Week 10 Release!

Week 10 Release

After some final polish, the game is finished and fully playable! So, what does it feature? Let’s go on a train journey through its design and features.

• A shotgun, which shoots off a big spread of bullets
• A tommy gun, which quickly fires a lot of bullets in a smaller spread.
• And a shootable load of dynamite, which, as you’d expect, explodes, dealing damage to everything in its surrounding.

• Left joystick – movement
• Right joystick – aiming
• Pressing leftjoystick – toggles aim mode, walk slower, shoot more accurate.
• Left lower trigger – interacting / buying
• Right lower trigger – shooting / melee
• Left upper trigger – switching weapons
• Options button - pausing
• x, y, a, b – menu interaction

Every project can be separated into multiple pieces and those pieces in even smaller crumbles. In the case of ours, we had a lot of different mechanics that could be tested individually, but had to fit that puzzle together. The first third of the project was spend on exactly that, building the separate pieces. (Movement, aiming, asset destruction, shooting, wagon movement, ...) After a couple of weeks, this led up to a proud moment, when the pieces fell together. And although it was cool to see it all working in conjunction with each other, that didn’t necessarily mean that it was fun or balanced yet.

As we continued the project, unreal became more familiar and the pipeline got smoothed out. We got a lot better at estimating how long tasks would take. On top of this, we also started to function more as a group, working closer together as artists and programmers. We met up an additional time each week to go over what we made, on the spot implementation or adjustments to things we made with multiple people behind the same computer screen. As well as playtesting, adjusting balance or collectively writing down feedback for directions we could take.

During the third part of the project we separately took part of a game jam. During which we quickly discovered that starting a new project for the second time around went a lot smoother. Coming back together after, also provided us new insights which were directly implemented in this game.

From that point onward we polished our game, working mostly on player feedback and visibility, leading up to what is downloadable and playable on here.

Wouter, Jens, Sammy, Benjamin and Mathis

The Terror Trains Team