Introduction

Hello and welcome to our game project for the DAE Howest course Group Projects.

Our group consists of 4 develepors, one programmer -> Jochen,  and three artists ->Jeroen, Rik and Sarah. The goal of our project is to have the players control little robots in an arena-like battleground to gather as much resource as possible. 
We want this game to be as fun as possible while also being simple to pick up and learn the basics of. Being a local multiplayer pvp game, it will be great fun for a group of 2 to 4 people to enjoy.

The game is set within a depleting oil rig station in a desert area,  which is most represented by Arizona in America with its empty landscapes and dry vegetation. In this environment the players have to fight over the last remaining drops of oil. Each player is able to connect to the main oil rig to pump its oil into the oil barrel-backpack each player has. But beware,  every player can connect to the stations of the other players to to steal their oil while buzy elsewhere,  manipulating their opponents. 
If the little robots run out of oil to function normally, they will move at a slower pace than usual to encourage the constant fight over oil. But if the station of one player runs out of oil, this player will be eliminated. The goal is to survive as long as possible, unitill one player survives!

In this document we will go over the choices we made for the pipeline and development of our game. We will guide you through our work and what we did this week. This is still our prototype stage so changes will be made in the future.

Art

Style

The start of the art bible was going a bit rough not knowing where to start. Once the first elements were decided everything went better. There was a quick decision on how the game would look. This was then also implemented in the artbible style.

The player should be able to clearly see where he is at all time that is why we choose to make the player more outline and hand textured. This was then mostly inspired by the Flotsam artstyle.

This is a good contrast on the terrain. This will only consist of plain colours and will have no detail (this only texture wise).

This will be done by the use of swatches.(this is an example)

This is done to make sure the player pops from the background. In this way of working will we ensure that the player never loses his character on-screen

The terrain elements will also have a shell-shader or an outline that makes sure they are not becoming one blob of elements.

The HUD is also really important when playing the game. The changing elements like energy bars will be the player colour to easily see how you are doing in the game.

The bars will be displayed at the corners of the screen to not clutter the screen to much.

Coding

Engine Software, Unreal Engine vs Unity?

For now we settled with doing the prototype within Unity, because it is more user friendly and new iterations are faster to implement than in Unreal Engine. Furthermore it is easier to post process in Unity, which allows for a nicer achievement of stylized graphics. 

So far we are comfortable with using Unity for prototyping, so we will most likely continue using Unity for the actual production of the game.

Controls:

Should work for any basic controller(ps4. xbox, ...):
For now, we have 3 mechanics(2 main ones).

Right trigger -> Stun/projectile.
Left shoulder -> Plug In/Out.
Right shoulder -> Toggle transfermode (only at player owned station).
Left stick -> movement.

Mechanics

Currently the main mechanics are in place. Players are able to connect to the stations and the main hub to gather energy and pick up little pick ups to boost the amount of oil they have by a little. The players have stun projectiles, which also costs oil to use, so it should be used with caution. 
If a player runs out of energy they move slower and if their station runs out of energy, the player is eliminated.

Other planned mechanics are spilled oil puddles, which slow down players which plan to walk through them. 

Right now the rate of oil consumption is still being tested to balance it out as much as possible without feeling clunky to operate around or being unrewarding.

Map Prototype:

Is there a reason to steal from others?

Over time the main hub will generate less and less oil. This incentivises players to steal from each other more and more as the game progresses, or even specifically eliminate other players for less oil consumption overall. 

Target Platform

The prototype will/should be available for low tier pc's (windows only) and playstation 4/5.
As of know there will be controller support only for 2-4 players.