It's been quite a few weeks since this production was completed, but I'll do my best to recall how it went.
Things started out slow with people wanting to take it easy after the first production cycle. As a result, production came down to the wire as we were still finishing the game on the day of submission. My role of project lead ended up being shared with the others as I made creative decisions, Josh made assigned jobs, and Will covered all of our documentation. Everybody designed and built their own custom lander module for use by different players in the game, as well as making destroyed versions so that the landers could explode and break up when they crash. I based mine off an Apollo Lunar Module which possessed a crew capsule atop the fuel tank with 4 landing legs and a single rocket engine. John was a little more creative with his Tesla Roadster lander with his version of Starman in the drivers seat. So what else did I do to pull this game together? Well I built the terrain to be built up of blocks to match the voxel style we were striving for. I also placed various obstetrical such as trees and rocks that the others had made, around the terrain to make different landing areas more difficult or block them off completely. I also programmed the landing detection as well as points for multiplied landing zones. Josh added onto this by randomising where landing zones spawned. I also set up all of the functionality for the options menu. One of my proudest creations was the dynamic splitscreen. Depending on how many people loaded into a game, the splitscreen set up would automatically set up based on that number and assign each camera to follow each player. If there are three players, the fourth camera is a zoomed out camera that follows the average position of all of the alive players. Another thing I set up was the pretend screen wrapping. When players reach the end of the world they are teleported to the other side, maintaining their vector. To stop them from vanishing in the middle of the screen I set up the cameras so that they could not leave a bounding box, and so do not follow the players off the sides or top of the map.
So what makes this game different from the original? The most obvious thing is the local multiplayer that is designed for up to four players. When competing against others, it becomes a whole new game. The fact that you have the ability to bump into others in an attempt to make them crash adds a whole new level of strategy. We found getting a couple of high points landings early in the round, and then crashing into others to prevent them from earning points, was the most effective strategy. Another noticeable change is the use of 3D models in a 2D plane, with a very bright and smooth colour palette. This is a huge contrast from the 2D white lines on a plane black background that the original game had.
The primary gameplay mechanics remain true to the original game. The players still must manage their fuel as they land slowly and as close to perfectly level as they can. Different landing zones are worth different amounts of points, and players respawn high in the air with a horizontal velocity.
This game was really fun to play even with testing, and we had positive feed back from outside players. For those of you that want to take a look at it, there is a YouTube video showing some gameplay in the gallery section of my front page.
See you all in the next blog for Cycle 3.