Posted February 21, 2021 by fdegraeve
##prototyping
Hi!
It is finally time to get this show on the road with our very first blogpost.
This week the team has been focusing on research and prototyping to answer important questions such as: "What is the meaning of life?", but also "How will this game actually work?".
Gameplay
Our game devs have been hard at work figuring out the ins and outs of Unreal and Unity, testing different features such as the path finding and the different AI-behavior systems of both engines. For Unreal we first had to research the C++ scripting, since we only experimented a little with it in the past and mostly used the blueprint system.
We think the AI-behavior is going to be the most challenging part. It will heavily influence our choice of engine. We decided to use the behavior tree in both engines and after some prototyping, we concluded that the unity version was a lot quicker to implement and expand. It has small default behaviors that can be used together to create more complex ones and implementing custom behaviors was also very quick.
Art
Meanwhile our artists were busy creating our art bible. Which will form the visual guideline of our game.
We’ve decided that while you are a ghost and technically dead, it is not all doom and gloom. Which is why our lighting will be warm, creating a cozy environment for the ghost to feel at ease. Until the ghost hunters show up, which will reflect in the change of lighting and atmosphere.
In general, we settled on a cute art style: simple characters existing of big shapes and round features, and a low poly environment working mainly with gradients and hand painted textures.
Next Week
Next week we plan to continue prototyping.
Our devs will make a prototype the engine we chose (Unity) we will implement all the mechanics in one playable prototype instead of creating small prototypes for different features.
Our artists will continue working on the art bible, to further define the visual style of our game.