This is the second week for our game projects at DAE and as such we are right in the middle of the Protototyping phase. We looked into a few questions we had for ourselves this week:

1. Do we use splitscreen or one shared camera?
2. What do our aliens look like overall?
3. How are our levels built?
4. In the case your character gets hidden by an object, what do we do?
5. How would the link system work?
6. How to randomly spawn obstacles in the level while making sure there's always one path left open?
7. What about AI?

Splitscreen or One Shared Camera

Splitscreen has the main disadvantage of restricting the viewport of each player to a smaller physical size, which could make the HUD harder to read, although they should have higher control of their own view. On the other hand, one shared camera reinforces the co-op aspect of our game. To get an idea of what the two would look like, we made a prototype:

Originally, we had in mind to maybe try and make something like the hybrid splitscreen of some LEGO games, but it turned out this works best for 2 players and apparently the system had been removed in the most recent LEGO games due to players not liking it.

The Look of Aliens

Our artists managed to get an answer to this very quickly! Even though this is still quite early, they already look quite convincing. If the inspiration is not clear to you, we're aiming for something like past century alien stylisation/Destroy All Humans.

Bonus: Humans!

Building levels

We have decided to go with a modular system involving hexagons. Pieces fit together easily and should set the basis for creating the final level quickly. Here's a preview of some of the tiles:

View Obstruction

We had 2 solutions in mind for this problem. Either we could somehow hide the obstructing mesh (this would probably be reflected for other players, which is a disadvantage) or use a dynamic camera activated using triggers placed in the level, but this would require the level to be built around the feature and it would mainly be for splitscreen. (not one shared camera) Have a look at the prototypes in action:

For the first video, line traces and materials are combined to give the final effect. The material of the mesh is actually swapped out at runtime until it stops blocking the view. The fading is achieved using a dynamic material instance.

In the second video, triggers are placed in the level and dictate whether they should transition back to topdown or back to side-view. The rest is lerping to the desired result.

Link System

For this one, we were looking to either directly connect players or have players linked as long as they are within a certain radius of each other. We opted for a system where players are connected by cables and can pull on each other or possibly even fling each other.

This prototype is available to download on the main page.

Random Obstacle Spawning

To promote replayability, we had in mind to randomly spawn obstacles at points that could be set by the level designers. As such, every playthrough would require a different path to get to your objectives. Of course, the system needs to make sure your objectives are always reachable though. To create this, the navigation systems of Unreal provide a way to know if a given point is reachable from another starting point using the navigation mesh, and this serves as the basis for the random obstacle spawning. The following video shows how the point of importance in the middle is always reachable:

Artificial Intelligence

AI will most likely play a fairly substantial part in our game so this part will be a prolonged endeavour. For this week, we set up a basic AI that can roam around nodes placed in the map, and will set chase to the player as soon as they see him. If the player manages to escape, the AI will start roaming again.

Plan for next week

We probably will look into the following topics for next week:

• More AI
• Stealth
• HUD
• Alien abilities
• Environmental traps
• ...