[RELEASED!] War of the Broses

[phill]

Late entry, but I've now got a clear run of nothing on until the end of the jam so here I go!

 

I want to make a Katamari-like game about lifting things. Any and all things. Premise is that there are two rival gyms in a city block. You are a weak bro at the smaller gym, who faces the prospect of losing his favourite place to lift. I know this is sounding like the comedy classic Dodgeball, but stay with me. Instead of dodging wrenches, you resolve to lift until you get so swole that you can lift their gym and toss it away like the trash it is. Enter gameplay!

 

The idea is that the player will walk around an open environment trying to lift things. Pot plants, a small dog, stop signs, a car, trees, fire hydrants, etc. By doing so they will gain strength which expands the size/weight range of things they can lift, all the time getting more and more comically buff until eventually it's possible for them to lift the entire opposing gym building and throw it away. Foiling the player will be bros that wander the streets and will lift you, agar.io style, if they have greater strength than you. I'm thinking a time limit is the easiest way to introduce difficulty,  especially for a jam game where I'm not sure I could program an opposing bro to compete.

 

Challenges I know I'm going to face are:

• Getting enough objects in the scene to make it fun for the player to experiment picking stuff up;
• Designing the level so that there isn't just an obvious linear progression;
• Making the opposing bros not annoying;
• Keeping it a short and simple experience (max 20 minutes is the aim).

 

So far I've managed to code up the picking-stuff-up bit, but now I need to start either smashing Blender to make a bunch of low-poly assets for insertion into the scene OR try to find the trashiest, most horribly clashing free environmental assets. Anyway, excited to finally join in the JAM.

[Mythalore]

Hey @phill!

You're not too late yet! Especially with such a strong idea! 

 

I can't remember but are there enemies in katamari? Might be better to copy what they have as a base for time.

[Travis]

I like this idea a lot! You will definitely be able to find some cheesy free assets out there to fill out a level. Looking forward to bro-in' it up!

[brendonsmall]

>OR try to find the trashiest, most horribly clashing free environmental assets

 

Yes, this works. 

 

Great idea (and great choice of episode title to boot!)

[Problem Machine]

This sounds like a great concept for a pod title that I was shocked hadn't been used yet

[eRonin]

You've already told me about this concept but I'm still sitting here lol'ing at this entry. Looking forward to it a lot!

[phill]

Alright, I've made a bit of progress! I got pretty far into coding up the game and then decided that it would probably be a good idea to move to a state-based system because I was running into all kinds of issues with assigning/clearing the objects to be picked up. So I used the great open source state machine asset that both @Travis and @Spenny recommend, found here, to get that all implemented. 

 

I've learned a lot about getting variables from other objects, using the inspector*, and how to use the rigidbody/physics systems, so I'm pretty happy with this as a learning exercise if nothing else. Anyway, here's some gifs!

 

I'm still playing around with how to do difficulty in the game, as it will be influenced by whether I can code up some very basic enemy bros. But currently it will be timer-based, and if the player doesn't have enough strength to lift something up, they get punished by losing time to a shaky-armed animation:

 

 

They'll need to go lift some other, lighter objects to gain enough stranth to continue:

 

 

The main things left to do are:

• Keep importing a tonne of free models into the scenes to make them look alive and full of lifting possibilities;
• Code up some dumb bros to chase you around and, if I do that, change the difficulty to be a risk vs. reward structure rather than a flat punishment;
• Introductory dialogue and UIs;
• Catch any fail states for the game, test it on another computer.
• Fix all the crap that I'll break between now and the weekend.

Woo!

 

 

 

---

*And not using it; I've lost track of how many times I've entered a variable into the inspector, forgotten about it, and wondered why the code isn't updating properly

[GammaBit]

This is a good thing! 

[brendonsmall]

This game is very funny and silly. I really like how the bro shakes when something cannot be lifted. The face texture change to "grunting bro face" is a nice touch.

[phill]

Finally finished the complete level rebuild! https://fifogamedev.itch.io/wotb

 

There's now an entire open environment to go fling things around in:

 

 

Big ups to Quaternius (quaternius.com) for all the 3D models (except one special one, heh). I've learned an absolute tonne during this process, so very happy with how it turned out regardless of whether or not it's a hugely 'gamey' game.

 

Can't wait to finally get stuck into everyone's entries!

[GammaBit]

Whoa - this looks great! 

[Teljoor]

The mechanic of lifting things to lift bigger things is very intuitive. I also like the 'too easy' prompt which makes it clear you can move on to bigger things.

[Nappi]

The Brotamari gameplay mechanic is very clever and satisfying! I think you also made a good choice with the simplified 3D assets, because trying to pick everything up makes sense in the tabletop-ish setting.

[Ben X]

I really like the look of this, like you're playing with Duplo or similar, and it may be a very simple gameplay loop but it's very satisfying once you get to throwing houses around and such. Would be great to see some of the more complicated ideas you had implemented here.