Sand Auto Wars is an online action game. Main concept of the game is fighting using vehicle to destroy your enemies. At start of the game all player will be sitting in cars of their choose. By using weapons mounted on the vehicle player will have to destroy other players or other player teams. Players battle on the map to destroy other players. At each start of the map/round players can select different battle vehicles. Different type of vehicles will have different advantages/disadvantages. For example heavy vehicles will be slow and clumsy but can use big weapons and can take a lot of hits while fast vehicles like are very fast but can use only light weapons. Maps will consist of a fix area, for example and open desert field or a city with some structures. Mainly structures will be not destroyed but some can be knocked off or pushed. Player will start at different starting points. During game, player’s stats of player’s kills/death will be recorded and displayed.

Balance

Balance is one of the most important aspects of action game. It can make or brake gameplay of the project. Main balancing way in Sand Auto War is to categorise vehicles and weapons in different categories and giving them a limit in which their characteristics can vary. For example Sand of War has three types of weapons and vehicles: Heavy, Medium, Light. This will make sure that weapons and vehicles of one fraction will be closely similar and at same time different and have own pluses and minuses.

Second balance approach in Sand of War will be to give one type of weapon or vehicle an advantage over another one. For example light vehicle has a great speed, but heavy vehicles are very slow, but a heavy vehicle has a powerful weapon, while light weaponry is weak. This way light vehicle can dodge heavy vehicle shots and do damage to it, but heavy has a chance in destroying light in one shot. So each vehicle or weapon has pluses and minus which balance them out.

Another balance is terrain advantage of one vehicle over another one. While heavy will have a problem driving through sands, light vehicle might outrun it and have advantage of agility over heavy vehicle. This adds more of balancing and at same time at a strategy to the gaming adding the team work as important aspect of the game play.

Although designing balance is important, main balancing of the game will be done during test phase of the project. Life approach is much more effective and balancing can be done much faster and accurately.

Levels

Overview

As this is a causal game with future aspirations into mobile phone and other hand held device markets, the environment will have to be as low tech as possible. As such the environment will be designed in 2D.

The game is viewed from a top-down perspective, as if the “camera: was hovering over the game itself. Is the best view possible for the 2D environment that we are providing.

The Physical World

Overview

In the physical world of the game, believability and realism is everything. With this in mind we have designed the game world to be as destructible as possible, with many world objects being able to be moved or obliterated.

The following describes the key components of the physical world.

Key Locations

There are two key locations of importants in the game:

1. Where the player starts
2. Where the battles will take place.

Since this is a game with multiplayer in mind, we will create a spawn point for each team so they may travel outward to the battlefield and fight. The spawn point will be a base where players may purchase additional firepower and better vehicles. Since this is a vehicle game we can assume players will want to move around as they fight, this means that level design must allow players the freedom to use speed and manoeuvrability mean large battle areas that will change in design based upon the objectives of the map.

Travel

Players move there car using simple arrow keys. Left/right will allow the player to turn while forward/ back will give accelerate/brake abilities.

Sand Auto Wars will have three main terrains:

Sand – a main terrain for the location. It let car to reach it 80% of top speed.

Sand road – main appear on the popular routes or around the settlement. It is much better then just sand and let vehicles to reach 90% of it’s to speed.

Road – only appear around or in settlements. Not much of road left after the war and it is mainly small patches of old roads, but it let vehicles to reach 100% of their top speed.

Scale

Relative to the map, the cars will be small. The map will be large enough to include all objects without crowding them however map sizes will vary depending on the objectives of the specific map. For example: A map that is long and thin is excellent for capture the flag, while a map that is wide and long is good for death match maps.

Objects

We can expect to find many objects (both movable and immoveable) around

the map. Such immoveable objects (like buildings) will be unable to be passed through, while other objects like road signs, will be able to be run over. Many of the objects found will resemble objects that can be found in the real world. Craters and rivers will also be expected in this map.

Time

Time will be used in all maps as a end all objective. When time runs out the game is over. We do not expect matches to go for many days. At most 20-60 minutes will be all that is needed to decide a winner.

