Who are the Harmonykeepers?

Design goals

The character design and abilities of the Harmonykeeper NPCs should complement the narrative goals of the game. The Harmonykeepers are one of the principal "villains" in the Dustership universe, so their motivations and personality should dictate their gameplay and design.

As an enemy, the Harmonykeepers should encourage use of the Dodge mechanic through the use of area-of-effect attacks that require a well-timed evade to avoid damage.

From an art standpoint, the Harmonykeeper assets should be reusable and extendable. By using a template Harmonykeeper asset, and then swapping out guns and ability animations, I can hopefully create a variety of Harmonykeeper enemy types while reusing and reducing the asset creation workload.

Abilities

The character wields a laser rifle with a long-ranged, two stage attack.

1. The Harmonykeeper targets the player when in range and a laser between the tip of their gun to the player's position is shown. The laser follows the player's position.
2. After a second, the laser blinks and stops following the player. The Harmonykeeper then fires the gun which produces a wide area of effect that moves from the gun quickly to the player's position. 
3. At this moment the player should dodge the incoming area of effect or take damage. The gun leaves a trail of fire for a few seconds that damages the player if they step across it without dodging.

Art

Art assets required by the design.

1. Harmonykeeper sprite with 4-directional animations for idle, walk and attack.
2. Laser texture for the tracking laser sight of the Harmonykeeper gun.
3. Fire texture for the damaging area-of-effect left by the attack
4. Sound effect for the character's attack, and for taking damage and/or dying.

Technicalities

New states required to define the design's behavior. Idle, Aggro, Stun and Knockback states already defined can be reused.

• Attack - Use a RayCast2D to draw a laser sight to the player while the Harmonykeeper is taking aim. After some aim duration transition to Fire and hide the laser.
• Fire - Using the same vector from Attack, instantiate a new entity HarmonykeeperRifleProjectile. Return to the Aggro state after some fire duration.

HarmonykeeperRifleProjectile is composed of a HitboxComponent along the line of the RayCast2D and a sprite. On ready, tween the length of both components over some duration from 0 to the target_position of the RayCast2D.