Ram-Head
Design document for NRR Arker Enemy
Info
General
The Ramhead boss is the second boss introduced to the game, and it's designed as a stationary powerhouse turret. This boss can unleash multiple attacks on the player and summon allies to chase them down. It also uses its giant antlers for both strike and melee attacks.
This boss is intended to complement the level two enemies. Rather than moving around the map, it stays at the back, using projectiles to keep the player at a distance. All of its projectiles split into smaller, difficult-to-dodge ones, making the boss fight a true bullet hell.
Character Aspects
The Ramhead boss floats above the ground, propelled by rocket-like particle effects attached to its underside, causing it to bob up and down. The power levels of these rockets change between attacks, visually indicating its direction of movement. A wind particle effect below it, near the ground, further emphasises the strength of its rockets, creating the impression of a whirlwind. This is all paired with a 3D movement sound audible when the player is near. All of these elements combine to give the boss a heavy feel, reinforcing that it's a formidable enemy not to be underestimated.
Attacks
Eye Projectiles
Projectile Charge
To alert players of an incoming attack, the Ramhead uses a charge behaviour right before it fires. This gives players crucial time to dodge or prepare for the incoming arc projectiles. During this charge, the Ramhead's eyes turn red, giving it the visual appearance of being alerted or in attack mode. This visual cue is accompanied by a charging sound effect, making it clear that the boss has been alerted. This alert mode is also used for the melee attack (Referenced in doc), aiming to confuse the player about which attack is coming next.
Shooting
After the ramhead enters this alert stage, it fires out lots of quick eye projectiles in rapid fire from each eye, making them hard for the player to avoid, as the ramhead will follow the player's movement while firing the projectiles, aiming to land where the player is going to be.
These projectiles move in an arc, similar to the Scorpio enemy's acid attacks or the Jumper enemy's missiles; instead of firing straight, they arc upwards and then down. This was a straightforward design choice: since the Ramhead boss towers above the player, it would be difficult to have ground-level projectiles accurately target it.
To show where the projectile will land, they have a floor target that moves along with the projectile, getting larger as it gets closer to the ground. This gives the player the opportunity to dodge incoming projectiles based on the target's location. These projectiles use 3D spatial movement audio that adjusts the pitch based on the distance between the floor and the projectile, creating a sound that suggests it's moving up and down.
Once the eye projectiles hit the ground, they split into multiple smaller projectiles that scatter in various directions, depending on the split amount. For these primary eye projectiles, they'll split into three or four smaller projectiles, with the angle calculated by dividing the total angle by the chosen amount.
These smaller projectiles are faster than the initial eye ones and while they do a small amount of damage, they're perfect for deflection from melee weapons. The idea behind these splitting projectiles is to give the player another thing to watch out for, forcing them to weave through the different split projectiles as they land, but not be a huge threat themselves.
For these specific eye projectiles, they initially follow a simple behaviour of random shots after the Ramhead enters its alert mode. To give the boss the best chance of hitting the player, it locks onto the player rotating towards it so the projectiles can get as close as possible. This will then progress as the fight goes on, utilising our established stage system for bosses (Referenced in doc). Consequently, later phases of the boss fight will see the Ramhead firing almost double the amount of projectiles at a quicker rate. After all projectiles have been fired, it will exit alert mode, and its eyes will return to their normal colour.
Large Projectile
Charging
To prepare players for its next major attack, the Ramhead initiates a secondary charge before firing its powerful projectile. This offers players crucial time to get ready before it unleashes its huge projectile attack. As it charges, glowing lights gradually appear on its horns, giving the impression it's building up energy above its head, culminating in a large orb of light and swirls. During this energy buildup, the Ramhead shakes violently. This visual cue is accompanied by a charging sound effect that increases in both pitch and volume with the charge level.
Shooting
Once the charge is complete, the Ramhead fires a large projectile from the area where the swirls and light were forming, accompanied by a particle effect that visually depicts its launch from above. This projectile utilises the same arc behaviour as the eye projectile (Referenced in doc), firing upward and then downward.
To convey its immense size and movement through the sky, this projectile rotates like a bomb about to strike. It's accompanied by a trail effect that makes it look like it's flaming and breaking apart, much like a meteor. This projectile also utilises the same 3D spatial movement audio that adjusts pitch based on distance, and it has a similar but much larger floor target.
When this projectile hits the ground, it splits into smaller projectiles that scatter in all different directions, similar to the eye projectile. However, with this large projectile, it breaks off into many small projectiles, ranging from ten to fifteen. Their directions are calculated based on the total number spawned. These smaller projectiles are slower, making them easier to dodge, but given their high number, they create a maze of projectiles for the player to weave through.
