Weapons part 3

So today we're going to show you some weapons that are really cool. Not to say that the previous weapons haven't been, but the ones showcased today are a bit more... exotic. And also very fun to use.

The Club

We decided that people who liked melee should have a bit of variety. So instead of just having the sword that is based on speed, players can now use the club that hits like a train. It takes a while to swing it, but if an enemy is hit they will go down. Also makes the wielder looks like a caveman, for added hilarity.

The Rocket Launcher

It should come as no surprise that something explosive would make its way into the game. And what better way to cause explosions than with a rocket launcher? The way it works is fundamentally different from most other weapons because it is projectile based. This means that the missile will have to travel to the target which in turn means that players will have to lead their targets. This is however compensated by the fact that it (obviously) damages in an area. Another drawback is the fact that it can only shoot one missile before the player has to reload, meaning that the rate of fire is on the level of the sniper.

The Grenade Launcher

Also in the field of explosive weaponry, we have the Grenade Launcher. In many ways, its similar to the rocket launcher, but the key difference is that grenades are subject to gravity. This means that shots will curve through the air. It will make it more challenging to aim, and it's damage is also lower. In turn it can shoot six grenades in rapid succesion before having to reload. The curve of the shot can also become an advantage to really skilled players, who can use it to curve their shots around corners. We do however expect that this will be pretty hard to utilize effectively.

That is it for weapons. We did have plans for three more but for a variety of reasons we have chosen to discard them. This is both because of the weapons themselves perhaps aren't fit for the game, but also because of our time constraint seeing as our deadline is on wednesday. We'll see how many updates we can cram out between now and then, but we are pretty busy.
Until then, have fun!

Test feedback

A couple of weeks back, we tested the game on a group of students from our school. There aws actually supposed to be an update about it immediately after but it got pushed back because of all the troubles with doing the blog. Rest assured that the guilty PR guy is being punished appropiately.

Meanwhile, we finally got to the point where we could actually tell you about it. The way we set it up is that we didn't actually tell the testers how to play the game. We just turned on the game, and gave them a controller. We did this because, while we may have ideas for what the intuitive way to do certain things are, it would be smarter to actually find out by looking at what people do when playing the game. Afterward, we also asked some questions on what was easy to figure out, and what was confusing.

Instead of actually showing you the notes about the results, which are rather hastily put together (and also in danish), we'll just give a quick summary. It should be mentioned that the class we tested on, is in the same course as we are, and thus have experience in playing video games:

• Jumping was apparently not all that intuitive (and seemed kinda redundant with the grappling hook).
• Shooting was completely intuitive and took almost no time to figure out, for every test group. There were however problems with aiming, which we've since fixed by adding laser sights.
• Sliding was not something the most people figured out. Instead, it was actually necessary to tell people about in almost all cases. When they first learned about it though, it seemed that they liked it.
• Grappling was apparently much easier to figure out, and usually the second thing people learned. According to most of the test groups, it also functioned really well, and was "like Spiderman with guns" which we're going to take as a compliment.

That was the majority of the feedback we got. The rest was mostly people stating that they liked the grappling hook or pointing out minor things that they would have liked differently (like fewer bugs).

Anyway, that's all for today, but there'll be more tomorrow so stay tuned!

Weapons part 2

So it's (finally) time for the second reveal of weapons. Once again we will be showing you three weapons, and this time they will be slightly more exotic. And due to a recent leap in technology (and use of common sense), we're going to be showing off demonstrations of the weapons:

The Submachine Gun

Sporting a faster firing rate than the assault rifle at the expense of range and damage. Great for people who like to get somewhat close, but dislike the shotguns inability to keep firing. 

The Sniper

For the long range warrior, the sniper is always a great tool for the job. With the highest single bullet damage in the game, and a range to match, the sniper is one of the few weapons that can potentially kill a player in one shot, if you manage to hit someone in the head. It's also quite risky, since the firing rate is so low that you may not have time for more than one shot depending one your dodging skills. 

The Sword

The Sword is for people who want to get real up close, to the point where even the shotgun is too long range. With a high damage compared to bullets, and a relatively high hit rate as well, the only drawback of the sword is it's uselessness at longer range. 

