War or Terror

Originally developed as 1/4 of the total body of work for a single semester art unit in Temporal Imaging at my local University this games main focus was on being an original Grand Theft Auto style top down 2D scroller. The assignment called for a 30 second flash animation to be produced and presented to the class for critique. As with nearly all my art assignments, as a computer science student, I answered it with code. I pulled together the engine for this game and some initial content. What you see here is what progress I managed to make on this project in the time allotted.

Intended to be a sandbox environment with no strict rules on gameplay the player was to have access to vehicles, weapons and powerups. There were to be buildings and obsticals and a huge map area that would allow the player to travel great distances in vehicles such as a jet or helicopter.

As the player you take on the role of a US Marine on deploymeny in the deserts of some unknown country in 'defence' of your country. The intention was to provide the player with an arsenal of weapons and machines of war without any direct orders to utilise them and let them loose in the sand box world. A number of missions were to be provided by three different generals via three separate communications tents located at the US base where the player begins the games. Initially only one would be active whilst the player completes the first few missions. This would then unlock a second communications tent allowing the player to take missions from both then eventually the third would be unlocked.

None of the missions from the first three would require the player to use force to complete their mission and it would be upto the player's own discression to avoid temptation. The general giving orders via the third communication tent however was going to be corrupt and offer 'black ops' missions. By completing missions the player earns points toward their score. They also score points by injuring or killing others however by doing so they also gain in notoriety. As the players score increases they get promoted through the enlisted ranks of the US Marine Corps, as they grow in notoriety however they gain the attention of the US Marine Corp Military Police.

At various levels of notoriety the USMC MPs may attempt to dissuade the player from further violence, detain or even kill the player in order to ensure the safety of others. Another way for a player to increase their score is to collect bonus gold-gilded oil drumbs. A number of other objectives when reached may also add a bonus to the players however they may be awarded other achievements instead. There are a number of war medals to be earned as well as marksmanship awards and more statistical oriented achievements as well.

The various achievements, medals, ranks and stats were intended to keep the player engaged in the game whilst providing something to strive for. The stats were intended to be saved to a remove game server that would maintain score and statistics for each player account allowing players to browse each others achievements.