AutoRunnerDirector

AutoRunnerDirector

Runs a game of Endless Rampage: the title screen, the score, the free-car clock, spare cars, levels, and what happens when you lose a car.

The rules

Put it on the world entity. Enter starts a run, and P or Escape pauses.

• You get a point for every metre of new road, and points for every enemy you put off it: rammed, shot, or spun out on your oil. Backing up earns nothing.
• At the start a clock counts down from freeCarSeconds. Until it hits zero, a lost car comes back free. After that you have startLives spare cars, plus one for every extraCarEvery points. Lose a car with none left and the game is over.
• Wreck a civilian or a police car and you score nothing for civilianPenalty seconds: no distance points and no kill points.
• Every levelLength metres the level goes up. The spawner is told the new level and sends more traffic and worse enemies.
• A weapons truck comes at firstTruckAt metres, then every truckEvery metres. From level helicopterFromLevel, a helicopter comes about every helicopterEvery seconds.
• When a police chase starts you get a message, and another when the last car gives up.

Use it in a scene

{
  "Game": {
    "tags": ["world"],
    "components": {
      "AutoRunnerDirector": {
        "player": "Player",
        "freeCarSeconds": 120,
        "startLives": 2
      }
    }
  }
}

The director keeps running while the world is paused, or nothing could unpause it. A lost car is driven out of the back of the weapons truck when there is one. If no truck turns up, the car is handed back six seconds after respawnDelay runs out.

Score and spare cars

The score is three small functions in the core:

/** Level for a distance driven. */
export function levelFor(distance: number, levelLength: number): number {
  return 1 + Math.floor(Math.max(0, distance) / Math.max(1, levelLength));
}

/** How many extra cars a score has earned. */
export function extraCarsFor(score: number, every: number): number {
  return every > 0 ? Math.floor(Math.max(0, score) / every) : 0;
}

/** Points for distance: whole points per metre, carrying the remainder. */
export function distancePoints(metres: number, perMetre: number, carry: number): { points: number; carry: number } {
  const raw = Math.max(0, metres) * perMetre + carry;
  const points = Math.floor(raw);
  return { points, carry: raw - points };
}

The carry is what keeps the score moving. At 30 m/s and 60 frames a second the car gains half a metre a frame, and rounding that down every frame would give zero forever. With the carry, the first frame returns { points: 0, carry: 0.5 } and the next returns { points: 1, carry: 0 }.

extraCarsFor counts from the whole score, not the last award: extraCarsFor(31200, 15000) is 2. The director remembers how many cars it has handed out and adds only the gap, so one big kill that crosses two marks gives two cars.

levelFor(3200, 1500) is 3, counted from where the run began. With the defaults, that is where helicopters start.

Who gets the kill

A car can be wrecked by something other than the player, and only the player's wrecks score. Each time the player rams a car (carCollision.hit), shoots it (autoRunnerProjectile.hit) or slides it on their oil (roadHazard.entered), the director notes the time. If health.died comes for that car within killCredit seconds, the kill is the player's, and the car's tags set the points:

export const KILL_POINTS: Record<string, number> = {
  rammer: 150,
  gunner: 300,
  shover: 500,
  helicopter: 750,
  enemy: 150,
  civilian: 0,
  police: 0,
};

The most specific tag wins, so a car tagged both enemy and gunner is worth 300.

Settings

Events

Needs

• CarDrive: the player's car. The director turns its keys on and off, reads its speed, and moves it back to the road with carDrive.nudge.
• CarCollision: rams that earn kill credit, and the ghost tag that keeps a lost car out of the traffic.
• MeshPrimitive: where each car is, for the road position and the kill pop-up.
• HighwayRoad: turns a position into metres along the road, and picks the middle lane for a new car.
• Health: when a car dies, and the heal and short shield a new car gets.
• SupplyTruck: the weapons truck it sends for, and drives a new car out of.

The director also sends orders to HighwaySpawner, AutoRunnerWeapons, AutoRunnerBomber and DayNightCycle. Leave one out and its orders go unheard.