Introduction

Hello! Welcome to our Group Project - Split My Ride for DAE Howest. 

The team exists out of two Coders; Victor Verlaenen, Warre Van Tittelboom and three Artists; Maxim Deduytsche, Shawn Perlado and Josim Coussens. We're excited to make weekly updates about our game. Mostly inspired by Subway Surfers and Mashed.

The game level is endless and the players will have to work together to survive and achieve the highest score. Each player will have to control their car, but the twist here is... They're both attached to a chain! Yes, a chain, but not only a chain. A deadly laser chain! The players can use the chain as their weapon to destroy enemies. But you need to get together to recharge the laser chain. All of these sound great, but you also have to avoid obstacles. Like airstrikes, manholes, spikestrips, etc...

For the upcoming week we will show you the prototypes and some of the research we have made. The research is also good for us in the future to show what worked, what could've been better and what did not work.

Artstyle

For the art wise, we want to make it have a cartoony shader with simplistic textures. Main reason is because we don't want to add chaotic textures on an already perhaps chaotic gameplay.

Level Layout

Level layout is rather simple. It's endless and the way the camera is positioned is behind the players' characters, mostly inspired by Subway Surfers. The players can drive around a limited area and are suppose to survive until one of them dies. Some objects like ramps and manholes are procedurally generated the longer the level goes.

Unity vs Unreal

The programmers have decided that we are going to work in Unity. Coding wise it's more accessible and transparent. For the artists, it's more user-friendly compared to Unreal Engine. Shaders are also easier to be done in Unity. Documentation in Unity is more detailed and easier to find. 

Main Mechanic

Enemies are spawned in front of the players and are varied between light enemies, who are easy to kill and heavy enemies, which are hard to kill. There's also air type enemies, which the players can kill by picking up a specific power-up. If they don't have any power-up, the only way is to dodge the incoming attack.

Plans upcoming week

Our plan for the coming weeks are mostly prototyping our core game mechanics, perhaps balancing some if needed. Testing and designing some arts, shapes, what colors can fit together with the environment etc.