A new year brings new inspiration for Aurum Kings, as well as a new production schedule!
We have a couple of big goals in next three or so months, and I would love to keep everyone updated on them!
UI Redesign
Based on feedback from the Rochester Mini Maker Faire, the HUD needs to be redesigned. Specifically in order to be more accessible, and be more clear to the player what they are choosing in the ability screen. Furthermore, the current flow of player selection would not accommodate a networked lobby very well. In order to do this and achieve my goal of adding in multiple game types, I am planning to implement a different flow for starting the game. Instead of just selecting a map, and then having to choose your ability every time you play, I would like to have players enter a general “starting area”.
In this area, where players can then press “A” on the controller to join into. The player can then go around to different pickups on the ground that represent different abilities and colors. This would give the player the chance to select whatever ability they want, and test it out at the same time. Finally, there would be a “ready” circle for different game types, that when every player is ready they move into and the game starts a countdown. When the countdown finishes, then the players go into a map selection screen.
New Gametypes
As of right now, there is only one game mode, which is similar to a “king of the hill”. My goal would be to implement at least two new game modes, that provide more replayability and options for the players. Some ideas that I have for game types are the following:
- “Mayhem”
- Abilities spawn as drops throughout the map, and the player has whichever the run into last. There is no cooldown for the abilities.
- “Dodgeball”
- Every player only has the arrow ability, and the teams play dodgeball with the arrows. The arrows start in the middle of the map, and the goal is eliminate the opposing team.
Networking
Networking is something that I have always been passionate about, and I have been fortunate enough to do a whole co-op related to networking in Unity. Using my prior knowledge, I plan to implement a simple networking model where one player can host a server, and other players can type their IP addresses to join. However, this would only work on a PC version of the game. In order to implement Xbox Live I would need to use the Xbox Live Unity plugin on GitHub. Another caveat about that plugin, is that you cannot use every Xbox Live feature. In order to do that, I would need to accepted into the ID@Xbox program (super awesome stretch goal).
Thanks for sticking with us through this project, we are very grateful for the support that we get! That said, keeping weekly blog updates is extremely hard, especially with such a small team. So, we can’t promise a weekly update, but we will update as much as we can!
– Ben
