Hackathon 2017: Day Two
It's the end of Day Two and (famous last words) the majority of the project is on schedule!
After further discussion last night and revisiting it again this morning, we've chosen to create a Space themed vertical scrolling game (or as Simon has called it, Endless Faller).
So far we're still to decide upon a name and the storyline, however the basic premise is as follows:
Each player will play as an astronaut jumping into space from a destroyed space station. Each player must navigate their way through space jumping on the falling debris from the space station (platforms) whilst remaining on the screen. The goal is to fall / navigate your way down for as long as possible without falling off the screen, the high scorer will be determined by whichever player can do this for the longest.
We hope to add obstacles / power ups / additional features later in the week or perhaps at a later stage - however we'll talk about that more as the week progresses.
The first challenge today was for James, Luke and Henry to look at the mechanics for multiplayer, how the sprite moves and interacts with the game, and generating the platforms / endless scroll.
Laura was tasked with designing sprite sheets for up to 6 players (for now, with a view to how they can be adapted for much larger numbers for multiplayer) and initial backgrop designs for the game.
Jack was here until gone 10pm last night trying to get the LED panels connected, and has spent most of today getting them mounted and up and running - although we're pleased to announce he's made great progress! After a power surge that tripped a fuse and caused half of the computers to turn off (we've come to the conclusion that we may have finally overloaded our extension cables), we've been able to switch them on and test our own imagery (static and animated). Fingers crossed we can get an early demo of the game working on them by tomorrow.
The video below gives you some insight to the stage we're at - luckily we've been able to do a lot more on design today than was orginally expected, as a paralax layer in the background had originally been sidelined as a stretch goal. Additionally, the dev team have been powering through multiplayer functionality and the main gameplay features.
There's plenty more to do, but do please take a sneaky peek at our progress!
