UNIBRAWL

My group consists of three people, Alexandre Poeira, Ricardo Silva, both from IST, and me (Marta Fernandes, FBAUL). Here is a short presentation from each one of us.

“Hi everybody! My name is Alexandre Poeira, I'm a masters student at IST in the areas of Intelligent Systems and Games. I've been playing games ever since I got my first PS1 when I was 6 years old and never stopped. I try to play a bit of everything, from FPS’s to puzzle-platformers to visual novels. I am also deeply interested in Game Development, being a huge fan of famous game developers, like Hideo Kojima, Shu Takumi, Gabe Newell and Chris Avellone. My first contact with game development was the prototype developed for the course of Game Design in the last semester.” – Alexandre Poeira

"Hello everyone! I am Ricardo Silva and I am a Master's degree student at Instituto Superior Técnico. I have been an avid gamer for 20 years with a major preference for First Person Shooters (Quake and Unreal Tournament being my favorites). My first contact with game development was a simple game that was a project for the Computer Graphics course at IST and from there I went on to learn the basics of Unity and Unreal on my own. " – Ricardo Silva

“Hi! My name is Marta Fernandes and I am a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in the area of Multimedia Art / Animation. My first contact with game development was last semester when I had to build a game in Augmented Reality for a college project; during the process I realized that my true passion is video games, so now I am concentrating all my efforts in gaining more skills and experience in this area. I don’t really have a favorite type of game, but I usually enjoy action/survival games, indie games (with a pixel art style), or any game that as a deep meaning such as “Journey” by That Game Company.”

– Marta Fernandes

Concept

Unibrawl is a 2D video game in the genre of “Run and Gun” games. The main purpose of the game is to give the player a look through University life from a gamer’s point of view.

The game consists in fighting our way through college years, facing adversities such as Tests (which are the enemies), and collecting powerups that boost our skills (Books); the player can even compete against colleagues and prove his/her study field is the best.

Game Modes

The game will have two distinct game modes: the first one is a fast-paced, single-player experience; the second is a PVP (Player Vs. Player) free-for-all multiplayer.

Gameplay

1 - Choose from a plethora of all your favorite university stereotypes;

2 - Traverse the single-player levels with your chosen character;

3 - Fight up-close and personal, or attack your enemies with swift ranged attacks and reach the end of the game;

4 – (Extra) Dive into the intense multi-player and defeat your friends!

Aesthetic

The game design will be done in a colorful pixel-art style for improved visual clarity.

There will be four playable characters based on the courses of IST and FBAUL (three from IST and one from FBAUL) that can be chosen according to the player’s preferences, being them: Computer Engineer, Civil Engineer, Chemist and an Arts Student.

Influences

Our game concept has been inspired by games such as the “SuperSmash Bros. series”, “Brawlhalla”, “Metal Slug”, and “Scott Pilgrim vs the World”.

Group Tasks and Used Software

The game design and animation will be done by me (Marta Fernandes) in Photoshop and maybe in Spriter, depending on the type of animation needed through the process.

The programming and building of the game will be done in Unity; Alexandre Poeira and Ricardo Silva will be in charge of this aspects.

Computer enginner

March 30th 2018

Hello again!

Since my last post our group has progressed a lot in the developing of our game.

After I showed my IST colleagues the characters’ concepts and they agreed on their looks, I started doing the pixel art versions. Here they are: Civil Engineer, Arts Student, Computer Engineer and Chemist.

The next step was to animate their basic movements, so I began with the run cycles. Unfortunately, I felt the need to give up on the Artist character for now, as there is a lot of work to do; I’ll focus on the three IST characters, and maybe in the end I can find time to do one more.

April 15th 2018

I also did the Idle movements (actions the character performs when the player is not pressing any button). I wanted to make something funny for each one of them, as we intended to make a humorous game. The chemist starts mixing chemicals and they explode on her face; the civil engineer grabs a building plan and reads it for a while; and the computer engineer grabs a console controller from his hoodie pocket and starts playing games. A breathing idle was also made, so that the characters don’t perform always the same action (it corresponds to the first line in every sprite sheet).

I’m currently working on the characters’ jump, but these animations will only be shown in the next post because they are still being made. After that, I might ask my colleagues to meet them again, so we can discuss the next step: the attacks (the most important actions of our game).

Speaking of my colleagues from IST, Alexandre and Ricardo, they are also doing a great job in the building and programming of our game! They have already sent me a video showing the prototype. Here is a screenshot of our game in its early stage:

Everything is going well so far!

See you in two weeks.

April 15th 2018

Welcome to my 3rd post

At this point I can say I have almost half of the work done, at least for the Multiplayer mode.

I have finally done all the basic movements for every character: run cycles, idles (seen in the previous post), jumps and defenses. Here are the last ones:

Jumps

Defenses

I also did the logo. The name of our game (“Unibrawl!”) is a mixture of the words “University” and “Brawl”, so I wanted our logo to be strong and serious, resembling a University, and at the same time dynamic as a fight. I made a lot of examples/studies for it, and it was really tough to choose one; it was actually harder than doing the animations. Here are some of the (several) logo studies I did:

In the end, our group chose the last one. Here is our official logo!

I’m currently doing the background. As the characters are all from IST I was thinking about using the inside of their building as background, although I’m not sure yet about which of the IST I’m going to do (Taguspark or Alameda).

See you later !

April 30th 2018

Welcome to my 4th post!

This is my last post before Mojo.

Current mood:

Mojo is almost here and there are still a lot of things to do. Our game is pretty much done except for the character’s attacks, which I’ve already started.

The attacks will consist of “normal attacks” – a combo of three attacks (left punch, right punch and right kick) equal for every character; and “special attacks” inspired in each character’s study field. My IST colleagues sent me a list of awesome ideas for the special attacks (4 for each character), but unfortunately, we are running out of time, so I had to choose which attacks were the easiest to do in the remaining time.

Here is a list of the chosen “Special Attacks”:

Computer engineer

Moving - Dashes forward, if midair falls to the ground, can only attack again when he hits the ground.
Neutral - Throws remote which boomerangs back to the character, can't activate again until it comes back.

Civil engineer

Moving - Throws a brick in the direction of movement (already done);
Neutral - Charges a punch that propels him forward, depending on how much time it's charged.

Chemist

Down - Throws chemicals to the ground causing an explosion, if in the ground is propelled upwards.
Moving - Joins two chemicals together while moving creating a trail that damages characters caught in it.

I already did the “moving special” for the Civil Engineer plus the object he throws !

My colleagues also asked me to do a “Stunned animation” for when a character is hit and feeling pain. Something like this:

(This image does not belong to me)

I couldn’t finish this post without showing you our Game Background ! In the last post, I mentioned I was unsure about which IST I should use for our game; it ended up to be TagusPark. I found TagusPark visual more appealing for our game, even though Alameda has a lot of cool places that I felt tempted to draw.

I’m trying to make as many attacks as I can until Mojo !

See you soon !

May 15th 2018

MOJO was yesterday, and I left with a bittersweet sensation. Our game looks great and I had a lot of fun at MOJO testing my colleagues’ games, but at the same time I feel sad because it’s over. I wish I had more time.

It has been an amazing experience for me to work in this area with a multidisciplinary team; It helped me a lot in the development of my animation and game design skills, as well as teamwork and communication. My IST colleagues also did a great job, and I can’t thank them enough for letting me be part of their team.

Being part of MOJO was priceless and it made me grow in so many ways. I would do it all over again without hesitation!

I leave you with some final images of our game and from MOJO.