Scrap Pirates – Big Game Project – Blog Post #1

Introduction – The Course & the Game Concept

Big Game Project is a course for the second year game design students’ at Uppsala University – Campus Gotland.  There are three requirements for to get a passing grade in the course; weekly blog posts, a game project and a post mortem report in the end of the course. The game project will be designed and developed in teams of various sizes. In the weekly blog posts I will share some of the work I have been doing for the game project, why I have done things the way I did and how the progress went. I will bring up problems that occurred whilst I was working, and how the problems were solved. Some parts might be difficult to understand if the reader is not familiar with the game engine Unity, programming or games overall, but I will do my best explaining the parts that I find important to know.

I am part of a team called Sprocket. The size of this group is seven people; producer and level designer Jenny Grip, lead designer and level designer Rebecka Nyström, system programmer Andrée Henriksson, lead artist Christoffer Svensson, animator and artist Jonna Jarlsson, environmental artist Ida Lahti and me, gameplay and lead programmer, Nicolina Åkerfelt. We have eight weeks to design and develop a vertical slice of a big game. When creating the concept for a big game, we had to show understanding of the complexity of the project with a production plan among other things. All decisions on design must be well thought-through, and the game together with the post mortem should demonstrate what we have learned during our two years of studying game design.

We are creating a game called Scrap Pirates (link to the vertical slice pdf file), a 2D Metroidvania game with 2 player co-op. The playable characters of the game are scrap pirates, looting scrap and other valuable metals to keep their ship afloat. They come across an abandoned terraforming vessel, and by using their magnetic abilities to solve puzzles they can explore this vessel, encountering a lot of scrap and dysfunctional robots on their way.

Mockup Screen by Christoffer Svensson

The game is being developed with the game engine Unity, and USB Xbox 360 controllers will be used for playing the game. It is a local multiplayer, with a shared screen.

Individual tasks – Magnetism

My tasks have so far primarily been focused on creating the magnetism feature, as it is one of the main features of the game. There are two polarities; red and blue, and by combining these force fields different actions can be performed. If two fields of different color touch, the objects who own these fields (for example the players) will be pulled towards each other. When fields of the same color collide, the objects will be pushed away from each other. These two actions, pulling and pushing, can be used for other actions such as jump/move boosts (using push to repel from another object) and hold (using pull to hold onto objects or the other player).

Mockups by Rebecka Nyström

Examples of puzzles using these actions can be found in the vertical slice pdf earlier linked to in this blog post.

There are two different magnet types, inactive objects and active objects. Active objects have their own magnetic field, and these can affect other magnetic objects in their surroundings, whilst the inactive objects can only be manipulated by magnetic fields and not affect any other magnetic objects. The active objects will be static, their main function is to be jump/move boosts and other non-movable objects on the level. The inactive objects on the other hand will be movable, they are mainly used for solving puzzles.

The players are able to switch between polarities and are of the active magnet type, they affect all magnetic objects that their fields collide with. This is done by giving all magnetic game objects a magnetic field trigger collider as their child in the Unity hierarchy. The magnetic fields have their own collision layer, and so when two fields are colliding a trigger message is sent and the magnetism function is called. If all polarities and magnet types are correct (these can both be neutral), the two colliding objects’ polarities are checked and the corresponding action is done (either push or pull).

I might write more about how the magnetisms’ code is working in later posts, but this introduction will do for now.