Hellow again dear followers! It is that time of the week again. Update on our progress for the game The Floor Is Hacked! 

first off i want to introduce some music to our devlog pages since music will be an important part of the games experience. so feel free to press play and read the devlog while emerging yourself in the vaporwave music style.

Going into this week the first question we needed to answer before we could go on was. 

Question1:
Which game engine will we use to make the game?

VS

We made a small pro's and con's list for both the engines. 

UE4:

• Pro’s:
  • Because we are with 3 programmers, we could handle the large package of UE
  • We can use AI Graphs
  • We can use Blackboards
  • There is more freedom/ open source
  • Rendering wise UE4 has better graphics quality
  • Local multiplayer is easier to implement.
  • The use of decals.
• Con’s:
  • More work to program (manually need to clean your garbage).
  • UE4 can be a too large of an Engine for small game projects.
  • The API side of unreal takes time to get used to.

Unity:

• Pro’s
• Con’s
  • Unity is slower to process and render stuff
  • In comparison with UE4 lightning is worse
  • And also less freedom in Unity than UE4
  • You can’t use decals.

Since the pro’s out way the cons and the artists are used to work in UE4 we choose to go for UE4. Why?

Because for one, there are more pros than cons compared to unity, also like stated earlier we have the extra manpower to make this work and the programmers are more used to c++ than to c#. It felt the most logical choice, plus the artists are used to using unreal as well which gives it a small advantage.

Now that we dicided to go with Unreal Enigine 4.27 we could further look into the theme and aesthetic of our game.

Question 2:

How will the theme and aesthetic of Vaporwave be represented in our gane?

subQuestion1:

How will the chracters look? 

This week there was a first blockout for the character proportions and a first try at an overpaint.

For the general shapes and proportions we chose we wanted to try and combine a chibi character with a simply stylised one. The main focus for our characters should be The top part of the body. We tried to keep the focus and readability here by giving the character a proportionate bigger head in regards to his body.  And lots of emphasis on the ammopack on his back. Since this Ammopack will feature diegetic feedback for the player regarding his ammo amount and ammo type. This is important since our camera for the game will be rather far so the head and the ammopack on his back should stay well visible. 

For the first iterations of the paintover we tried to play with the material reflection and the surroundings to see how it would look and that it wont become too much. We also feel we want to keep the character's rather angular in shape tapering down towards the legs. 

subQuestion 2: 

how will the environment look?

For the environment we where thinking on how to give verticality to our tile based game without taking away the main game element. Making the payers fall through the floor. We experimented a bit in Houdini and we where quite pleased with the result we got from putting the playingfield on a sin wave function. 

The next step we want to explore with this is what if the motion plays along with the music that is curently playing in the background of the game. Or what if we make it more organic like and ocean. 

This also sparked an idea to maybe have the tiles go in a ripple effect after being shot.

subQuestion3:

What will the RFX look like?

We decided to go with a lot of different glitch type effects. here are some examples of what we would like to add as FX.

The space where a bullet lands makes the local area glitch out. And is followed by the effect of the ammo on the tile. 

The floor glitch effect.

A first go for this effect:

https://gyazo.com/fcf92994f7b6a8c28f4d34dd7743ed1b

The patterns displayed on the floor to indicate what their state is. For example speed up tile

The ammotypes would be represented by space invader like imagery.

These images our not our own work(unless specified) but it gives a nice overview of the glitch effect we would like to achieve with some of our FX.

On the developer side we finalized our prototype which is available on our itch.io page. 

Question3:

What is the best feel for Character movement speed and shooting mechanics?

We agreed that the characters should move rather fast to keep momentum going.

We also agreed on 3 different styles of projectile paths. 

• the main projectile type which is rather close range.
• the arc projectile type: more for the heavy hitting further range attack.
• the sniper projectile type. for long range take outs. 

This will wrap up our week3 updates for our game. 

I hope to see you all next week to follow up on our adventure in creating 

The Floor Is Hacked!