Design Decisions

February 13th

• Due to poor testing support in Unreal (as discovered by Nicole and Jill), we are switching to using Unity as our game engine. This justifies our decision to create a lean server for the backend.

February 11th

• Simultaneous turns that resolve deterministically (i.e. no random elements)

• Safe areas that you can herd the pigeons to in order to save them (probably in the center of the map, and more than one)

• Deterministic pidgeon movement (i.e. run away from fire, possibly smart enough to path around a corner, possibly not)

• Limited items (each level would give you say three lighters to use as BadGuy and you may only use those lighters to influence the match)

• Spreading fire that will eventually burn everything and provide a natural timer to the game. (so if nobody does anything bad guys will always win)

Game Roles

There would be two roles, GoodGuy and BadGuy.

In the simplest version of this game, all levels would be GoodGuy against BadGuy (more on this later) with objectives as described below.

• BadGuy: Burn enough pigeons to win (amount specified by the level) by using some of your items (x1 per turn) to burn the pigeons.

• GoodGuy: Herd the pigeons to safety (by using some of your items [x1 per turn] or by leading individual pigeons), so that you save enough pigeons to win (amount specified by the level).

Possible Additions:

• GoodGuy vs GoodGuy. Where each good guy is trying to save their pigeons before the other. (may lure the other’s pigeons to their deaths)

• BadGuy vs BadGuy. Burn the enemy’s pigeons before they burn yours

• More player items (i.e. any that aren’t lighters)

• Player powers, (items with no use cap, but cooldowns)

• More map elements, exploding barrels of oil

• Single player puzzle levels where you have to save pigeons by using their fear of fire

• Single player puzzle levels where you have to guide pigeons through difficult levels

• (Trigger Warning) lol Single player fun fun burn time where you traumatize Caden

• Making a vegan mode where it’s water instead of fire and it’s pigeon robots with exposed circuitry

Some Justifications:

The gameplay is going to be different for the two roles, which sounds like fun

Everything would be deterministic, so that players can plan out a turn and play it ahead of time (if you aren’t sure how that works, look up frozen synapse, or rock paper scissors)

Most of the gameplay elements can be controlled from the level editor which gives us control, but prevents us from hard coding things in and lets us iterate on gameplay via map design easily. (And means that if we ever release this to the wild with good level creators it could be a good game even if WE never make any good levels)