Missile Protocol

Ludum Dare 59 (theme: “Signal”) — 197th of 1,610 entries (top 12%), rated 4.4/5 on itch.io. An asymmetric local co-op game for two players on one device, made solo in 72 hours.

▶ Play: pacelin.itch.io/missile-protocol

The idea

You are stranded in enemy territory and must reach the nearest allied port under a missile barrage.

• The Operator sits at the ship’s console: levers, sliders, buttons, a radar and a signal screen.
• The Instructor holds the manual and talks the Operator through decoding incoming signals and defusing missiles.

Neither player can win alone, so communication is the core mechanic.

Mechanics

• Ship control with simulated inertia: linear and angular acceleration/deceleration, a fuel supply and hull durability.
• Radar sweep: a rotating beam “pings” zones and missiles in its sector relative to the ship’s heading. A satellite slider aims the lock-on cone.
• Signal decoding mini-games on a CRT-style screen:
  • Wave filter: tune amplitude and frequency with stepped sliders until the sine wave matches the target. The FMOD sound changes live with the parameters.
  • Bit filter: scroll through a bit string and flip the corrupted bits.
• Missiles are defined as ScriptableObject configs (series, mark, length, solve code) that the Instructor looks up in the manual.
• Map zones: repair, refuel, safe and finish zones; randomized missile spawning.
• Main menu, pause, km/miles setting, RU/EN localization.

Engineering

• Architecture: VContainer LifetimeScope composes plain C# models (ShipModel, RadarModel, FuelModel, velocity models) with entry-point controllers, and views subscribe to model events.
• State machine for the signal screen (setup → solve filter → solve missile → result messages).
• Async bootstrap on UniTask: audio and localization are initialized with cancellation before the first scene loads.
• FMOD audio layer with code generation: a strongly-typed AudioSystem is generated from FMOD banks, so events are called as AudioSystem.Game_Machines_Sine instead of string paths.
• Tactile machine UI: custom slider handles, buttons and switches with press animations on DOTween.
• Editor tooling: a missile-config batch creator, a 2D object placer (uniform random / Poisson-disc), a localization preview window and camera utilities.

Tech stack

Unity 6 (6000.3) · URP 17 · C# · VContainer · UniTask · DOTween · FMOD · Cinemachine 3 · Unity Localization · TextMeshPro

Project structure

Assets/_Project/
├── Scripts/
│   ├── Core/        # bootstrap, audio, pause, scene loading, localization helpers
│   ├── Game/
│   │   ├── Ship/    # ship, fuel and velocity models + controller
│   │   ├── Radar/   # radar sweep, pings, target lock
│   │   ├── Filters/ # wave & bit filters, signal-screen state machine
│   │   ├── Missles/ # missile configs, views, solve panel (+ editor tools)
│   │   ├── Map/     # zones, missiles spawner, map objects
│   │   └── View/    # machine controls: sliders, buttons, switches, gauges
│   └── MainMenu/
├── Plugins/Audio/   # FMOD wrapper + code generator
└── Localization/    # RU / EN string tables

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Author: Pavel Kibirev — Unity Developer · GitHub · LinkedIn