BAGEL stands for Building A Game Engine Lol. This is the first post in the series documenting my experience building a multiplayer game. This is not a technical tutorial. It is only a devlog. Something where I write to clarify my thoughts and showcase some stuff I've learnt along the way.
This first post is a public commitment to releasing the MVP of the game before the end of the year.
Vision (or the What?)
Imagine Theseus before he sets out into the Labyrinth. Imagine now that in addition to the Minotaur you also find out your competing against other Theseus-es (maybe Theseusi ? idk pick your poison). And not just that they are competitive. They want to win. They want the gold and Princess Ariadne and fame and to be read about 2000 years later. Now you gotta go in there beat them all. There's no thread. Not unless you find it in there.
That's what I'm going for in this game. I'm building it with a friend, Carlos Espinosa, from TEM. It's going to be a multiplayer competitive game where you can navigate a maze, find loot, armour up and then fight other players. All the while you're fighting zombies and trying to make it to the center of the maze. That's the gist of the game.
Bird's Eye View
This is a initial sketch of the game look and mechanics.
The final game may not be a circle. Liable to change.
The primary source of resources in the game is chests. You will have chests that you can open and access potions, armour and weapons. You will have a finite inventory so you will have to pick and choose. In the future maybe I can do something wherein the type of armour / weapons you have changes the speed and HP. For now though I'm keeping it simple.
Wouldn't be a great multiplayer game without interacting with other players, right? When you get to another player, you can choose peace or war. Of course you don't know what kind of inventory they're rocking so you gotta do the cost-benefit analysis yourself.
The natural enemies in the game are the zombies. You. GOTTA. KILL. THEM. They deal damage and they've attended a graph theory course so they know A* search. Which means they can find their way to you. They're lean. They're mean. And they're green.
Visual Inspiration
The visual inspiration for the game is Stardew Valley. I want the game to look and feel like this.
Like a relaxed cozy game (with zombies and killer competition ofc). Idk what this kinda game "aesthetic" is called but this is what I have in my brain.
Why ?
Just for the lols. (title kinda gives it away)
How ?
From research, I've narrowed it down to the following stack
I don't know what or how game state is supposed to be managed2. Its all in memory for now cause it works. For now. Full speed ahead.
Goal
So the goal, quite clearly and simply is to achieve the following
Build a multiplayer 2D multiplayer competitive game released in public beta before December 31st.
- Players can navigate around the map using the keyboard.
- Players will have to try and get to the center of the map.
- There will be no interactions (no sharing, no attacking, no zombies) in the MVP
- Players can play on any platform (OSX, Linux, Windows)
- Server should be remote