Development Overview

As a team of three, we are designing a real-time asymmetric team combating multiplayer game, Family War, and our goal is to provide a funny and relaxing game experience for the players. Before we started designing the game, our team went through the first week of planning and designing the main mechanics of the game, including the asymmetry of the characters, the map and scene overlay, the theme and the atmosphere, and so on. In the later design process, we converted many initial ideas, but in general, the detailed plan in the early stage brought great help to our design process.

Playtest Feedback

Professor Bruneau Vs Jackson

• The camera tends to rotate too much, and tethering occurs, distracting the players in their gameplay. 
• They also suggest that the camera itself moves in size too much. They suggest we lessen the increase and decrease rate of the camera zoom.
• There at the moment of this playtest was no way for the collectors to win. We need to create a score system.
• Picking up (although a valid option that works) often was too rigid for the players. The playtest showed we can invest in a soccer based object movement system. 
• The shooter player always seems to create walls that block the player. We need to fix this by having bullets despawn on ground impact. (or maybe a way for players to collect if they are trapped).
• There are a few bugs noticed from this playthrough. For example Auto Snapping to the right needs to be resolved.

Yifan Vs Emily

• This playtest reiterated that the largest problem is the snapback from the right joystick.
• It's hard to shoot and rotate at the same time due to button placement (move the shoot to the right trigger). Have more environmental situations. Make the player feel they can impact the space around them.
• This playtest also shows that shooters will inevitably corner Collectors, making the way bullets despawn the forefront for future design.

Development Docs

After getting the theme of game design and multiplayer game, our group's first idea was to make a multiplayer game about picking up objects and throwing them to each other. Then we came up with different ideas about the perspective design of the game. We weren't sure at first whether we should work in 3D or 2D, because both perspectives have their own benefits and defects. Finally, after a whole class of discussion and research collection, we decided to make this game into 2.5D perspective. In other words, the play world is 3D, but the players see it from a bird's eye view, vertical to the ground.

Such a 2.5-angle game creation is undoubtedly a fresh and intriguing experience for all of the team members, so the first problem we solved was the setup of the game camera. We used Cinemachine to create a group camera for multiple players, meaning that the camera would always look at the midpoint of the line between all players and automatically zoom in and out. It gives our game a very rhythmic and dynamic  visual experience. Some players really liked our camera, and some of them were really dizzy when we tested it. (Well, we like it anyway ;))

Then, we focused on the overall atmosphere of the game and the choice of theme. After discussion among the three of us, we decided to set the theme of the game as a family war. At the same time, the game's four characters will be divided into two teams. One team is the older brothers and sisters, the other is the younger naughty brothers and sisters. The idea for our original game mechanics, which was the picking up and throwing function, was split into two parts and given to two teams. In other words, the big brothers and sisters team is responsible for picking up toys and rubbish lying on the floor, while the little brothers and sisters team should seize the opportunity to be naughty and stop the big brothers and sisters from "shooting" them. This makes our game asymmetrical, with two teams playing with different goals and experiences.

After that, our design process focused on the balance between the multiplayers. We sped up the older siblings' characters so they could pick up items faster and throw into the trash. For younger brothers and sisters who were able to shoot all the time, we reduced the initial power of their bullets so that they had to hold fire to get more damage. This slows down the frequency and power of their shots, allowing elder sibling team to work together, draw fire and get the mission done. Finally, we optimized the map and modeling, followed up with feedback including sound and UI.

All in all, this team game design experience taught us the importance of teamwork, time management and a lot of new things, not only in terms of code, but also in terms of multiplayer balance. The three members of our team, My, Caleb and Jasmine, worked very hard, and we had a very clear division of work. My worked on setting and character design, while Caleb and Jasmine worked on programming and game mechanics. Every feature we made was the result of team members thinking together and encouraging each other. We're very proud of the game we made! (Of course, there's a lot of room for improvement ;0 )