We need an app icon!!

I quite like the idea of having a minimalist one, but that might give the wrong message about the app as that's not what the art in the game looks like.

I made a sketch of icon:

• research other game app icons
• get list of sizes we need
• decide on an editing software
• make templates for making app icons

The user should be able to use a shield to protect the city for a short time. This should have a cool down.

The players core and total survival time should be displayed somewhere

Currently we having everything in the view controller class. We should really clean this up

Need to add thruster sound to missile

Sometimes if you angle it just right, an explosion can bounce away and enemy missile rather than exploding it.

Currently we’re just using the default particle image. We should change this to look more like an explosion

String comparisons are expensive when compared to numerical comparison, therefore we should change our physics collision code to look at nodes category bitmask, rather than name.

How hard is it to support macOS?

A core part of the game will be unit pathfinding to a target.

Apple's GameplayKit provides some pathfinding tools

• Investigate Apple GameplayKit Pathfinding (see comment below)
• Create a testing scene/mini-game (mini-game: you place stuff between the unit and a goal then press a button to start it path finding)
• Can user control/provide hints to pathfinding (way points?)
• Unit Placeholder asset
• Goal Placeholder Asset
• Pathfinding Button Graphic

During Playback we should be able to pause and resume the game.

• Throw up a new UI on button press
• How can we pause the screen mid game? Does SceneKit provide this or do we need to fake it up?
• Create pause button sprite/art
• Create Resume button art
• Create return to main menu?

When the player eventually loses the game, we should display a game over message and show their score.

The player should be able to 'win' maps, and then progress to the next city.

This is probably dependent on #40

• define parameters which control level difficulty
• how can we procedurally increase these across levels in a standardised way?
• how can we change between game levels (and pass data between them? Or can we just stay in the same scene and re-gen our city?)

When an enemy missile hits a house it should destroy the house.

When missiles colide, they should explode, instead they can bounce of each other.

Another key component of the game will be building placement.

We'll need to divide the world into a grid which will aid in placement.

Of course, we'll need to use taps to move the cursor and rotation.

We'll also need some sort of hint to indicate where the placement will occur. For the moment we can use something simple (or can we use a 'ghost' version of the model, i.e. can we set opacity on a node?).

• Grid System (divide world into sections)
• Snap to Grid
• Placement editing mode (user should enter a placement editing mode where they can move and rotate building before confirming)

It would be pretty cool if we could have flocks of birds flying across the screen. During the missile launch they would hide, but at the start of the game, before the action begins they could fly around the city. Or fly out of the city when the sirens sound.

It would be really cool if missiles left a smoke trail

Perhaps if the player does something special (like destroy a special enemy) they can get a power up which allows them to fire a missile from all solos at once?

The Player Missile Launcher should have a cool down period

Description

To give the game some more complexity, the scene should be split into separate planes. On each plane we have buildings to protect and missile silos to launch missiles from as well as enemy missiles to destroy.

Along the top of the screen there should be a mini-map view of each plane (which shows buildings and incoming/outgoing missiles in arcade style) which are also selectable to switch between the planes.

There should also be a world view which zooms out and shows a kinda birds-eye view of everything.

Tasks

Plane Switching

• Plane Control Architecture
• Camera Movement
• Move Audio Listener
• Plane Template (can we create a template scene for placing target plane & cameras?)
• Plane specific UI hints

Plane Mini-maps

• Plane Switch Buttons
• Updating Button Texture
• Selected Button Hint

General

• Reimplement game over

Notebook

An enemy jammer plan should fly around the city (from plane to plane, circling around off screen) which can be shot down to access special abilities such as the rail gun mechanic #57

Currently the scene view is quite close up boring.

The city should be farther away and larger to give a greater sense of scale. I also think that the missile silos should be in front of the city, to give the player a better feeling that they are firing missiles at the enemy.

• plan out city view with a hand made scene (i.e. manually placing assets) to play around with it
• define areas for the procedural engine to target. (i.e. and area where it can place buildings)

This will likely be dependent on #39, perhaps they should be worked on at the same time.

