Hi!

It is finally time to get this show on the road with our very first blogpost.

This week the team has been focusing on research and prototyping to answer important questions such as: "What is the meaning of life?", but also "How will this game actually work?".

Gameplay 

Our game devs have been hard at work figuring out the ins and outs of Unreal and Unity, testing different features such as the path finding and the different AI-behavior systems of both engines. For Unreal we first had to research the C++ scripting, since we only experimented a little with it in the past and mostly used the blueprint system.

We think the AI-behavior is going to be the most challenging part. It will heavily influence our choice of engine. We decided to use the behavior tree in both engines and after some prototyping, we concluded that the unity version was a lot quicker to implement and expand. It has small default behaviors that can be used together to create more complex ones and implementing custom behaviors was also very quick.

• Something we will also need is a pathfinding system for the npc’s. Luckily, we won’t need to write one of our own because both unity and unreal have built in navmeshes and navmesh agents. 

• We also tested the controller support of both the engines. With Unreal it’s very easy because it supports controllers out of the box. Unity on the other hand is a bit less straightforward and takes some more time to set up. However, after the setup both engines work perfectly with controllers. 

• One last thing we also researched was the interaction of the player with the npc. Given that our main mechanic (scaring people) depends on this, we thought it was necessary to have a look at how we could implement it. 

• After the prototyping we decided to go with Unity. Mainly because we are more familiar with the engine and believe we will have an easier and faster development using it as opposed to Unreal. Unreal also does not have any systems or features that we can't live without, hence our choice for Unity.

Art 

Meanwhile our artists were busy creating our art bible. Which will form the visual guideline of our game. 

We’ve decided that while you are a ghost and technically dead, it is not all doom and gloom. Which is why our lighting will be warm, creating a cozy environment for the ghost to feel at ease. Until the ghost hunters show up, which will reflect in the change of lighting and atmosphere.  

In general, we settled on a cute art style: simple characters existing of big shapes and round features, and a low poly environment working mainly with gradients and hand painted textures. 

Next Week

Next week we plan to continue prototyping.  

Our devs will make a prototype the engine we chose (Unity) we will implement all the mechanics in one playable prototype instead of creating small prototypes for different features. 

Our artists will continue working on the art bible, to further define the visual style of our game.