Introduction:

Hello dear readers. This is our game project for the course "Game Projects" at Digital Arts and Entertainment at Howest.

Our group consist out of five members. Two programmers Tibbe and Nick and three artists Angel, Engon and Juozas. In the coming weeks we are planning to create a fun and exciting HotPotato inspired game with a few twists here and there. We are updating our Devlog on a weekly base.

Premise of the game:

You are 1 of 4 other wrestlers trying to become the Buckle Bomb champion. You will fight in a 2D style arena tag match where you need to get rid of a highly explosive bomb as fast as possible before it detonates. How will you do that? It's easy, just give the bomb to one of your fellow wrestles before the bomb explodes. The other wrestles won't just take the bomb from you though, so you better chase them down!

Every time you die you will be handed death points, these death points are not so good for your awesome wrestling reputation so you better avoid getting them as much as possible!

Also make sure to always stay in the arena box or you might get thrown out of the ring and get more death points.

The wrestler with the least amount of death points when the time runs out, gets to be titled the Buckle Bomb champion.

Coding:

Unreal Engine 5 vs Unity?

In the first week of prototyping we tested our main mechanics in both engines to see which one fits our needs better.  Unreal Engine is known for its powerful 3D graphics capabilities, including advanced lighting and shading effects. It also has a built-in physics engine that provides realistic physics simulations. Since we are planning to do a 2.5D game with a moving camera, we have a slight preference for Unity, because has it has  a more user-friendly and intuitive 2D game development environment, and it is easier to implement 2D camera mechanics in Unity.

Are our main mechanics interesting/fun?

This is something which still needs some test and iterations. The moving camera should not go to fast or to slow otherwise the game will be too easy or too hard to play. Giving the bomb to others should feel properly. We have to make sure it is balanced and players will be able to tag each other and it is going to be interesting for each player to play and not just stand while two of the players are going after each other. We have thought about if whether it would be better if the players can throw the bomb or if it will be not nice to balance with the rest on the game. We decided on doing no throwing for the main mechanic and gameplay but we will add a throw mechanic and other interesting stuff later on by items.

Art:

How are we going to illuminate our level?

The main idea we have in mid for our game is to let the players run, jump and fight around in a WWE-style arena. The main question we now have is: How we are going to light our level? Our level will be in a 2D-esk side view so lighting has to be adjusted accordingly.

Our main references for style and lighting are Dead cells and Replaced, both of these games have a pixel art aesthetic and tackle lighting in unique and different ways. Dead cells uses a lot of colours in the foreground that contrast well against a fairly monochrome background, this makes it that the player clearly can distinguish the main character from the background and environmental objects. In Replaced the character is mainly 2D and the background environments are all 3d modelled but textured to fit the 2D pixel art feel. Replaced also chooses to use very dramatic lighting in their levels with a lot of light rays from windows and overall sunlight or the occasional flashing computer screen. This makes for a very clear distinction between fore- and background. 

For our game we wanted to use these lighting/colouring techniques. We quickly saw that our first obstacle was the environment. Both Replaced and Dead cells utilise sunlight/outside lighting to add light and visual strength to their game. Our game would take place inside a big wrestling stadium, witch meant there would be no sunlight or any outside light for that matter. So we started brainstorming and are trying out different lighting solutions, for example spot light that would shine on the "play area" and guide our players to objects and show a clear layout of the level and it's platforms.

Our plan for next week:

For next week the programmers are going to make a working prototype where our main mechanics are included, and you can play the game with multiple players. We are going to make our camera mechanic work where it moves around and kills you when you are outside the viewport. In the prototype players will be able to pass the bomb to others and kill them.

The artists are going to test a shader that converts the 3D assets into a nice looking pixel art style to see if it works and how it works, so we can decide whether we can use that in the game. They are going to research the lighting in the game and the environmental lighting. They will also make and look to make some basic 3D characters to see how the shader works.