MORE BRAINSTORMINGGGGGG!!!!!!
After having a discussion with Adam on our ideas, we realized how much we did not care about this idea. We were too passionate about other ideas that we completely did not realize that this idea exists. When we explained this idea to him, he felt the same. We did not want to miss out on an opportunity to work on a cooperative idea and wanted to take a step back and start from the beginning. We decided to put the previous idea of our co-op game in the bin and started brainstorming.
We looked into various games like Runbow, Battle Block Theatre, Overcooked and more to get an idea of how local multiplayer games are made.
We discussed and decided that we wanted to make a high adrenaline based endless runner as it seemed the most fun idea. We were not the most passionate about this idea but we really wanted to give it a go and see how far we can take it. Games like overcooked really hit the nail on what we wanted to make. In overcooked, although you can play it single player, its more about the multiplayer experience where you have to work together in a team of 2-4, prepare ingredients, cook the food, clean the dishes, deliver the food and try not to burn the kitchen down. Its a very enjoyable and stressful experience, and we wanted to bring that to our game idea.
Gameplay
The idea being an endless runner, we wanted there to be some motivation for the player to keep moving forward, so we chose a hungry shark chasing the players through a constantly changing level.
We decided to make this into a 4 player experience and chose unique player characters with unique abilities that they can use for specific hurdles.
1) Swordfish - It could slash through the fishnets and seaweeds
2) Octopus - It could camouflage all the characters with it so they can get past certain areas. The other players must stay in range of the octopus to stay camouflaged.
3) Turtle - The turtle helps them go through the ocean currents. So the characters have to hold the turtle or else they can loose control.
4) Angler Fish - Can light up dark areas.
For obstacles we liked the idea of having Large Seaweeds that can slow the characters and they can also get stuck in it. Sharp rocks that the players would need to avoid. Fish eating plants that work like the chain chomps from the Mario games.
Overall we enjoyed developing the idea but there was still a lack of passion. We probably would not take this idea forward but it was fun developing this. We learned a lot about how multiplayer games work and how we can design cooperative
puzzles.
Prototype
Camouflage:
I worked on a quick prototype where an object switches the base material and adapts to the colours around it as if it was camouflaging. To achieve this effect, I had to design a custom Shader that calculates the colours around the object and refracts it. To achieve this effect, I had to use Unity's Lightweight Render Pipeline and check the Opaque Textures box in pipeline settings to get access to them in Shader Graph.
I divided the effect into three sections:
Vertex offset: This controls how much the sphere's vertices move around, giving it a fluid motion
Procedural Refraction: This makes it so that the things behind the sphere appear refracted.
Fresnel: This was more for the visual appeal of this effect. Fresnel is usually used for adding a subtle glow at the edge of a model.