Prototyping phase

Welcome to our first developer log! In this blog post we will ask and answer some questions we have about our project. We will also explain things like our struggles during this early development stage and the things that have worked so far.

Q&A

Problems

1. Unreal
   1. When developing the local multiplayer in unreal, we stumbled upon a bunch of problems. First of all we had to figure out how c++ and Unreal worked together, this took longer than expected and delayed the development of the prototype. Secondly, figuring out how the multiplayer in unreal worked exactly also took quite some time to understand.

What worked, what didn't?

About the artstyle

1. What style is the game going to be
   1. Answer: We are still exploring different possibilities for the art style. Regarding the characters we already quickly agreed that the catcher will be quite a lot bigger than the runner. In our minds the catcher is this huge "monster" running after little monkeys willing to destroy it all.
2. Environment and setting?
   1. Answer: Concerning the environment, we explored different Ideas. The original idea was for the game to happen in a zoo. Then we thought of different ways to frame the level into the screen. We wanted to go for a glass dome but we then decided to avoid circular shapes as it would mean a lot of loss space around the corners of the screen. That meant we would go for a more rectangular room probably a lab in a building.

Plans for next week

1. We want to answer the remaining questions.
2. We want to finish a playable prototype in Unity and test all of our mechanics. Here we will decide if the game is fun enough and if we should add additional mechanics or not.
3. Make prototypes with different blockouts since the level design will affect gameplay heavily.
4. We want to prototype:
   1. The catch mechanic + cage
   2. The point system
   3. What to do with the monkeys when caught
   4. UI
   5. Oxygen mechanic