gives the player more options but increases the distance and time they can
spend in air. The level progression accounts for these changes and increases in air control, distance
and player skill as platforming becomes more complex, platforms more distant and more enemies
are added as the level progresses.

Enemies & Traps
The enemies have unique aspects to their actions that alone provide different challenges as they are
introduced. The high jump slimes are harder to land on for players getting used to gaining air,
therefore the player is given the charge shot for easy height and a lot of room on the first part of the
level with high jump slimes to get used to them. Later they are introduced alongside regular slimes,
introducing a puzzle solving element that requires players to realise that trying to kill regular slimes
while high jump slimes are nearby could easily cause them to hit you from above and surprise you.
This shows how mixing enemy types is a progression of difficulty on its own as players have to
identify the best way to deal with an encounter rather than an individual enemy or enemy type.

The fast slimes and large slimes are introduced in similarly fair ways to teach the players what they
can do. The fast slimes are easier to take out with more air control (which the flamer does best), but
when introduced the players can’t use this and are forced to see how the fast slime AI acts
differently. Dealing with the frustration and difficulty of killing the erratically moving fast slimes
means the player feels extra satisfaction when receiving the flamer which is the ideal counter. The
large slimes are introduced individually on a platform with edges all around, this means players can
witness the spawning but also have a chance to witness that should a spawning orb fall off a
platform into the sea it kills the spawned enemy instantly. This gives them a whole new strategy for
dealing with large slimes should they want to.

So, all slimes are introduced in a way that makes what they do very clear to the player, but also are
slowly mixed together to increase the encounter difficulty as the player progresses.

As for traps, they are similarly slipped into encounters and platforming to increase difficulty. The
increase in size and damage and the addition of automatic timed traps as opposed to reactive traps
provide different and more difficult encounters and platforming for the player as the levels progress.

Boss
For the boss, the plan was to take the idea of atomics progressing over a level and instead use
atomics to progress a full boss fight. But again, I didn’t want to simply increase damage or simple
statistical atomics as the boss cycled through phases I wanted the atomic progression to be more
complex. So, for the progression of the boss fight, it doesn’t simply get better damage/armour or

more aggressive it slowly gains more abilities and the abilities themselves change too, becoming
stronger, faster or last longer. Not only does this make the boss fight harder as the boss loses health,
but additionally makes it interesting and engaging throughout.