A new group, a new project. This time around I have found myself in a group leadership role. I set up a few project management systems such as a slack channel for communications and got someone else to create a GitHub repository for his prototypes that he made for our two ideas. For this project we are required to re-imagine a retro arcade 2D game as a 3D game.
I’ve been anticipating this project since the start of trimester. I wanted to recreate Lunar Lander, a moon landing game where players manage fuel and aim for different landing areas worth different amounts of points. It was released in 1979 by Atari, Inc. (Lunar Lander, 1979). I have played a recreation recently that I have thoroughly enjoyed, you can find it here ("Lunar Lander", 2012). Thankfully my group also loved this idea, but we still needed to pitch another idea. We landed on the light cycle mode contained in Tron. It was was an arcade game released in 1982 that featured multiple game modes that the player must progress through, based around the movie of the same name released in the same year (Midway, 1982).
With out ideas in hand, all that was left was to flesh them out to meet the assessment criteria and be ready to pitch. One aspect of the assessment is local multiplayer. Putting multiplayer in Tron is a no-brainer. The snake like movement to trap your opponent is perfect with multiple player controlled light cycles. Lunar Lander however is a bit more difficult. We have opted for a musical chairs style gameplay, where it is a race to occupy all of the landing pads, each only available for a single use. Player still have to manage fuel, as well as will crash if they land too hard or not level. However we might make fuel management less important, to encourage competitive strategy around bumping each other. A part of re-imagining Lunar Lander is the art style. We have opted to go for a colourful voxel style of modelling, similar to Crossy Road (Crossy Road, 2014).
Our pitch went okay, there were a couple of things that could have gone better. For example our group wasn't exactly on the same page due to some miscommunication ahead of the pitch. But thankfully our Lunar Lander pitch was deemed to be there better idea and we were green lit to go ahead and make it. As we are each require to make a 3D model each, we agreed we should each make a lander that the players could select from. Over the weekend we brainstormed what models we should each make for our ships and I made mine. My model turned out like a very traditional lander, with a crew cabin atop a fuel tank, with a singular rocket nozzle and 4 landing legs. I painted it to have a primary colour that the player can change ahead of the game. Other landers that the others have thought of are much more creative. One idea is to model a lander after Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster which will be awesome to see. I’m excited to start work on this project next week when we all meet up and get something awesome built.
References
Hipster Whale. (2014). Crossy Road [IOS, Android, Windows Phone, tvOS].
Atari, Inc. (1979). Lunar Lander [Atari 6502 Vector].
Lunar Lander. (2012). Retrieved from http://moonlander.seb.ly/
Midway, B. (1982). Tron. Midway Games Inc.