Levels Description

St Paul Canyon – Deathmatch

Forces of Democratic Order while transporting emigrant from Federal Vault meet a Rebel’s force in St Paul Canyon. Major Steffen Gough orders his troop to engage and destroy Rebel’s forces to the last man.

Team death match

Start: Game starts with two teams in opposite corners. Vehicles are spread on the base in respect to chosen fraction.User is able to buy weapons while on the base.

Objectives: The point of the game is to gather as many frags as possible. Users can kill opponents single or by working in the team, the point is to kill opponents and get score for that.

Winning Condition: In “multiple death” game mode If user gets killed he will be spawned on the base with full health.
In “single death” game mode If user gets killed he must wait until one team wins (kills all others in opposite team)
Termination point can be set by the user who created the game session. It can be time, or certain frag amount.

Single death match

Start: Game starts with users allocated on the spawning points. User is able to buy weapons on the spot for allocated time.

Objectives: This is fully anarchy mode of the game. Everyone is for themselves. The point is to gather as many frags as possible.

Winning Condition: The game will terminate if previously allocated number of frags is gathered by someone, or the time selected for length of the game is reached.

Vault 13 - Collect Resources

Democratic Order sends their forces to Vault 13 to check for survivors and gather vault’s resources. At the vault site they found large army of Traders, who plunder vault’s resources. As it seems that there no survivors, Democratic Order engage Traders forces and tries to secure as much vault resources as possible.

Start: Both teams are located on different (opposite) sides of the map. All players have a basic type of weaponry. Located at different points in the map are resource caches which teams must fight over.

Objectives: Each team must attemp to collect 5000 resource points within 15 min. Resources are collected by going out, finding a cache and bringing that resource back to the base.

Winning Conditions: Whoever gets to 5000 resource points first or when timer runs down to zero, the team who has the highest recourse count wins the round.

Angry Sands - Capture the Flags

Small village in the middle of the sand dune is a great place for the stronghold. Both Democratic Order and Rebels thing so, ad both of their forces have to prove that it belong to them. Both forces will try to take the village street by street until they have full control of the locations

.

Start: Both teams are located on different (opposite) sides of the map. On the map there are a number of flags. All players have a basic type of weaponry.

Objectives: Each team has to try to capture all flags at same time to win the round. To capture the flag, player from one of the teams have to drive through it. Each team must try to get opposite team flags and guard their own in process.

Winning Conditions: When one of the teams captures all of the flags.

M438 Base-King of the Hill

Nearly established base, by the Democratic Order, is on the way of the trade route to the northern lands. Traders send their retaliation forces to assault the base and take control over it. Democratic Order forces will have to hold until the reinforcement, if Trader take control of the M438 Base, it will be very hard to take it back

Start: Both teams are located on different (opposite) sides of the map. All players have a basic type of weaponry. At the middle of the map is located an objective hill or area. Both teams are located equal distance from the area.

Objectives: Each team has to try to get to the center of the map and hold the area for 5 minutes straight. Timer will go down only if players from one team are located in the area. If there is a player from another team in perimeter timer stops. Each team will have to try to secure the center of the map and at same time try to push opponent team back, so they have full control of the wining area.

Winning Conditions: When one of the team timers runs down to zero, that team wins the round.

Vehicles

Vehicles will have following attributes:

Vehicle classes decryption:

Vehicle Statistics

Light Vehicles

Medium Vehicles

Heavy Vehicles

Weapons

Weapons can be installed on the vehicle as turrets and fired while driving use mouse controls. All weapons can turn 360 degrees and fire range ammunition.

Weapons have following attributes:

Following is the attributes for weapons in respect to their class:

Surfaces

Surfaces – are on what user will be able to “drive”. Different surfaces affect how car will go, uts speed, agility etc.

Following is the relation between the road condition and vehicle performance degradation.

Game Engine

For the development of Sand Auto Wars, a 2D engine Spark will be utilised. Spark is privately made game engine for the 2D games. It contains wide support for the sprites, music, input and low level network.

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Overview of the game