Proof of Concept 3: Dev Log

Our newest Proof of Concept, HitchKick is a brawler game made to have the player feel empowerment.Basically, the player went around with an ability to kick so powerfully that he could smash walls and furniture with ease. It was from a top down perspective and the player ran around a facility basically kicking things into other things and destroying them.

For my role in this project, I had to implement interfaces and basically set up the entire player-object interaction within the game. The game utilizes Unity’s physics engine, with some modification to how objects interact with each other in order to create a more modifiable and controlled experience. And this is where the challenges for me lie. I had to have the physics feel satisfying, but keep all of the developer end numbers easy to work with, so I made a very barebones method of handling this. Basically the system I had set up was based on power levels. The player had a power level and every moving object had one too

The player’s was determined by an inputted number and moving objects were determined by their velocity. When The player applied a force, it basically just set a velocity to the object, and when an object collides with another object, it sets that objects velocity as well. In order to make it more dynamic, I implemented a value that determined if the object resisted the force. If the power was lower than the resistance, then the new object wouldn’t react to the collision or input of the player, but if it was more, then it would transfer over power, but only the difference between the two values. I also set the objects velocity rather than add force just so that I could keep track of the objects power more easily with very little difference.

So to speak on the design of HitchKick, put bluntly, it is very difficult to see the potential in this idea. First off, we only really came up with an interaction for the player, and it was very general. This is good and all, but unfortunately we lacked most of the aspects of a game. It was more of a toy after all, and although that’s not a bad thing, it requires us to heavily lay the ground work in the future for any other feature we want to add. In general though, I think we did accomplish one of our own primary goals where we wanted to plant a feeling of empowerment in the player and that translated over really well. Overall, I feel that although this could of been baked for much longer, it was still a very fun concept and I think it would be a waste if it was abondoned without further consideration.