Week 2: Starting the Prototype

From an engineering standpoint, significant progress was made this week.  I wrote up an analysis of our three main choices for development platform: Unity3D, Adobe AIR, and MonoGame.  In the end, to highlight our team's strengths, we've decided upon Adobe AIR as our prototyping platform.  It's the most familiar of the three and the quickest to get up and running, given that we have BeauSWFMobile, a flash framework I wrote mid-2013 for Extreme Fly Fishing 2013 and Little Battleship of the Deep.  We've also decided to pursue a MonoGame-based engine for full development, assuming we continue development into next semester.  This will give us more flexibility and control over our game, as well as serve as a great test of our skills.  Working with proprietary or in-house tools and technologies is something our team will likely face when entering into industry jobs, so dealing with these challenges now may be very useful.

I've begun working on a prototype for We Love Nuclear Armageddon.  There's still a lot to do before it's playable, but I'm happy with how it looks so far.

Behold my programmer art and scanline effect.

The designers are busy prototyping our second idea.  We still need a good working name for the game, as currently we're just calling it Mage-Man.  Our pitch after five minutes of discussion was "MegaMan with wizards", but we've clearly moved beyond the simplicity of that concept.  It's about "wizards" in a sort of surreal reality - think Scott Pilgrim rather than Lord of the Rings.  We're still figuring out the details as we go along.