Weapons

So after a bit of a delay, we can finally give you guys a closer look at the weapons. So far, we've implemented a lot of the standard issue weapons, like assault rifle, shotgun, submachine gun, pistol, etc. We also have a couple of melee weapons and some more exciting stuff like miniguns and rocket launchers. All of them will, of course, be balanced, but we're trying to make them so that they will excel in different situations. The exception to this will be the pistol which is supposed to be alright in every situation, but doesn't have a situation where it will be the optimal weapon. This is because it's the starting weapon and we want to make it so that it will never be the optimal strategy to use the pistol, but it will always be viable so as to avoid snowballing. For those who doesn't know what snowballing means, it's when a player get's an advantage early on (through either skill or luck) and that advantage makes him strong enough to make it hard if not impossible for other players to catch up.

So without further ado, lets look at a few of the weapons you'll (probably) be using in the game:

The Pistol:

The pistol is, as previously said, the jack of all trades. As the default weapon, it will be average in most respects, literally. It will have average (or close to, anyway) firing rate, damage, range and clip size

The Assault Rifle

The assault rifle is one of the primary automatic weapons. It is supposed to be used at mid range, and the higher-than-average rate of fire lets you take care of enemies faster than most other weapons at that range. 

The Shotgun

The shotgun is, like its real world counterpart, meant to be up close and personal. It fires a volley of shots that individually are weak, but manages to do impressive amounts of damage should they all hit. 

Sorry if the update is a little sparse, but most of these weapons are kinda run of the mill. It will hopefully be a bit more exciting to hear about the less traditional weapons. Until then, have fun!

Grappling hook

So one of the main selling points of the game was the use of grappling hooks. We went back and forth on how it was going to work. Should it be a speedrunners kind of thing where you just swing from a rope, or should it be more like terraria where you're pulled straight to whatever the hook catches. The former feels great because of the momentum, but it requires loads of space to use, while the latter is very practical because of its precision, but can feel weird. So in the end we went with both. Kinda

This footage is sped up. However cool it looks, it's not actually that fast paced.

The way it works is that it pulls the player towards whatever the hook hits, but the player still has to deal with physics. That means he's gonna go swinging if he grapples in any other direction than straight up. This let's you keep the momentum, but is also viable with smaller spaces (although not as small as we first imagined). There's also the fact that it just feels cool to make a fly-by with a grappling hook. Especially when you actually hit another player.

Later today, there's going to be an update on the weapons with a focus on mechanics as opposed to graphics, so until then, stay tuned.

Weapon Graphics

So last update for today, with more coming tomorrow: Weapons!

Since the weapons have to fit the artstyle of the rest of the game (maybe not have to, but it's certainly preferred) they're both polygonized and single color. The effect is kinda like that of a silhouette:

The shotgun (because no game that involves shooting would be complete without a shotgun)

And the sniper.

Both weapons are traced from real-life equivalents, and then modified to fit with the rest of the game. We can't actually say which weapons they're traced from as that might bring a lawsuit down on us, but you're welcome to take guesses.

That is all for today folks. Hopefully, there will be more of a steady stream of updates from now on. We certainly hope that our PR guy will get better so he can get back to work.

Until then, have fun!

Background art

Time for the second update of today, this time focusing on the background art (as implied by the title). ¨
Our idea for the setting of the game was in the theme of factories or some kind of experimental lab. The idea was that we wanted to have dynamic levels in terms of implementing mechanics that would show up and then go away after a while. When we needed a setting that could explain why random events happened, we kinda got inspired by portal but decided to make it more old looking. Thus the factory look. While we scrapped the idea about dynamic events, we still liked the theme a lot so we decided to stick with it.
Here's some examples of how we thought we might implement it:

With platforms:

An example without platforms:

A mockup of a platform

This last picture isn't going to be used. It's too detailed so we're planning to use a version that is simpler. It does however communicate the theme quite nicely.
There's gonna be one more update and then that will be all for today. See you in a little for an update on what weapons are going to look like.

Characters

So first of all, we'd like to apologize for the complete lack of updates over the last week or so. Our PR guy has had some health issues, but we should be able to post regularly from now on. This also means that there will be multiple updates today.
First up, we'd like to show off the characters. Bear in mind that all along, we've been going for a really simple artstyle, so the characters are all the same except for the colors.

If you think it looks a bit polygon-ish, bear in mind that a) it's part of the simplistic artstyle and b) the characters are going to be quite small, compared to the rest of the screen. If you're wondering about the gun or the background, they will be the subject of the next couple of updates, so don't worry about those just yet.