Prototyping - Week 2

This weeks achievements:

This week was about making our prototype more fun and finding answers to as many questions as we could think of.

[Illustration of the prototype]

We experimented with Unreal Engine for a couple of hours to make sure we didn't make a hasty decision in choosing the game engine.

Finally, we have decided to go with Unity, because it fits our type of game best. In Unity, we can easily start with a clean project and build it up exactly to our needs(nothing more), by using the component system and scripts . This way, we can work efficiently in an optimized environment and deploy easily to multiple platforms.

We added basic controller support, to make sure our target platform was fit for our game. This was definitely the case, the game became much more fun with controllers in our opinion. Let us know what you think!

Other features that were added:
 - Level shrinks over time and blocks only spawn in the shrinked area
 - Players can punch other players
 - Bomb block (explodes a few seconds after punching it and kills players that are too close)

[Level shrinking]

Some bugfixes:
 - Blocks fell through the level (as their mass was much higher than the block the level is made of)
 - Diagonal movement wasn't normalized (diagonally moving was faster than horizontal/vertical)
 - Fixed blocks not falling on grid after their size had been changed (from 1 to 2)

On the visual side, a simple block placeholder was created by one of our artists:

Answers to our questions :

• Can blocks fall on top of each other?  
  • In the last prototype, if a block fell on top of another, both broke. After playtesting for while, we often found the map was too empty. We didn't want to increase the block spawning speed so we came up with another idea: If a block falls on top of another, it breaks the block that was already standing there. In this way, if the type of the two blocks isn't the same, there is a change to the level, not necessarily a big one, but it adds something to the game. 

• What happens when a block you punched hits another block?  
  • We decided to make both blocks break for a few reasons
    • If the one of the blocks is a pickup crate, the pickup will always spawn, which is what we want.
    • If the block would launch the block it hits, there's no real difference between the block not being there at all and the block you initially punched just keeping on moving.
• How exactly will pickups be obtained 
  • Pickup crates will spawn a pickup when they break
  • In certain levels, there will be a pickup spawner
• How many lives/respawns does each player get in a round 
  • Each player will get 1 life as we're aiming for quick rounds
• Game modes
  • First of all, the players will be able to choose between FFA and 2vs2.
  • We're also planning on making some different gamemodes: 
    • Standard
    • One where every player gets a certain pickup for the whole game
    • ...
• Can you punch other players?
  • We thought it would be one of those other small additions to the game. Punching the player will only give a slight knockback, but in situations where the map is getting very small, it could help the player to victory!
• Block generation
  • On the same grid as the level
• Different types of blocks
  • This is something we definitely want. It makes for a way more varied experience and less repetition.
    Currently we have 3 types of blocks: standard blocks, bomb blocks and pickup crates.

[Bomb block]

Ending notes:

Now that we're done prototyping and have answers to our questions, we can finally start on the real development (production stage).

Again, feedback and suggestions are always welcome! A new download of our build is available!

And as always, stay tuned for more...