Lightkeepers

Lightkeepers is a tower defense game about mixing elements and using them to protect a light beacon in an endless night made in Godot 4.2 and then updated to Godot 4.3. It is a prototype with many functioning modular components that can (and will be) reused in further projects. This is both a prototype and my first publicly available game to play.

Development features

It's rather complex as a whole, but all components/scripts are populated with explanations, documentations and examples, for people like me who are used to learn reading and trying it out. It has foundational tools of our workflow, such as:

• Modular CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions to upload games directly to itch.io based on repository and environmental variables.
  • The guide to properly configure and use the Actions is public.
  • During workflow execution, Godot is installed in the action runner and commands are executed to export the project as-is, meaning no manual export is needed; the deployment will always export the latest build on the repo!
  • The pipeline also patches web builds by renaming the *.html file to index.html during runtime, avoiding manual intervention.
  • As well as other components in the code, feel free to reuse the Github Actions workflow. Mind that you'll still change some environment variables such as project, user, e mainly the BUTLER_API_KEY variable stored as a secret.

Game features

Some of the features present on the game code are:

• Singletons (Autoload)
  • Options
    • Sound sliders
    • Language options
    • Keybinding menu for remapping controls
  • UI
    • Contains HP, coins, menus, and tools all in scalable Control nodes; has a lot of functions to deal with clicks/touch
    • Contains a filter that forces color to follow a specified palette. Currently using Technogarten palette.
    • Other palettes can be inserted into the ScreenEffect node and change the game visuals easily, but it's not very performatic; This was made before we could use Compositors.
    • Fade-in and fade-out transition using an outdated but stylish shader
  • AudioManager
    • Loads an entire folder as a queryable dictionary
    • Can also randomize sound effects receiving an array of sound strings that can be found in such dictionary
    • Plays music and SFXs globally or in a specific location when called
  • LoadManager
    • Loads scenes with a loading screen
    • Sub-threading compatible (although not always advised)
• Components
  • HitboxComponent - Recieves data from collision boxes and polygons. Mostly used together with HealthComponent.
  • HealthComponent - Controls the health of all entities of the game, with heal, damage and death functions.
  • DropComponent - Drops items based on the id of the entity that owns it, recieves items from a .JSON file.
  • CombatComponent - Adds targeting system on enemies, debuffs, etc.
• StateMachines
  • A visually comprehensible system of States based on children nodes hierarchy. Used in everthing that has to change behaviors, such as towers and complex enemies.
• Player interaction
  • Camera movement, controls, and zoom are mouse based with optional keyboard
  • Mouse focused controls with drag and drop based interaction
  • Varying drag and drops tools, such as the Hammer used to demolish turrets
  • DraggableObjects class and functions composing drag-n-drop elements
  • ControlSlot class to contain DraggableObjects into Control nodes between UI layers
• StageManager
  • StageManager + WaveManager - Event controller and threat spawner based on resources and easy to change directly on the UI.
    • Wave resource (Singular wave with enemy data, positions and schedules)
    • Waves resource (Stores an array of Waves that can be iterated by WaveManager)
• Graphics
  • Pixel art sprites made in Aseprite and Krita (Asset pack is included)
  • Animated sprites
  • Godot Theme template and insights

Planned updates

• Gameplay improvements
  • New stages with dynamic challenges
  • Varied events
  • More combinations of elements
  • Tutorial stage
  • Endless mode
• Balancing
  • More tests and tuning base properties of towers and elements
  • More variety of enemies and specialization
• More animated sprites

<iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/2854992?bg_color=323353&fg_color=fcfeb3&link_color=f68181&border_color=fbff86" width="552" height="167">Lightkeepers by Nyeptun</iframe>