RGB (Red, Green, and Blue)
Students: Nigel Smith, Jonathan Cardinale, Grae Lessley, Rayce Golan, Clay Golan
Class: Video Game
Instructor: Susan Damon
School: Canyon High School, Anaheim Hills, CA
District: Orange Unified School District
Date: 5/18/2015
Project Purpose
Students were to create a multi-level top-down shooter strategy game, etc to submit to a national high school video game competition.
Game Overview
The game is called RGB because the game revolves around three colors: Red, Green, and Blue. We took the concept of colors and were able to change one enemy into three different enemies just by changing their color. In the game, the player changes colors by pressing the shift key, and proceeds to cycle from red, to green, to blue, and then repeat. When the player’s ship is red, it can only destroy red enemies. Red enemies cannot hurt the player’s ship while it is red, but any enemy that isn’t red can hurt the player’s ship.
Enemies
Enemies will spawn depending on the level the player is on. There are four different types of enemies in total, not including the boss. These enemies randomly spawn into one of the three colors, and the player must change his or her ship’s color to match the enemy's color in order to destroy it. The player is faced with the challenge of constantly changing their ship’s color, to combat the array of enemy ships on the screen.
The first enemy is the grunt, which moves down from the top of the screen and shoots in random directions. The second enemy is the elite, which shoots homing mines that track the player’s ship. The third enemy is the lancer, which stops at the top of the screen and fires a laser down dividing the screen. The fourth enemy is the jackal, which moves down the screen like the grunt, but fires a laser horizontally on either side.
When the player’s ship collides with an enemy projectile of the same color, instead of taking damage, the player’s ship absorbs it and adds it to its ammo/energy count, and then is able to shoot the projectile back at the enemies. For instance, when the player’s ship is red and is hit by a red projectile, the player’s total red ammunition count would increase by one. There are three different colors, and as such, there are three separate ammunition stashes. The ammunition is not only used to shoot at enemies, but is also as a way of measuring the ship’s health. If the player runs out of ammunition in two of three colors, the ship will explode.
Ammunition
Ammunition can be lost in a variety of ways. One shot will be lost for every shot fired of that color. When the ship is hit by a projectile that is not the ship’s color, the ship’s ammunition count of that respective color decreases by five. If an enemy ship makes it to the bottom of the screen, the ship’s ammunition decreases by one, based on the enemy’s respective color. If the player’s ship collides with an enemy, fifteen energy is lost from every color, however if the player collides with an asteroid, seven energy is lost from every color. If the player’s ship is hit by a laser, thirty energy is lost for each second it remains within the beam, however if the player is inside of a laser and is the same color as the beam, the ship gains one energy per second. When the player completes a level, the player is awarded twenty energy in each category.
There are ways to gain ammunition as well. When an enemy explodes, it releases an explosion of its respective color. If the player is within close proximity to the enemy explosion, the player can either gain three or lose three ammunition, depending on if the player is the same color as the enemy ship or not.
There are four power-ups that are randomly dropped when an enemy is destroyed:
- speed, which doubles the speed of your ship
- shield, which prevents you from losing any energy for ten seconds
- storm, which lets you shoot incredibly quickly and no ammunition is lost while the power-up is active
- nuke, which removes all enemies from the screen
These power-ups also spawn in the three colors: Red, Green, and Blue. The player must be the corresponding color to pick them up.
Levels
As of now, there are a total of nine levels. Levels are scaled to become harder as the player progresses.Every time a new level is reached, new enemies are introduced, and the amount of time the player must spend on the level increases. In level 1, there are only grunts, which are smaller enemies that scroll down the screen. The player needs to strategize and find clusters of same-colored enemies to get a large ammunition boost, and also decide which enemies to destroy, and which to ignore. In levels two through four, new enemies are introduced incrementally (one per level). In level 2, Elites begin to have a slight chance to spawn. In level three, Lancers spawn. In level four, Jackals begin to spawn. From this point forward, all enemy types are in the game, and in levels 5-7, the spawn rates of these special units are increased while the spawn rate of grunts is decreased, thus making it harder for the player to stockpile energy by absorbing ammo from grunts.
On level 8, the player is required to pilot through an asteroid field. These asteroids spawn at an incredible rate, and wrap from one side of the screen to the other. The player does not take as much damage when hit with an asteroid, however the player still loses enough energy to damage his or her stockpiles. In addition, the player gets no bonus energy for destroying an asteroid, which makes level 8 very difficult.
On the 9th level, no traditional enemies spawn, instead a boss appears at the top of the screen. The boss is a large ship which moves much faster than the player. While the player can move in any direction on the X-Y plane, the boss can only move horizontally, and changes direction when he hits the border of the screen. In addition, the boss also changes color whenever the player does. For example, when the player is red, the boss is blue. When the player is green, the boss is red. When the player is blue, the boss is green. While the player follows the cycle of RGB, the boss follows the cycle of BRG. The boss also rapidly fires missiles that semi-track the player, and randomly fires a laser that lasts one second. In addition, the player cannot absorb any energy from this level, and has to rely completely on what he or she has stockpiled throughout the rest of the game. In order to defeat the boss, the player must fire upwards, then change color, before the shots hit the boss, so that the boss switches to the color of the player’s shots, and flies into the projectiles. In order to destroy the boss, the player must hit the boss 40 times. When the boss is defeated, a congratulatory message is displayed and the player is returned to the main screen.
Buttons
On the main screen, the player can select one of four buttons. These buttons can either be clicked on, or shot at, using a version of the player ship found on the main screen. The tutorial leads the player to an interactive tutorial, which teaches the player all the functions of the game. There is also an option to turn on or off fullscreen. There is a play game button, which starts the player out either the first or the fourth level, depending on whether the player has reached the checkpoint. Finally, there is the endless button, where enemies constantly spawn, and have increasing spawn rates. as the game progresses. If the player survives for five minutes in endless mode, a boss is spawned. This boss works identically like the boss from the campaign, but in the endless other enemies still spawn, and when the boss is destroyed, the player is not moved to the main menu.
When selecting the endless button or the play game button, two more buttons appear on the main screen, asking the player to either select single player or cooperative play. In the event that cooperative is chosen, a second player ship is spawned, and the controls for both ships change. For player one in cooperative, W, A, S, and D are used to move, shift to change color, and the spacebar is used to shoot. For player two, I, J, K, and L are used to move, B to change color, and alt to shoot.