Hi,

Our team is making a game for the Game Projects course for Digital Arts & Entertainment.

The game is a fast paced 2D platformer, where players fight each other to survive in an environment filled with traps and other dangers. The fighting consists mainly of dashing/charging. Scores are time based; each player has a timer, by which they can add or subtract time with pickups or dying respectively. 

Currently we are working on setting up the art bible and tech bible, and the programmers are working hard on making a basic prototype!

The prototype is quickly giving us an idea on the first problems that we need to solve, such as getting a good feeling for the movement. Most of the current problems are movement related. The movement uses forces, which is causing a glide effect due to initial acceleration and reduces the feeling of control with the dash mechanic. Velocity control solves the glide effect but is making more problems concerning the dash forces. 

Solving problems is giving us more problems, but the prototype in it's essence works.

We believe that our game mechanics can be pretty fun but it will largely depend on a good movement control in terms of feeling, which we will definetely work further on.

We are currently experimenting with different control scheme and controller setup to find the one that fits our prototype the most. We can strongly conclude that using a controller (for example PS4 controller) will be more handy and adapted for our game style than a keyboard. Currently the prototype has been only tested with a keyboard which makes it rather difficult to include more than one player. This will be definetely added on our todo list for the coming week.

In order to decide which engine suits the most for development of the software, we experimented with two different game engines, namely Unity and Unreal Engine. It turns out that Unity provides more effective tools for our 2D game. Our team unanimous concludes that Unity will be a better tool for the job.

During the development of this week, the implementation of most of the feature went relatively smooth except for the movement, which was mentioned above.

Implemented Feature in the prototype so far:

- Player movement: horizontal and jumping

- Player dash mechanic

- Traps: static and dynamic

- Player death and respawn

We wanted to make a game where players fight each other, but took the whole brawler idea in a different direction. We thought of a dashing/charging mechanic with which you can push players into traps or dodge them.

The choice of camera view was motivated by the fact that we wanted to make a platformer, and making this game in 2D with sprites would give us the best possibility to implement our chosen art style.

The art style that we chose exists to compliment the gameplay. Clear shapes and and bright colors will make the chaotic environment a little bit more readable.

To add a sense of pressure to the game, we decided that each player's life would be represented by a timer, which they can refill by killing other players, gathering pickups, and doing dangerous things. In addition to losing time because the timer decreases, you lose time by dying.

We added variety to the game by thinking of pickups, different kinds of traps and environment elements such as slippery surfaces and speed ups.

For  the coming week we plan to finish both design documents and implement a better movement system, inputs registered via two controllers, a time system mechanic and of course fixing bugs.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!