Prototyping (part 2)

This week we asked ourselves 5 questions:

What is the Core fun mechanic?

• Hitting each other
• Breaking stuff
• Throwing each other around

Eventually, just those three things wouldn't suffice to keep the player entertained. So, as a solution, we decided that players could throw each other in the lava, because just breaking things doesn’t give you enough interaction with the other players. This still needs to be prototyped to verify.

Unity vs Unreal

• Unity is easier for programmers (less wrappers, more transparency on classes, etc)
• Unreal is easier for artists (node programming, blueprints, shaders, etc)

We decided to go with Unity as programming will probably require most amount of time.

Room layout

• Squared
• More interesting, dynamic shape

The room will be big enough for four players to be able to jump around and attack each other, perhaps enough space to avoid each other as well.

How does mom enter the room?

• Soundmeter: not fun, because know exactly when she’s coming. The game can also go on indefinitely if you wait long enough for the meter to go down.
• Timer: also not fun, same reason as above. Plenty of time to hide/break stuff before she comes in.

Random: hidden timer, resets after mom enters the room. This sounded like the best mechanic for a surprise effect. We thought about having a warning signal pop up a few seconds before the mother would enter the room. 

Extra remarks

• Props need to respawn after a while, otherwise you’ll rampage the room in seconds and there’ll be nothing left to do!
• Breaking stuff = when something hits the floor or wall (or another player!) fast enough. Either by falling down of by throwing. 
  

We succeeded in making fast decisions art wise and program wise.  Right now, we're putting together an artbible and a techbible.  The artists are occupied making props in different shapes, making some more concept art and looking for some fitting lava shaders, while the programmers are focused on making a working prototype and adding the core mechanics in unity.