Kill Your Friends VR Postmortem
The Good
Great Two Player Party Game
Challenge:
Our team was able to pull off a local multiplayer, VR vs. keyboard and mouse, survival horror game in 48 hours.
This was my first multiplayer game I’ve had the opportunity to work on and to have a hand in creating that aspect was a great learning experience.
I focused primarily on the killer gameplay. This mostly entailed developing a Player Controller that existed in the same space as one set up for VR by a teammate. Making sure that both players could hear each other’s footsteps required a lot of communication with the other teammate in charge of the VR Player Controller.
Promising Future:
There isn’t a lot of work that needs to be done before I can publish this game to Steam.
One of my personal goals is to publish a game that I can be proud of before I graduate in the spring.
With the gameplay loop being fairly simple, fixing bugs and polishing will be an astonishingly straightforward path.
The Bad
A Lot of Work to do in 48 Hours
Rushed:
I learned very quickly that my team and I had chose a game that had no business being made at a game jam. A lot of research, like how to achieve the style of multiplayer present in our game, had to be done when developing this game.
As the weekend progressed, I started making mistakes. My code began to lack my own established structure in favor of “getting it done.”
Day two, I was so preoccupied with getting the game done, I had forgotten about IEnumerators and created two of my own.
In the final hours of the game jam, I personally had to add/change functionality of several scripts, including the “Multiplayer Controller.”
What To Remember Moving Forward
How Can This Experience Help Me Improve?
Lessons Learned:
When short on time, it is generally worthwhile to ask a teammate or do a quick google search to find the necessary information you need to accomplish your task. This can help save you time and meet those crucial deadlines.
When working in scripts that intertwine directly with a teammate’s it is important that you and your teammate are able to communicate effectively. This extends to each other’s code. If your teammate can’t find what they are looking for in your code, it can lead to an unproductive workday.