Orchestrating the Player's Demise

Creating a compelling death mechanic in a game can do wonders for the overall player experience. It’s not just about letting the player know they’ve failed; it’s about tying that moment into the game’s theme and flow. For my project, I implemented a system where, upon reaching 10 madness points, the player "dies," the message "You have perished." is displayed, and the game pauses momentarily before looping back to the start screen. I took inspiration from the classic Fromsoft "YOU DIED" screen that anybody who has played any of their Souls games has experienced countless times. Here's how I pulled our "death screen" off step by step.

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Setting the Foundation

Madness Points Tracking

The player already had a MadnessPoints script that tracks their increasing madness. It was modified to check if the madness points reached 10, triggering the death mechanic. To ensure a clean and modular approach, I encapsulated all death-related functionality within the script.

Adding the Visual Element

I used TextMeshPro to create a dynamic "You have perished." message. The text needed to:

• Be inactive at the start of the scene to avoid distracting the player.

• Activate only when the player dies, displaying prominently in the center of the screen.

A prefab of this text object was created for reusability across scenes. This made it easy to drop the prefab into any scene where the mechanic was needed.

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Coding the Death Mechanic

Activating the Death Message

When the player’s madness points hit 10, the script activates the DeathMessage object using this code:

if (deathMessage != null)
{
    deathMessage.gameObject.SetActive(true);
    deathMessage.text = "You have perished.";
}

This ensures the message appears dynamically without needing manual intervention.

Adding the Pause

The game pauses briefly to give players time to absorb the moment before resetting. This was achieved using Unity’s Invoke method:

Invoke(nameof(LoadStartScreen), deathPauseDuration);

The deathPauseDuration is a public variable, adjustable in the Inspector, which allows me to fine-tune the timing for maximum impact.

Resetting to the Start Screen

After the pause, the game loads the "StartScene" using Unity’s SceneManager:

private void LoadStartScreen()
{
    SceneManager.LoadScene("StartScene");
}

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Refining Across Scenes

One challenge I faced was ensuring this mechanic worked seamlessly across multiple scenes. While the prefab approach helped, I had to double-check that each scene’s MadnessPoints script correctly referenced the local instance of the DeathMessage object. I automated this in the script:

if (deathMessage == null)
{
    deathMessage = FindObjectOfType<TextMeshProUGUI>();
    if (deathMessage != null)
    {
        deathMessage.gameObject.SetActive(false);
    }
    else
    {
        Debug.LogError("DeathMessage TextMeshProUGUI not found in the scene!");
    }
}

This ensured that even if I forgot to assign the object manually in the Inspector, the script would find it at runtime.

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Testing and Tweaking

With the mechanic implemented, testing revealed minor issues, like the message not appearing in certain scenes. These were quickly resolved by ensuring proper prefab usage and runtime object linking. Additionally, tweaking the deathPauseDuration helped strike the right balance between pacing and flow.

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Final Thoughts

This death mechanic ties together the player's madness system with the overall game flow, creating a moment of tension and reflection before resetting the journey. It’s a small feature, but it reinforces the game's theme and enhances the player's experience.

If you’re working on similar mechanics, keep these key points in mind:

• Make visual elements modular with prefabs.

• Ensure dynamic linking for runtime flexibility.

• Test across all scenes to catch inconsistencies early.

It works, and now we are approaching something that is more in line with an actual game versus a "tag" simulator. Eventually I will implement the ability to give the player some offensive capabilities once the madness points reach 5, which will introduce (hopefully) a sort of "risk/reward" system where the player may actually want to have a higher madness point value during some levels to fight back against the monsters, but if the points get too high, the player dies. We'll see how things go. I also want to tighten up the death mechanic a bit by freezing game time once the player accumulates 10 madness points so you won't have the clumsy situation of the monsters continuing to bash away at you before the game menu screen reloads, but for now I'm happy with what we have.