Our group met for the first time as a whole (Four of us in total) and we where able to push some progress for the project and establish some of the ground we would be building up from. After some brief introductions and discussion which recapped our individual past experience, we quickly moved onto discussing game ideas and what environment would best suit us as a group. I'll go over what was discussed about our planned project environment first since we focused mainly on the game design.
After a very brief discussion, it was made quite clear that Unity looked to be our best option. Mainly since we had some Java experience across the group and felt it would be the most manageable option, considering the timescale we were looking at. The Unreal development (UDK) kit was brought up as a possible platform but weighing up the pros and the cons, Unity was a better option. Unity suited our initial design ideas better and we were advised that it would be much more manageable in terms of the time it would take to learn how to work with Unity compared to the UDK.
Moving onto what was covered for the game ideas, which was the focus of that weeks meetup. At first we took a round robin approach for pitching some ideas. Two of the team members put across two fairly detailed explanations of good game ideas which I liked and gave me some confidence for how the game design would turn out. Personally when it came to putting forward a game design I didn't really have much to put forward as game design is not my area of interest and coding is what I would prefer to focus on. A similar situation for the other member of the group. It wasn't to be a problem though as after talking a bit more about the two game ideas that had been put forward, it was clear we definitely had some workable ideas we could start to dissect. The one point I personally put out for the game wasn't so much a game design but more something that I thought would influence the game design. From talking about our previous experience it was clear that the group lacked an artistic or animation strength. I had already had this in mind but after this was made apparent it dawned on me that my suggestion would, in theory, hopefully down scale this problem. I had personally wanted to make a game in 3D but using the rendering technique of Cell Shading. So we then took the game ideas that had been put forward with a thought to them being cell shaded. Which could help to cover our weaknesses in art and modeling etc...
Both ideas are still being thought about but I will briefly describe them both. One is essentially a 3D (possibly 2D or 2.5D) platformer game but focuses on clever level design to appeal. It would be made with classic platformer cliches in mind but made non nonsensical and much more punishing towards the player. So the difficulty has to be higher than expected to be be the draw of the game, the challenge it presents and being able to overcome it. I don't want to get into all of the details that where described for it since it may not be the idea we go with. I personally liked this idea because it would give us a lot of flexibility in terms of the games actual design and could relieve some pressure on certain aspects of the game creation. Specifically things like model creation and scripting since a thought out level design is going to be the strong point of this game idea.
The other idea that was put forward was a top down mech (Mix between a tank and a robot) shooter that would allow the player to customize there mech before playing the game and different types of mech would give a different weapon set and attributes attached to it which would give a variety of play experience. In terms of the actual gameplay post mech customization, it would draw from elements of bullet hell games. Moving down a corridor having to destroy waves of enemies whilst avoiding enemy attacks to survive. This was the core of this game idea and there was some more to it but I'll leave it at that until we are settled on a design and it has been fleshed out more.
We all decided to have a think about it over the following week and would discuss it again at the next meeting and settle on an idea so we could start the production of a design document for the chosen game idea. Other than that personally we have each been told to keep looking up tutorials and generally studying how to use the Unity platform. One member has said they would look into our options for making models and animation for the project since it is a grey area for the group on the whole.
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