Big Game Project: Scrap Pirates. Week 1-3

Hellooo…

It has been almost half a year since my last post but now it is time to start posting again and a new course begun three weeks ago, Big Game Project. It is just as it sounds, we are to create a game during this course and eventually show it off at Gotland Game Conference in late May this year.

The joined the group Sprocket with the game Scrap Pirates. Scrap Pirates is a Metroidvania style exploration/platformer with a focus on two player co-op puzzle gameplay. The goal of the game is to progress through levels by solving puzzles and picking up scraps. The aid the players solving the puzzles they can activate a magnetic field around their avatar which will allow them to move crates too heavy to move otherwise. I am one of only two programmers in the group, together with three graphical artists and two level designers.

The two first weeks were mostly preproduction: planning, designing and so on. But now we are in full production mode. The first deadline is in a week, the next Friday, and then, the Wednesday in about two weeks, it is the Alpha deadline. I am pretty certain we will have a working Alpha version of the game before the playtesting next week. The big things left to implement for my part before that are animations and re-spawn; everything else is working decent enough for an alpha version at least.

If I remember correctly, the only big feature left for us programmers to implement after that is an upgrade system which will allow the players to upgrade their toons by spending the scraps they have collected so far. I have probably forgotten some feature while writing this, but that is probably ok anyway…

The pictures demonstrate a very early prototype of the players together with our first enemy, the Welding Arm.