Asymmetric Survival Game

This week we decided to explore an asymmetric networked multiplayer game with a horror theme. I enjoy playing competitive games and have experience making asymmetric multiplayer games with pew. Ryan and I were both on that team so we are slightly hesitant towards this idea because it is close to something we had already done before but at the same time it could still be different enough to be fun to make. In the prototype I made you can switch between both sides of controlling a giant spider and controlling a human. In the full game there would be multiple humans fighting against a giant spider player.

This is a screen shot of the giant spider laying an egg sack. Egg sacks spawn a smaller spider every ten seconds. The only mechanic currently worked out for this character is to lay these egg sacks. We have other ideas such as setting up webs as traps but those are not fully thought out yet.

This is a screenshot of the human fighting off the horde of spiders that the giant spider just created. It is night time for this player so he has a lantern. He also has a gun with limited ammo at the moment.

Though we had fun with the conception of this idea I think we are starting to lean away from asymmetric multiplayer. One of the major issues with this idea is that it would rely heavily on the spider player knowing what he is doing for the game to play correctly. In the setting that this would be played the most, the QA labs, the players will be new to the game. It may take 3 games or so for the spider player to get it and during that time the other players aren't enjoying or truly testing the game. And by that time he will have to switch to a different game or role. Because of this and a few other reasons we have decided to take the game as a multiplayer coop against spider AI that I will get more into next week.

Magnetx Prototype 2

This week we decided to further explore Magnetx. The two main things I added to the prototype is having the magnet powers lock onto magnetized objects and adding basic blocks to push and pull.

This is a very simple mechanic of being able to pull and push blocks within the environment. This would later be used to solve puzzles.

The way this locking on mechanic works by using what we had before and adding a lock on target effect. Once you hit a magnetized object the magnetized rays point towards the point that they hit regardless of where the player goes. This gives sort of a grappling feel. 

This grappling feel was definitely very fun and could work in our platform puzzle environment but the problem is that it starts go away from the realism of magnetization. Mechanics such as this could be fun in a platform puzzle but don't represent how magnets really work. So we have to ask ourselves if we were interested in the mechanics or the realism of magnets.

Stealth Kids Game

This week my team decided to explore a co-op stealth game. The setting of this game takes place in a 1950's house. The main characters are two kids that are trying to sneak cookies without their parents knowing. This week I made a basic game play prototype to show off the kind of mechanics we would have in our game.

An interesting part of what I did this week was my detection implementation. The initial goal was to create an accurate cone of vision for the parent. I decided that an easy way to do detection that would not see through walls would be to use Unity's line-cast or ray-cast systems. So I created an object that would take a start point, an angle, and a distance for line casting. It also had a line render attached to it so that the detection could be displayed. From here I wrote a generator script that took in an angle range and a transform and then created these line renders around the given transform. In the picture above I have a parent with a range from 0-70 degrees creating a cone like shape of vision.

In this second picture the kid is in range of the parent but is not detected because the line-cast does not go past other objects.

Magnetx Prototype 1

The first game we're looking into doing for senior team is a game called Magnetix. In this game you play as an electromagnet in a puzzle platform environment. We have ideas of exploring magnets and different things that magnets can do too add to the fun of this puzzle game.

For this first week though I created a prototype that shows off the base mechanic. This prototype has attracting and repulsing abilities for the player. In order to do this I first had arms that rotate around a single axis. From here the player could left/right click and shoot out attraction/repulsion lines in the direction the arms are facing. This was done by simply adding force relative to the direction the arms are facing.

As you can see in the image above the attraction lines can be used to move the player towards objects. This can be useful to get to higher platforms.

The other option is to use repulsion. In the image above it is used on an object directly below the player to shoot him strait up. This could be used to get over areas that maybe have traps in a pit but there is a magnetized area to push off of. 

Overall this prototype was successful in showing that these sort of physics can be fun. As soon as you jump in and play around it is kinda fun, even though there isn't much of a game yet. Based on that reaction alone it seams this game could have some good potential.