Posted March 01, 2022 by arnoutmeysman
Hiya pizza lovers,
We are excited to share our very first devlog on our game “Speedzza” with you!
In the first real prototyping week, we worked a lot on getting our concept right and setting the foundation for our project. We researched a lot of art and tech and kicked off the project! We will be posting more devlogs soon so follow us on our weekly journey as we are making this game!
We have 3 very creative artists and 2 very structured coders. The artists being Hicham Ouchan (The tech guy), Arnout Meysman (The environment guy) and Emily Van Ginneken (The character girl). The 2 coders in our group are Simon Bruyneel (The sound guy) and Celine Vandewalle (The code girl). Our project is going to be a super exciting pizza delivery service game.
In Speedzza, 2-4 players face each other in a fast-paced chaotic point-to-point race to make the most amount of money. This is done by delivering pizzas! You all work for the same pizzeria chain, but there can only be one at the top of the food chain. If you aren’t carrying any, don’t be sad, because you can steal pizza boxes from others by bumping into them. Use a wide variety of different pickups that spawn throughout the city to catch up to the pizza carrier or escape the others if you are the carrier. These pickups can grant you anything from a speed boost to throwable objects that you can hit your fellow couriers with.
Now how will we go about making this thrilling project? This is what we're planning on doing in the coming weeks and our thoughts behind these decisions.
Unity or unreal
We are only using unreal for the prototype since that’s a lot easier to use with just blueprints instead of coding. But for the rest of the game we decided to use Unity. Everyone in this group has more experience in Unity which makes it the better choice, especially if we have to code this ourselves instead of using blueprints. The language for Unity (C#) is understood better in this group than the one for Unreal (C++).
What are the controls for the game?
All players play on an Xbox controller. You will be able to set the number of players on the starting menu. The game will feature no support for mouse and keyboard. We thought that it would feel a lot more natural if you play it with a controller to drive than if you would use the keypads on your laptop/computer. It's also that way a lot easier to implement multiple players since you can connect multiple Xbox controllers on one laptop.
Sound implementation: in-engine or with audio middleware (wwise)?
As for sound implementation, there are 2 options. Either it is implemented with the tools that the engine offers or we use audio middleware like Wwise. Although Unity and Unreal both offer great tools, we think that Wwise is the best option for our game. It keeps the sound mostly separate from the engine and doesn’t require a bunch of extra code to be written that might potentially clutter up the rest. Wwise offers a bunch of great audio functionalities like random- and switch containers, parameters and events. Most of these can be triggered or changed with singular lines of code. This will allow for a smooth implementation of our sound. Wwise also contains a mixer for on the fly mixing and a soundcaster that allows for quick and easy testing of events without the need for the game to be running.
How are we going to make the players bump into each other?
When the player starts driving, the engine needs time to accelerate in order for the scooter to gain speed. The player is able to brake to instantly lose a huge amount of speed and the player is able to drift while maintaining most of his speed. When players hit the environment, they are slowed down. When players hit other players, they slightly bounce off each other and get a speed reduction.
We also figured that if the player hits the other player at a certain amount of speed, according to that speed he would get a certain amount of pizzas. So if you would say have a block that indicates your speed with 5 levels for example. Depending on which block you are, you get an extra pizza. So if you would be the first block of speed, you would only get one pizza, in the second one you get two, and so on. This would then be calculated by your speed - the other player's speed.
Which art style will you use?
This week we also already worked on the first version of our artbible. We did a lot of research about what style would best fit the game and would be doable. We decided on having an artstyle that has mainly round, friendly, cozy shapes. We also wanted to pick very exaggerated shapes especially for the characters. Making the head almost as big as the body. Also for the environment choosing mainly shapes with beveled edges for example to give it that round feel. For the colors we wanted to pick a somewhat desaturated color palette. Especially for the environment. We then wanted to pick more saturated colors with a bit more contrast for the characters so they would stand out a lot more. Also for the interactable items.
What is our plan for the next coming week?
For next week we are going to finish our first prototype. We're also going to finish the artbible, tech document and make sure we cover everything needed. We are going to make more tasks in the hacknplan. Finally, we are going to start making some 3D assets to put in the game to get a feel how everything is going to look.