Hi guys, i just finished a new devlog, it regards the Endless Wave System and spawning of enemies in single prefabs, squadrons and path moving enemies.
The Endless Wave System spaghetti monster i mentioner earlier grows even larger now, but i'm encountering some stuff that needs to be addressed. Since the whole endless thing is, let's say, semi-random (predefined squadrons, random number range single enemies and enemies that move via paths, all spawned randomly based on experience points range and number of enemies on screen with their own "weight" values) the pool seems to small to give a sense of variety.
Here's the picture of a system scheme, pretty basic for now:

You have an explanation on Tigsource Devlog (
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=59099.20) but i'll explain it further here when it is fully complete.
Squadrons They have the largest number of variety, but they can be painstaking to make if a large number of ships is involved. For example, this is a basic one, Marine Carrier in the escort of five Provokers, six ships total.

Due to Unitys limitation of nested prefabs, i can't just pop them into scene view and save the whole squadron as a prefab (which would be really awesome and speed things up), instead i have a prefab which instantiates ships on defined coordinates in local space. That needs a lot of tweaking, entering values manually then pressing play to see where they are actually positioned. In the whole process, waiting for Unity to start the game to see where the ships are spawned takes the most time. Obviously, the time spent is the largest con, but the pro is that i can simply replace prefabs in the squadron in a blink of an eye. That means i can change those Provokers escorting the Marine Carrier with another ships in only a few seconds, or even set each position to spawn a random ship, thus making the ships following the carrier different each time and even spawn different ones according to the players experience level.
When you take into account around 40-50 ships made until now, you get the idea how tiresome can sometimes be to make all these squadrons, but it keeps the game away from being a procedural generated crap, it keeps the randomness factor but in a structured way.
Random Number Range Single EnemiesNow this is the actual procedural generated crap that is to be avoided, but when used properly it functions great. What does that title actually mean? There are several enemy spawn points scattered all around the screen, by utilizing this approach, depending on certain variables, they will spawn single enemies that follow their own behavior, be it the regular "move forward and shoot" or something else. There are some cool thing regarding this. For example, i can spawn 1, 2 or 10 ships in a random pattern based on the players experience level or number of ships already on screen. They act like fillers, we already have one or two squadrons on screen, so let's drop a few more small baddies that do their own thing. It also keeps the players on toes since they don't know what to expect. A horrible drawback is that things can get too random if not controlled by various parameters that need to be finely tuned.
Enemies That Move Via PathsI'm sure you'll agree that the game would be very boring if all the enemies would just move forward towards players side of the screen, no matter how many types of them there is. Using paths to move the enemies further deepens the variety and the semi-randomness factor of the game.
Obviously, paths can be used for both Single Enemies and Squadrons. They work great for single enemies since we can set a wave to spawn, let's say, 5-7 small ships and then use a path that's branching, like this:

In this example, when the ships get to the first waypoint (purple square in the upper part of screen) they will do a check which will apply random branch choice, some will keep moving forward towards the left part of the screen, and some will circle around and go back right, or maybe sometimes we'll set them all to follow the same path, so for a path like this, we actually have three outcomes: all follow path 1, all follow path 2, all branch random, which is flexible and great.
Using paths in Squadrons take a bit more time to work on, but they add further variety to squadrons. The Provokers following the Marine Carrier in the first picture may spread or fall back after a while.
Another important option that using paths gives is the easing of movement. Ship may start moving slow, than speed up while moving down the path. Or other way around. That can be randomized to, per ship, squadron, or a whole wave. It gives a lot more natural feeling to movement since ships moving at the same speed constantly may feel mechanical and boring.

Here's how that easing actually looks in game, just played areound, number are not tweaked.



Utilizing all this stuff drives the game away from the classical "memorize the pattern while moving on rails" type of play. It takes a lot more time to work on but definitely keeps every game session exciting and fresh and rises replayability to a whole new level. Unfortunately for some, not using seeds for procedural generation means you won't ever be able to replay the level you played, maybe some other time
