Game Concept

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Concept Statement:

Airfight mayhem is a pixel art styled warplane game with different attack weapons such as rockets, bombs and different bullet types.

Genre/Category:

Action, Flying and Shooter game.

Concept creation process:

Textures

Creation process of the textures will include blender to turn the assets from Simple Military - Cartoon War | 3D Characters | Unity Asset Store and Simple Airport - Cartoon Assets | 3D Industrial | Unity Asset Store to turn them into 2d pixel styled assets using this approach/method Making advanced Pixelart in Blender [Tutorial] - YouTube. The textures may look like Terraria textures but will be a bit more detailed.

Sounds

As far as sounds go. I may be creating my own sounds using Mulab 7 or I may grab some sounds from the YouTube audio library that is free and non-copyright. The sounds will mostly consist of sound effects and some music that will play consistently in the background.

The UI will be created using the UI toolkit instead of the canvas UI. This is an easier approach which does require a bit more understanding of how to use the UI scripting wise but is a lot better to switch between pages with more configurable options to work with as well as creating style sheets that will be consistent across multiple pages.

Planes

The planes will be a prefab consisting of a RigidBody2D component, a mesh collider or a box collider 2D and a player input controller component. In the scripting side there will be 2 attached scripts. The player controller script for the player to control the plane that will listen to the inputs from the player input controller and a plane behaviour script which controls everything to how the forces are applied, health, ammunition and inverted rotation triggers that defines if the plane is flipped or not. The player controller script can also be swapped out for an enemy AI script however the enemy plane will most likely be its own separate prefab.

Enemy

The enemy will most likely be a prefab that is a clone of the player plane prefab but with the enemy AI script attached.

World Creation

World creation will be a tile map with a mesh collider that will consist mostly of just grassy ground. There will also be trees placed on the world from the Simple Temples - Cartoon Assets | 3D Fantasy | Unity Asset Store asset (converted into 2D of course).

Audience:

The target audience will be younger teenagers and for people who like action-based flying vehicle shooter type games.

Competitive Analysis:

The competitive analysis includes the following game which is very similar to what I am designing here: Air Fight - Free Online Game - Start Playing | Kizi. Most other games such as War Thunder also follow this same concept (Which partially inspired this game idea) but with different approaches and mechanics such as being a simulator type of game, an arcade styled mechanically based game or just a flying game that probably doesn’t even include planes at all. In terms of how many games I am up against, There seems to be a huge amount of flying games however not many seem to follow the approach that I have come up with except for the one that very closely resembles the idea linked above.

Competitors I am up against in terms of the same mechanics are online games on kizi and poki. It may not be a huge amount but other games that is in the scope of just flying fighter planes, in general would include Microsoft, Gaijin and probably most other major game studios.

Most other games seem to succeed in this type of genre as it is quite an entertaining type of genre that most games follow. Take for example Elite Dangerous which had major success in being a space age type of flying/shooter/exploration type game which has nearly lasted 10 years! Even though most online based games usually do not last long. Other games such as Microsoft flight simulator and War Thunder perform well in this genre too however World of Warplanes didn’t seem to take off that well due to the fact the game had too much of a simplistic nature.

Game Treatment and Concept Art:

Weapons

Types of weapons include Rockets, Bombs and Bullets. Different bullet types depend on the damage and speed of the bullet is fired from the plane. Different rocket types will include seeker and non-seeker. Both bullets and rockets are interchangeable unlike the bombs.

Plane Physics

The plane physics are the same as any sort of regular plane, but the speed and weight of the plane can be affected depending on how many rockets and bombs players take. This also changes when the player drops or shoots rockets which in turn makes the plane lighter and more manoeuvrable.

Plane Controls

Plane controls are as follows: Up and down is to rotate up or down left and right is to flip the plane over (This will be on a 5 or 7 second cooldown). 3 other buttons will be used to shoot, fire rockets and drop bombs. (Controller and Keyboard support)

Plane Behaviour

Flipping the plane over makes the plane invulnerable to midair plane collisions, bombs and rockets while flipping over (1-2 seconds). Players can only flip the plane if they are travelling faster than a certain speed. Crashing into another object, player/plane or ground instantly kills/destroys the plane. The player will also be able to heal the plane by retreating to their base.

Enemy

Enemies can come in 2 forms. An anti-air gun and a plane. The AI will include 3 states. Seek and destroy will seek the nearest player, turn to head towards the player and fire. Avoid and evade will avoid any nearby player but also try and do some manoeuvres to avoid any incoming rockets or bombs. This will activate when the plane is either low on health or an enemy plane is behind the plane. Retreat and rearm will make the enemy plane retreat to their side of the map and rearm/repair when it reaches its base.

World

The world will be an arena-based type map without walls. It will include objects such as airships, rocks, trees and hills. The sides of the map will override a plane’s control if it goes outside of the world boundaries and redirect it back into the arena. The world will not be procedurally generated and there will only be 3 different arenas/worlds.

Play Modes

There will only be 3 types of play modes. PVP, PVE and Missions.

Missions will consist of a campaign like single-player only mode which may include other vehicles to fight against which are only in that mode.

PVP/PVE mode is a local multiplayer mode that includes both players and AI controlled planes (Depending on how many planes are set by the game setup). This can either be an FFA mode or Teams mode. An extra CTF mode may be introduced but it is not a definite mode to be added.

External Packages

Cinemachine, Unity Input System.

Cinemachine Setup: There will be only one camera that will have a setup where it will encompass all the players resizing as needed. The movement will also be smooth/lerped but will not extend beyond the world’s boundaries.

Unity Input System: One Input manager in the main menu which listens for the join buttons to be pressed. There are no player presets that can be saved or chosen when a player joins. This will all be setup and chosen by the players before the game starts e.g., before the Start Game button is pressed.

Plane outfitting balancing system.

The plane outfitting balancing system will consist of an energy depletion system the more you put armaments on your plane. For example, equipping 2 bombs will be the same as equipping 150 rounds of high damager low velocity bullets. This is not yet fully worked out and may change based on feedback and gameplay. However, it will limit the number of armaments a player can take instead of just fully equipping their plane and going for an all-out brawl.

Enemy AI Levels

The enemy AI levels will consist of 5 levels. All enemy AI will be able to avoid the ground, retreat and have a variable number of bombs depending on the mission/game setup.

Novice: Basic AI movements with a low limited range, low damage weapons with low velocity, cannot avoid midair collisions.

Rookie: Basic AI movements with mid-low limited range, low damage weapons with mid-level velocity bullets, can avoid 30% of midair collisions.

Average: Basic AI movements but with low prediction ability, mid-level limited range, can avoid %50 of midair collisions, mid-level damage with high velocity bullets.

Pro: Advanced AI movements, Decent prediction ability, mid-high level limited range, can avoid 70% of midair collisions, higher manoeuvrability, mid-level damage with high velocity bullets, equipped with 2 seeker rockets.

Ace: Advanced AI movements, High prediction ability that can vary as it learns (not a final decision), can avoid 80% of midair collisions, high-level damage with high mid-level velocity bullets, Equipped with 2 seeker missiles, High manoeuvrability.

Plane concept art: