Phase II Progress Report — New functionality — Boss fight for the win

4 min readMay 31, 2021

In this article I will discuss the newly implemented boss enemy.

Up to this point the only end to the game was dying. I have changed this by adding in a boss enemy. The boss enemy will show up on certain pre-defined waves.

Functionality

The boss moves down onto the screen and strafes with shields protecting its hull.

It has 5 plasma turrets which shoot a plasma ball to the location the player was when they were launched and a missile launcher which fires homing missiles which track the player but can be shot down.

When a turret is destroyed he shield of the boss will break and the turret will cause some damage and allow damage to hit the hull. The boss will then flee. When the boss makes it off screen the enemy waves continue.

The boss will say on screen on wave 20 in an act of aggression to finally take the player out. The player can take out another turret to overload the enemy shields permanently. The player then needs to destroy the hull. The boss does not have a set amount of points to give when it dies but instead will dish out points based on how many seconds it was alive for, with a negative value possible, causing the player to lose points if they take too long.

When the boss dies the game completion screen is activated with the tally ticking up to show how many point the player gets for killing the boss and some text to restart.

Boss movement

The boss checks its position is matches the correct y position then begins moving side to side.

Boss attacking

The boss goes through its list of turrets and randomly tells each to fire. If the turret has been destroyed it will not fire however it remains active visually.

Turret Attack

The turret will fire its attack if it has not been destroyed.

Turret damage

The turrets will activate an explosion when they take damage and once their health reaches 0 their colliders are disabled, with the enemy boss being told they are destroyed, causing significant damage to the boss’s hull.

Boss damage

The boss’s damage method is a bit more complicated. If the bosses shield is on the only damage that will be taken is when a turret is destroyed. When this happens the shield is deactivated, and the boss can take damage. Visually the shield will flash different colours as it “overloads”. When this sequence is over the boss will leave the screen and cause the next wave to start.

Boss fleeing

The boss will check the wave number when it is enabled.

It will not flee and not reactiveate the shields on the final wave. When fleeing the boss will ignore collisions for the turrets, taking direct damage to its hull.