Something To Fight
One element that that game needed w;as something to provided a vague sense of danger and challenge. As well as something to give life to the environment.
Due to this a simple concept was established for an enemy that lashed out at you whenever the player got too close.
Here is are a couple of initial concept sketches for the enemy envisioned:
The design was kept simple in order to facilitate rapid development of the idea. The hexagon, which has become a characteristic of the alien world has an advantage of being a strong, simple shape that is quick and easy to work with.
The image on the left shows the geometry and the joint structure of the Tentahex enemy.
Another consideration for the simplicity of the tentacle enemy is that of the relative ease of writing the code for it, as since it is static there is no need for any pathfinding or worrying too much about where the player is.
To quickly summarise how this enemy works, it has three states: Idle, Alert and Attacking and it periodically checks within a defined sphere for each state whether the player is within that sphere. If the player is, it changes state appropriately.
If the player is standing directly in front of the tentacle, it plays the attack animation then fires a ray a short distance in front, damaging the player if it hits.
This method was less than ideal, as the player only gets damaged if standing directly in front of the tentacle. To quickly fudge a way around this, I attached a collision box to the end of the tentacle and let that damage the player as well. It also made a lot more sense.
Three animations were developed for this enemy, one for each state (Idle, Alert and Attacking). Initially the number of animations was kept to one for each state to ensure that the animation and code that drive it were integrating properly. As it turned out, having one animation for each worked well enough visually.
This animation is for when the enemy is it's idle state, when no player is nearby. The idea behind it is that the tentacle is fidgeting a little, and occasionally reaching out and checking the nearby area for danger/players/food/all of the above.
Here the tentacle is rigid and quivering, as though it is attempting to scare off whatever create (the player) has come within it's vicinity, as well as being in a stance that is more prepared to attack.
Last but not least is the tentacle severely thwacking the ground in front of it. Not much here, however I tried to give the animation a considerable amount of weight where it hits the ground and sticks there for a moment, then it takes the tentacle an amount of effort to pull itself back up.
All of the animations use Unity's animation blending to smoothly transition between each other, given the amount of responsiveness required to be effective, particularly the attack animation the blend times range from 0.1 to 0.5 seconds.
For the animation of the Tentahex enemy as it appears in-game:
An idea for the habitat of this particular enemy is the hexagonal rock structures inspired by basalt columns I have placed around the world. These structures were also the basis for the texture of the tentacle, as though it is either made from the same substance or has developed camouflage for its surroundings.
Here is the Tentahex enemy in game, in it's natural habitat:
