Hi there! Today is a big day for us as a team, since the prototyping stage of Grave Rave is coming to an end. We are very pleased to tell you what happened last week and some design decisions we've made during the prototyping of our game.

The engine

First things first: The game engine. At the start of the project we all wanted to start working in Unreal Engine 4, so we did. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, apart from the artists we had no experience in Unreal what so ever. This became our main reason to work in this engine: We wanted to learn UE4 C++ (We were not allowed to work with blueprints).

After a week, things didn’t go as planned, we were behind on schedule and needed a lot more work on our basic prototype. It should’ve been finished, but we couldn’t figure out the multiplayer aspect. So, we decided to make one programmer work with Unity. The deal was if she could catch up on the things we had in Unreal by the end of the week, we would switch over. And she did.

After one week and a half of struggling in UE4, we decided to go with Unity. This way we can deliver a better game and are able to work faster and smarter. The relief under the programmers was great.

This choice affects the artists the most, since they have no experience with Unity at all. But we are certain that they will be able to catch up and make this game, the game we wanted from the start.

Features

Starting next week, we are officially in the development stage of our game, this means that we’ve decided on the features that are definitely going to be in the game. So, I figured why not give you some of the main features.

Characters

There will be multiple characters to choose from on a character selection screen. Each character will have its corresponding music genre and unique ability. This way the players can pick a character based on their favorite music. Characters will also have a soundgun, used to convert zombies to the great tunes you chose at the start of the game.

Arena

The arena will be graveyard themed with boomboxes playing music on either side. The boomboxes are the bases that need to be defended from the bad music of the other player. So only your music can prevail.

Zombies

Zombies will be coming out of the ground (from the graves) and wander around, it is your task to convert as many zombies as you can to destroy the other player’s boombox. Once converted the zombies will wander to the opposing boombox and try to destroy it. Don’t worry, converted zombies can still be converted to your side.

During production stage, we’ll be working on these features and give you more information about how and what it would look like in game.

The prototype 

This week we’ll already give you a little preview. Along with this devlog you can find 2 builds, our UE4 build and our Unity build. You can give each a test run. These versions represent the most basic form of the game, no art, limited UI and no real end to the game for now. (In the UE4 build it is not possible to convert zombies, we know…). These builds are up for basic game mechanic testing and seeing if our fun-factor is high enough. If you want to try it out, these are the controls:

What to expect?

Next 7 weeks will be production stage, every week we will update on itch.io. We’ll provide a build of the game with a development log. This way you can follow our progress and struggles from up close. Testing our game and leaving a comment on our page is greatly appreciated. We can take these comments into consideration while working on this gem. Keep in mind, each build we put online, in these weeks, is not a finished version of our work.

We look forward to hearing from you, and we’ll see you next week!

Group 12 out.