Welcome back to our devlog!

This week we've done a lot of brainstorming, prototyping and researching, which we will share with you here.

New Game Plan

Last week we might have aimed a bit too high with our game, with the time we have at hand. That's why there have been a lot of changes to the game we had.

The new game idea is a 2-player arena shooter in which you have to defend your land, plagued by aliens. You and your friend will have to survive at an old farm while using the environment to your advantage. The environment will have interactables like exploding barrels and terminals that will benefit the player in defeating the aliens. In this game we want to put the focus on using your surroundings and not just shooting enemies with your weapons. 

You can play as two characters: Big Tim and Slanky Tim. Each Tim will have unique abilities and firing patterns which make them have different tasks when it comes to survival. 

Research

Since we are not 100% sure about our game mechanics yet, the only way to actually know if it's fun is to prototype the game and try it out. In the past week we've made some simple implementations of our mechanics to test what would work best for our game and these are some of the questions we've answered.

Unity vs Unreal Engine

One of the most important questions to answer is what game engine to use. There was a lot to consider so we thought about what our game needed and chose accordingly.

Unity Pro's:

1. Ease of use: the script system in Unity makes it very easy and fast to add new behavior into the game.
2.  C# : because Unity works with C#, it's also easier to program and make changes.
3.  Great 2D Development: Unity has a lot of built-in 2D functionality that make it a go-to 2D engine.

Unreal Pro's:

1. Lighting: Unreal Engine uses the Lumen system which creates beautiful environments.
2.  AI systems: with the improvements to pathfinding and behavior trees, UE5 has really good ways to implement AI.
3.  Particle systems: UE uses the Niagara system to beautifully create and change particles for a better experience.

Keeping the above mentioned arguments in mind, as well as more nuanced features, we decided our engine of choice will be Unreal Engine 5.0. When looking at the features our game needs, for example the alien-like environment and enemy AI behaviors, it was a no-brainer to go with Unreal Engine.

How will the camera interact with the two players

When playing with 2 players, something we had to consider is camera placement. Below you can see a split-screen idea we had so each player can individually focus on their own screen and character to have a better experience that way, but after some playing the game felt too small to play on, and considering the people playing will most likely sit a good distance away from the screen, we decided it would be better for one camera to center itself in between the two characters, and when they move too far apart, the camera simply zooms out.

How will we synergize Big and Slanky Tim

In our game it's important that both players feel like they're doing something useful, while also have a unique kit to the other. In the prototyping we did, we came with the idea of having Big Tim being more beefy while putting out very good AOE damage up close. This way we can have certain environmental 'challenges' where you have to stand close to something and defend it, for which Big Tim will be very good. Slanky Tim will be a bit faster than Big Tim, so he can move around the map more for using the environment to his advantage. 

How big will the map be

It's very important to have an environment that is big enough that you can freely move around and are not really stuck in one place, but we didn't want to make it too big to a point where it's difficult to know where you are exactly. Keeping this in mind we decided on a size of about 15 by 30 meters. In the image below we've drafted out a general layout of the farm which we will iterate upon more and more.

We hope to see you next week for another update :)