These projectiles are designed to work perfectly with any deflecting weapons; considering they're much slower, it makes it easier for the player to prepare in time to deflect them. The projectiles have a long particle effect trail, making it easier to see which direction they're moving in.
Strike
The Ramhead's strike attack is a new melee ability. The Ramhead slams the ground, builds up energy, and then strikes forward at the player, using its antlers to tear through the ground. This devastating attack can damage both enemies and the player. The speed of this attack can vary depending on the boss's stage (Referenced in doc), making it a tricky one for the player to avoid. This attack incorporates elements similar to the Crab boss's lunge attack, but it's adjusted specifically for the Ramhead boss.
Charging
The Strike attack begins with the Ramhead dropping itself downward headfirst, slamming the ground and causing rocks and shards to fly up. When it hits, it can knock back and damage the player if they are within a close enough distance to the strike location. This makes sense physically, but also allows the Ramhead to strategically move the player into its line of attack with the initial melee, setting up a perfect one-two hit.
After hitting the ground, the Ramhead enters a stationary stage, remaining in place until it's ready to strike the player. When the Ramhead is in this stage, it loses all ability to rotate, which gives the player a greater chance to avoid this attack. This phase of the attack provides players time to move out of its damage zone. While in this stage, four floor targets will appear in front of the Ramhead, indicating its attack path and areas that will get damaged. These floor targets feature a moving material effect that visually reinforces the direction of its attack. To convey a sense of building power and an impending strike, the speed of these material effects will increase until the Ramhead is ready to attack. This is accompanied by 3D spatial audio that builds in pitch based on the Ramhead's remaining time until it strikes. The duration of this attack phase will vary depending on the boss's stage (Referenced in doc), meaning later stages will see the Ramhead attacking almost instantly, giving the player little to no time to dodge this vicious attack.
Attack
Once the Ramhead has charged this attack, it then moves forward towards the player, creating particle effects that resemble marks torn into the ground by its horns, sending sparks and shards everywhere. As this stage of the attack is active, the rocket particle effects normally used to show it floating are sent into overdrive, clearly showing the rockets propelling the Ramhead forward. This also uses a 3D spatial audio effect that follows the Ramhead as it moves, emitting a screeching, mechanical sound that should effectively warn off the player.
The areas indicated by the floor targets remain visible while the Ramhead moves towards the player during its attack. However, the player is only damaged when the Ramhead's horns are close, utilising collision boxes directly attached to the horns to register hits. If the player is struck by any of the horns, they will take damage and be knocked back. This significant knockback should then provide the player with an opportunity to move out of the way and avoid further damage. This is another part of the attack that will vary in speed, similar to the charge, based on the boss's stage. So, later stages will see the Ramhead striking very quickly, as opposed to the first few stages, which are much slower.
Return
Once the attack concludes, the Ramhead returns to its original position, ready to initiate another attack or defensive behaviour. This stage's speed is also tied to the preceding strike phase: if the strike attack was very quick, it will use that same speed to accelerate the return animation, making the entire attack much faster. This is again accompanied by 3D spatial audio that conveys the Ramhead has finished its attack and is powering up to fly back to its floating position.
Spawning Enemies
The Ramhead boss, like all current bosses, can spawn enemies to assist it during the mid-fight. This adds more intensity and creates an extra challenge for the player, as they'll need to fight through waves before being able to attack the boss again. This feature was set up for the first boss, making it easy to carry over to the Ramhead. The player can still damage the boss while enemies are present; it just becomes more difficult to focus on the boss when there's another enemy shooting at the player.
Activating
To notify the player of an incoming wave, the Ramhead begins to shake and move about, accompanied by 3D spatial audio that sounds as though it's calling or summoning other entities to its aid.
Spawning
Once the Ramhead calls for help, it uses its own custom spawn points, strategically placed around the map, to calculate where and what enemies to spawn. The spawning mechanism operates identically to our other room spawners; however, these are attached directly to the boss. When the game begins, it records these coordinates, marking down precisely what and where it can spawn.
The behaviour of these spawned enemies is highly customizable. It can be set to spawn any number of enemies at a specific rate, use the pre-selected enemy type for that spawn point, or even override it with a custom enemy.
In the early stages of the boss fight, the Ramhead utilises a simple spawn behaviour, only bringing in one to two enemies with a long cooldown. This prevents overwhelming the player from the outset. However, the spawning becomes significantly more challenging in later stages.
Alongside this basic spawn behaviour, which simply gradually increases the number of waves and the maximum enemies per spawn, a secondary spawn behaviour is added to the Ramhead's arsenal later in the fight. This involves spawning an initial wave, followed by a second wave specifically chosen to be a level two enemy. This significantly ramps up the difficulty, as the boss normally sticks to spawning weaker grunt enemies. Facing the full power of level two enemies increases the intensity considerably. This secondary spawn behaviour also escalates enemy difficulty, starting with weaker level two enemies and progressing to spawning tank enemies by the end of the fight.
