SENTRY CRATER

https://www.coregames.com/games/889d98/sentry-crater

In the Arenas of Combat Game Jam webpage, the Inspiration section described a moment where the player is overwhelmed by a rush of adrenaline while engaging an enemy. I wanted to try to replicate that moment as much as possible in Core. 

Sentry Crater is in some sense a hybrid: team deathmatch meets boss battle… plus jetpacks. The game introduces an NPC based third party to an otherwise traditional team deathmatch framework. Team Nemesis and Team Spec-Ops make up the two player factions, and the third party is a giant robot called the Sentry. 

In the first minute of the match, the Sentry is asleep, and its curled up body serves as a sort of playground for the players.

However, once the minute passes the Sentry wakes up and sends both teams into a frenzy as the Sentry begins its indiscriminate assault by jabbing some players with its claws and disintegrating others with its eye laser. 

The Sentry itself is part environmental hazard and part boss. On one hand, players cannot do anything to the Sentry other than escape from the range of its attacks, but on the other hand, the Sentry looks and acts like a boss with its own attack patterns, targeting, and its own win conditions. Team Nemesis and Team Spec-Ops can only win if they reach a certain number of kills, and the Sentry can win either by timeout or if it reaches its own killcount goal.

Other mechanics in Sentry Crater includes the dynamic UI and environment. The power of the Sentry causes the floodlights for both teams to go out, and the urgency of the situation causes both teams to activate their sirens. The light and noise from the sirens completely change the atmosphere in the side corridors of the map. Meanwhile, the Sentry itself changes the center of the map into an active and hostile environment for the players. The Sentry also introduces another mechanic when it wakes up: a double points zone to entice players into staying near the Sentry despite the risks of dying.

To balance with the sense of helplessness players can get when confronting the Sentry, players are equipped with powerful jetpacks that can help them avoid gunfire, scale scaffolding, and dodge Sentry attacks.

Sentry Crater is not completely leaning on game mechanics; the map has elements that add to the bigger narrative the players are a part of. Each prop in the map was placed in for both aesthetic and narrative reasons. The assets belonging to Team Spec-Ops are intentionally set to look inferior to that of Team Nemesis. Team Spec-Ops only just settled into the mining facility, whereas Team Nemesis have established themselves in the mine long before the arrival of Team Spec-Ops. The purple-marked scaffolding indicates that Team Nemesis was also the first to have excavated the Sentry, and the clutter of crates and barriers indicate that Team Spec-Ops have just recently started their invasion into the crater. The stacks of ammo boxes indicate Team Spec-Ops is a military-based faction, whereas the endless number of servers and computers show that Team Nemesis is mainly a scientific group. The rows of hastily placed barriers show the struggle that happened when Team Spec-Ops first invaded, and the fallen barriers and props are what remains of the initial assault.

In addition, Sentry Crater features cinematic cutscenes for key points in the game to add to the narrative and add a kick of old-fashioned movie-style action (There are cutscenes for when the Sentry wakes up and for each game ending depending on who won the match).

Sentry Crater is an attempt at my own action packed narrative.

The following Community Content pieces were used in the making of this game:

“Chiar that you can sit in” by Aj

“Multi-Directional Dash” by Aj

“META Player Titles” by TeamMETA

“Computer Servers” by MrDrRobotoMan

“Flickering Light” by Nezhul (logic from standardcombo)

“Ease3D” by NicholasForeman (did not make it to final game, but it was used in the WIP version)

“ammo crate” by togagames

“medium ammo box” by togagames

“resupply cabinet” by togagames

“Outlined Nameplates” by WaveParadigm

Aside from the Community Content and a few Core prebuilts (autobalancer, static player equipment, SMG weapon, killfeed, healthbar, and ability display), the game was created from the ground up in an empty project. The game state manager, UI managers, cutscene managers, and Sentry controller scripts were all custom made for this game.