Phoenix development studios has been stuck in a rut, so to speak, for the past couple of semesters when it comes to our game design. We found a concept and theme that we've stuck to pretty faithfully, even carrying over the same title. We've had our fill and it's about time to retire The Next Dimension for the time being.
Now this leaves us in an interesting position. Over the summer, some group members had looked into different game types we could approach this year. The first was a tower defense game. At the first the concept was appealing, but upon closer inspection it was concluded that it would simply require the production of too many assets, more than we believe we could handle, and so inevitably it was out of scope.
Then we had an idea, something we haven't done before but are interested in trying. A multiplayer focused party game. The rough idea currently is to have little, simple-designed avatars with a basic melee weapon (something stick-like) thrown into an arena and set to fight to the death. Now where variety comes from are multiple game modes (king of the hill, capture the flag, infection), different skinnable weapons and characters and different arena's with various obstacles. That is the ultimate goal.
What we realised last year is that we have a tendency to overscope. Whether it was the amount of levels, or characters, doing more was detrimental. Now we were fortunate that for Level Up we had a well-functioning
level that we showed off and realized that it was better to have one functioning level than a bunch of useless ones. This led us to setting realistic goals this year which will consist of basically getting skeletal systems implemented well into the controllable characters, getting the basic attack and defense mechanic (and movement) working well, and having a stable game run at a respectable framerate, that can handle multiple players.
Because we are using multiple engines this year, Havok for physics and Ogre and 2LOC for everything else, we feel we can optimize controller input and minimize resulting lag. We are planning of transitioning from SFML's rather slow input handler, to the well established XInput which will also allow for easier controller integration.
Other things that new engines can provide (that we'll need)...
Physics: We'd like to implement rigid bodies and ragdoll like physics into our main characters. When a character hits another and kills them, they will collapse into a ragdoll like pile of meat. We're planning on implementing this with the use of Havok.
AI: Artificial intelligence is going to be one o the most important factors of our game, because it is almost entirely based on player to player interaction. With limited to no networking in the first semester, we need to have a semi-sentient ai manager that can do basic character control and movement that will enable someone who is playing alone to have a fun game experience.
Graphics Pipeline: This year we are using the versatile Ogre engine for rendering and graphics and we hope that figuring it out and implementing it will be outweighed by its uses. It may allow us to prototype faster if we can get it up and rendering quickly.
Networking: Networking will be implemented next semester once core gameplay and AI has been implemented to a stable level.
Input Handling: This year we are planning on transitioning to a much better method of handling, Xinput, which will allow us to better implement external controllers, especially for a multi-person game and have a overall stabler framerate.
Final Thoughts
After going through the first GDW we now know our restrictions and what we are allowed to do. This game will not be split-screen, but rather local multi-screen play. We are not using multiple gameplay elements, like driving, walking, flying but rather multiple game objectives (like ctf, ffa, king of the hill). Overall this year we know we have to have a realistic scope and get solid gameplay first before anything else. It's going to be a fun year :)
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