Melee Attack
Activating
Similar to its main charge effect, the Ramhead uses a charge behaviour right before it performs a melee attack. This provides players with crucial time to dodge out of the way before it hits the ground. During this charge, the Ramhead's eyes turn red, giving it the visual appearance of being alerted or in attack mode. This visual cue is accompanied by a charging sound effect, making it clear that the boss has been alerted. This alert mode is also used for the eye projectiles (Referenced in doc), aiming to confuse the player about which attack is coming next. However, the key difference here is that the player must be close enough to trigger this melee attack.
If the player gets too close to the Ramhead, it will trigger the melee attack behaviour. This serves to knock the player away and back into range for its projectile attacks. A few seconds after the alert mode is triggered, it will play a slamming animation, crashing down to the ground. This movement is similar to its other attacks but much quicker and executed in one smooth motion. All of this is accompanied by 3D spatial audio that follows the Ramhead mesh downwards. However, unlike other animations where it's powering down, this one powers up the rocket particle effects, giving the impression it's forcefully propelling itself downward towards the ground.
Attack
During this motion, when the Ramhead reaches the ground, it will create a ground-breaking particle effect, sending shards and rocks everywhere. Similar to its other impact attacks, if the player or enemies are within its melee distance, it will damage and knock them back.
The melee attack is now a fairly familiar attack within the game. However, this is the first enemy to utilise a new method for triggering its collision check with the surroundings. Instead of our older method, which relied on checking within a time limit that needed to be perfectly synced to the animation (and became difficult to maintain when animation pace changed), the collision check is now triggered directly through the animation itself. This means we can achieve exact accuracy every time, regardless of the animation's speed. This method appears to be more reliable and will be used more extensively throughout the development of future enemies.
Defences
Shield
To defend itself against incoming player attacks, the Ramhead has a shield behaviour, allowing it to enter a state where projectiles will bounce off it, firing back at and even damaging the player. During this state, all types of player attacks—including grenades and abilities—will not damage the Ramhead. This ability acts as a defensive tactic for the boss, but also serves as a good way to give the player time to collect resources or regenerate any needed health or ammo. At certain stages, this can be used alongside spawning enemies, forcing the player to deal with them while also adding variety to the fight with different targets. This also provides an opportunity to gain loot or build up throwables or health by defeating these spawned enemies.
This behaviour, also seen in the previous boss, will become a staple for future bosses and enemies. It's easily replicable and offers a great way to add more defensive tactics to the bosses.
Activating
When activating this behaviour, the Ramhead will drop to the ground, similar to its strike attack (Referenced in doc). However, instead of flipping to plant its horns, it remains upright as if simply landing. As the Ramhead plummets, it hits the ground, causing particle effect shards and rocks to fly upward. If the player is nearby, this will damage them, similar to its melee attack (Referenced in doc). This is also accompanied by 3D spatial audio that follows the Ramhead mesh downwards, conveying a mechanical, powering-down feel, as if its rockets are shutting off and it's landing. The rocket particle effects and wind particle effects also turn off once it lands.
Shielding
When it reaches the ground, the Ramhead activates a mesh overlay of a white, transparent effect, giving it the appearance of being surrounded by a sci-fi force field and making its body glow. This is a staple visual cue for shield mode across other enemies and bosses in the game; it's the universal way the game communicates to the player that an enemy is shielding. While some might have material differences, all shielded enemies will glow white.
When in this state, all types of player projectiles or attacks will not damage the Ramhead, making it invincible for a short while. The shield behaviour in this boss fight also utilises the spawn wave behaviour (Referenced in doc) beforehand, allowing the Ramhead to call in other enemies and then shield itself. Originally, this was designed so the boss would still be in range for the player to accidentally hit it and deflect projectiles back, creating another hazard to watch out for while taking down the spawned enemies.
For this particular boss fight, the early stages of the boss introduce the player to wave spawns (Referenced in doc) and the shielding behaviour by spawning one to two waves of enemies at a slow rate. However, in later stages, it can spawn up to two waves much quicker. This also applies to the duration it can spend in shield mode; a longer duration gives the player more time to defeat the extra spawned enemies before the boss starts attacking again, making short shield modes much more difficult.
Once the time limit on the shield mode concludes, the Ramhead returns to its original position with an animation and 3D audio effect that follows the mesh back upward. This gives the impression that the Ramhead is turning on its rockets and powering back up to float once again. This also reactivates all of its rocket and wind particle effects.
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