When the user selects play, we need to show a loading screen whilst the scene gets ready.

It would be cool if the player could earn a rail gun power up/upgrade which could be enabled on a plane to automatically take down incoming missiles for a period of time.

Sometimes the app gets limited to 30FPS even though it spends most of the time idle. I think this is because early one we can't render a frame fast enough so it limits it down. For the time being I have limited the app to 30FPS

When the user fires a missile, it should have a cool animation where it launches up and then orients towards the target, like this:

It would be cool if we could integrate with the Game Centre, but what would this provide? What do we need to do?

We should find out and evaluate how/if we want to do this.

There should be a splash screen prior to the Main Menu which shows the company logo

Currently we apple a force to the missile to make it move, however, this force seems to be cancelled/changed when the missile collides with another missile. Preferably, the missile would act as if it had a thruster powering it,

During attack, the city should emit siren noises. Similar to the missile warnings that sound during the iron dome attacks

After a house has been destroyed missiles are still fire at it's location

Player Missile should spawn from Missile batteries on the ground

Incoming missiles should spawn along a strip above the town

The player should be able to destroy enemy missiles. I think a good way for this to be done, is to place a collidable, but invisible sphere when a player missile explodes. This sphere then expands over a period of time and if it collides with an enemy missile, the enemy missile explodes.

It would be really cool if we allowed chain reactions too, I.e. the same thing happens when enemy missiles explodes too, therefore, you could end up chain exploding loads of missiles!

Currently we have a lot of placeholder art and UI in the app. We should work on getting all of that into a releasable state. It doesn't have to final or perfect, just something good.

• Missile model
• Silo model
• Houses/Buildings (we should have more than one to provide some variation
• Sky box
• Explosion Particles
• Smoke Trail
• Explosion Sound
• Thruster Sound

An app needs a store page, which in turn needs stuff like a description, videos, and screenshots.

• Research what makes a successful App Store page
• game screen shots
• game videos
• description

The user should be able to touch on the screen and fire a missile

Need to add camera panning and zoom control.

I suspect we could do this by keeping a camera target node along the floor. Then, we apply the rotation, movement to that (although zoom will need to move camera away from target).

• Pan Camera
• Zoom

When the game ends we should destroy all in-flight missiles

Before release there are certain tasks/checks that need to be done. They will be compiled here.

• Test on different sized screens
• How to promote game
• play through test
• verify only require assets are bundled with app
• Company Logo is on the main menu
• Version is correct (and present in main menu screen)

All arcade games need background music.

• Find software to make music
• research how to make game music
• how to make it 'scale' up with the difficulty of levels

When the Missiles collide with something a placeholder sound & effect should play

When the user clicks to fire a missile we should place some sort of hint so they know where they are firing.

• add red dot on UI overlay when users clicks and remove when missile explodes
• design target graphic to be placed
• load and place graphic when user taps
• Add animation to hint
• fix multiple explosion bug

When playing audio, the game lags on the first instance of playing an audio file, but works find for future instances.

Initially I fixed this by playing the audio files at the start of the game at 0 volume. We should perhaps formally do this for all audio. Perhaps with an audio loading class, which goes and plays each audio file?

That or perhaps work out why the SCNAudioSource.load() function doesn't seem to work properly.

When the app is launched it should show a main menu screen first.

• Workout how to transition between scenes
• Transition on tap to main game scene
• Add Play Button & Title Text
• Add Background Art
• Design Menu
• Find out how to make a button in SpriteKit
• Discover what sizes of art is necessary for sprites
• Create Play Button Art
• Create Placeholder Title art

The user should be able to select the missile silo they want to fire from, rather than the game selecting it randomly.

To add a little bit more replay-ability the cities should be procedurally generated. This should be within the constraints that as the player progresses through levels, the difficulty should progress.

• make a couple different building models (just basic ones)
• Can we procedurally generate buildings?
• Generate city layout plan
• plan out how to target buildings (and destroy buildings?)

Should add a license protecting my work