A couple of weeks ago I made a game for the Global Game Jam as part of a two man team, in the course of 48 hours. This was interesting for me since it's my first time in a jam making a 3D game, working in Unreal rather than GameMaker, and working as part of a team!
The Global Game Jam page for our game with download link can be found here.
The Global Game Jam page for our game with download link can be found here.
To copy the summary from the Global Game Jam page, 'The volcano is hungry, and demands sacrifices to be appeased. How long can you last against an increasingly furious fire-mountain and the rising seas? Or bring a friend along for split screen!'
You basically run around picking up people and either throwing them into the volcano to calm it down, or throwing them into other people so they breed and produce more people, who can then be bred again in turn... or thrown into the volcano.
As you're doing this, the volcano spits out fireballs which must be dodged, and which will solidify into new ground tiles which you can also pickup and move around to change the landscape.
You basically run around picking up people and either throwing them into the volcano to calm it down, or throwing them into other people so they breed and produce more people, who can then be bred again in turn... or thrown into the volcano.
As you're doing this, the volcano spits out fireballs which must be dodged, and which will solidify into new ground tiles which you can also pickup and move around to change the landscape.
The view of the island you get from the menu.
I've only been working with Unreal for about a month or so, on and off just getting to grips with some of the basics of Blueprint and getting used to working in 3D space rather than the 2D of GameMaker. My teammate did most of the heavy lifting here, having far more experience with Unreal and Blueprint (and art!).
The visuals and all core gameplay functionality are almost entirely his work, while I tweaked some balance, made the menu, and did some of the simpler elements such as laying out the tiles for the island, creating the rising water and volcano eruptions, and building the system for the gradually increasing fury of the volcano. I also found and added the sound effects, and added split-screen multiplayer (which is not as impressive as it might sound, since Unreal makes it pretty easy - the biggest challenge for me was getting the game to restart properly from a split-screen game without the camera getting messed up due to the extra player).
Basically he handled most of the work involving more complicated maths and vectors, while I helped out in other areas. You can tell he did the art since the game looks so much more pretty than anything I would normally produce!
The visuals and all core gameplay functionality are almost entirely his work, while I tweaked some balance, made the menu, and did some of the simpler elements such as laying out the tiles for the island, creating the rising water and volcano eruptions, and building the system for the gradually increasing fury of the volcano. I also found and added the sound effects, and added split-screen multiplayer (which is not as impressive as it might sound, since Unreal makes it pretty easy - the biggest challenge for me was getting the game to restart properly from a split-screen game without the camera getting messed up due to the extra player).
Basically he handled most of the work involving more complicated maths and vectors, while I helped out in other areas. You can tell he did the art since the game looks so much more pretty than anything I would normally produce!
The player is carrying someone, while watching an eruption in progress.
Working as a team went well for the most part - we had a few minor issues with our Git revision control system, but generally it just took decent communication to avoid conflicts from both of us working on the same files at the same time.
We produced a lot of content and systems given the time, but didn't really have any time left over for playtesting or ensuring all the mechanics worked smoothly together. I think we only managed to actually play a multiplayer game together after we had submitted it to the compo! The biggest weakness of the game is probably there in the balance of the different mechanics, which I imagine could be solved fairly easily with a bit more thought and time applied to it. Nonetheless, the basic gameplay is still fun, and I really do think it looks nice.
We produced a lot of content and systems given the time, but didn't really have any time left over for playtesting or ensuring all the mechanics worked smoothly together. I think we only managed to actually play a multiplayer game together after we had submitted it to the compo! The biggest weakness of the game is probably there in the balance of the different mechanics, which I imagine could be solved fairly easily with a bit more thought and time applied to it. Nonetheless, the basic gameplay is still fun, and I really do think it looks nice.
RSS Feed