Summary
For our GDW game this year, we have decided to create a geometry-war style space shooter based on an underwater theme. The mechanics are seemingly straight-forward and creating a digital prototype for the game shouldn't be all that difficult although several considerations must be taken in order for the prototype to be successful. We have concerns that must addressed and obstacles to work around as well. Let's begin with gameplay.
If you don't know what geometry wars is, here's a quick video to get you caught up.
Gameplay
Our main concerns surrounding the gameplay of our digital prototype would have to be the enemy A.I. as this has always been a challenge in the past. While it is easy enough to have a spaceship in flight rotating and shooting object that are flying towards it, it would be more of a challenge to implement enemies and even more of a challenge to implement bosses. To bring it down to our core mechanic, our game is a twin-stick shooter which is what we would showcase as our primary focus in our prototype. Since a prototype is not necessarily the full game or even a full system, I think it would be best for us to focus on delivering the experience of shooting asteroids coming at the player at different speeds just to demonstrate the pace of the game and to see how our audience responds to the basic movement mechanics and gameplay rules. We wouldn't be able to test out our enemy A.I. right away because this is something we would have to work on for quite a bit before we can perfect it.
Another concern in regards to gameplay is how our prototype will be able to portray the power up system and three-dimensional movement in space. Our game will be 3D and in order to make use of a 3D space, we plan on having the spaceship do special tricks like barrel rolls and loop-de-loops as bonuses. We're not sure how well this will play out and how we can implement this 3D gameplay with a primarily 2D viewpoint. We're also concerned, to a certain degree, about how power-ups and player types will work within the game. Will the power-ups make gameplay easier? Will they visually impact the player's ship? Will they make the game too easy? Will the level of power-up be different depending on the player type? Will we have to account for various power-ups based on the player's ship build? Will player's be able to purchase these in-between levels? Will players be able to keep their power-ups on to the next level? And so on and so forth. Lots of questions are yet to be answered.
Aesthetics
As far as aesthetics go, one of our main concerns was whether or not the player would be able to see a dark ship in outer space. We weren't planning on making the ship bright neon colours but maybe we could give them an outer-edge glow to stand out amongst all the other object and enemies in the space. We also wondered whether the player should be able to see the whole space they are playing in or should they only see part of the map. This brought us to the question of possibly adding a minimap to the game which would represent where the player was relative to the entire level space.
We thought about what bullets should look like in order for the player to tell what they're shooting and how accurate their aim is. Should the bullets just be beams of light or should they be 3D art assets? We thought about what it would look like when enemy ships were destroyed. Whether they would explode and hurt the player if they came too close or whether they would simply fall off the map rotating and shrinking like a chopper with no pilot.
Kinesthetics
We discussed at lengths about what control scheme to use for our game and what would feel the most natural. After taking a look at Geometry Wars and Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombie Arcade, we had decided that twin-stick shooters would probably work best for our purposes. We still, however, have several concerns about the interface of the game and how players will respond to the current schemes and layout. We're not sure whether the embedded minimap will make sense and we're not sure whether we should have trailing particles in order for the ship to look like it's being propelled through space. Even if we want to do any of these things, we need to make sure that they are technically viable and that our programmer will actually be able to implement the functionality that would make the spaceships look and feel natural.
A lot of talk about the speed of the player's ship and pace of the game has been going around the table as we try to figure out what would feel best - a fast-paced space shooter or a strategic aim and shoot game which requires precision at enemy weak spots to work. We are concerned about the responsiveness of the controls as we will be employing an XBox 360 Controller and have to make sure that the game feels like one a player can purchase off the XBox LIVE Store.
Technology
This is a big one as we even currently struggling to work with 2Loc, an engine that has been given to us to work with this semester. Not only are we using an engine that isn't our own, but time is spent getting used to and learning the ins and outs of the game engine before we can begin producing our game. I feel like this, at the current moment, is our biggest challenge and our greatest fear as far as technology goes. We know our technological constraints and have chosen to create a simple game that doesn't exactly display terrific feats of technological prowess, but which has solid gameplay and juicy aesthetics. Since we don't have much of a say in the matter, our technological concerns are limited to figuring out an engine we haven't designed.
Make it or break it
I definitely think that our general gameplay rules and technology would probably be the biggest concerns when it comes to the development of our game. Again, enemy A.I. is a big one and the game engine itself. We plan to use several shaders within our game and so have to figure out what the system for shaders is within 2Loc so that we may begin developing code for what we would like to implement including Rim Highlighting, Blur and Normal Mapping.
I think at this stage in the game it isn't as necessary to make our game look the best, but it is imperative to spend our time perfecting the mechanics of the system and developing good enemy intelligence. This could definitely kill our game since the first half of the semester is based on prototyping mainly gameplay and without this we would have very low gameplay value. I think seeking, fleeing and other steering behaviors are a high priority but before we even begin taking a look at those, we need to focus on figuring out the 2Loc engine and Havok physics. I certainly do hope that we are able to do everything we want and more to bring our game to life and have it looking really good in time for prototyping it at Level Up next year.
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