As mentioned in my last post, my team (Team Skeleton Cocoons) had chosen to make a 3D platform fighter for our third and final prototype. I took the role of systems designer and product owner for the project. I first set out to improve the cheese system to make players be forced to navigate around the environment. The current problem with the system was that the cheese would fall down to the lower section of the stage and the player would then have no reason to navigate around any of the other platforms.
I brought this issue to our level designer and lead programmer and the three of us went about modifying the cheese system to make it fulfill the purpose it was initially designed to do. What we ultimately decided on was a system where when damaged cheese would not drop but fly to the nearest platform.
This system would cause a large amount of cheese to form on different platforms over time. This would motivate players to navigate around the environment to increase their health. This game more weight to the movement mechanics and made then a vital part of the experience rather than a accessory.
Before we knew it our final week of prototyping was done and it was time to choose a prototype to go forward with. I could make a whole blog post on the decision making process that my team went though to chose our prototype. However after two hours of discussion we finally decided to go forward with Seize the Cheeze for our final polished game. After this we had a week and a half to polish it before presenting it and deciding if it would go forward or be cut and our team dissolved.
Once this was taken care of I began to look at ways to vary the game play of Seize the Cheese to add replay value. To do this i decided to implement character specific attacks. Currently we had two different characters in build but their differences were purely cosmetic. It was my intention to give each one their own unique attack. This would vary gameplay by making a different experience to fight as and against.
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