BY TEAM WONDERFUL

Team Members

Lauri Rantala – Programming

Mika Yli-Pentti – Programming

Julia Lammi – Art

Miska Koivulehto – Art

 

Game Idea
Hey Hoy Houley Mouley is a multiplayer arena brawler for 2 to 4 players. Players can battle on four different maps, where they try to push each other off the stage. If a player is hurt enough, their character will get stunned for a while and that’s when they can be easily shoved off the stage. Before each match players get to choose how many points are needed for the victory.

The game has three different weapons to choose from, in addition to unarmed attack, which is also a valid option for the most brawliest players. In a game of four people someone has to be unarmed. Each weapon has different stats, the spear for example has the longest range but does less damage and knockback. Sword does the most damage, but not as much knockback as the shield, which does the most knockback. It’s a Rock-Paper-Scissors sort of a  situation.

Development
We got to our initial game idea pretty quickly. We had other ideas also, but this one stood out the most, and everyone felt like they could work with this kind of project. Our scope wasn’t too big, so we got mostly everything we wanted done by the deadline – except for environmental hazards. More game modes that would have fitted our vision of the game could have been made. Some of the art was left out of the game: e.g. character textures, due to one team member getting sick and unable to send the texture files.

Visual Design
Our graphical style was pretty clear from the beginning. We wanted to make somewhat simple and playful game, with lowpoly characters and levels. We had to plan our character designs so, that they could use same skeleton and animations, but managed to get them to look different enough from each other’s.

Programming
First we thought of creating a fully physics-based game with active ragdoll characters, but through some setbacks and lost time we opted for the middle ground. The characters now switch between animated and ragdolled states when they get stunned or killed. The scope for this project was just right to allow us to learn new stuff, but also have a finished product by the end of the semester.

Download the game!

Creativium team members

Toni Mutanen (3D modeling, texturing, sound, code), Lauri Kosonen (code, sound), Valtteri Ojanen (code, sound), Ville Niemi (code) and Sofia Kari (Texturing, 3D modeling).The concept

Since Finland had it’s centennial celebration last year, we wanted to pick a finnish theme for the game. Kalevala was an obvious choise, our national epic poem. Surrealism and heavy metal music / mentality were also brought in to freshen things up. We first played around with an idea of a game where you would defend a boat from the witch Louhi, but we figured the replay value of that game would be very low. Then Lauri suggested we could make a pinball game. We all thought that a pinball game would have a fitting scope for short spring project. Oh, how wrong we were. Pinball design is a skill that is mastered in years, not in weeks or months. Kalevala wasn’t the easiest topic to convert to a pinball table, since the poems mostly focus on the characters and their developments. For research purposes, as a team, we went to Vapriikki’s game museum, since there’s a Twilight Zone pinball game there. We got a feel for the game, shot some video and took some photos for reference.

The development process

The playfield layout was discussed many different times and it went through several iterations. Some work was wasted, because we didn’t lock down the layout early on.

We had plans for other game modes, in addition to the the sampo mode. A pinball table usually has more game modes than just one. It would be easy to add more, now that we have the play mode framework done, if we decide to continue the game’s development.

Pinball physics were suprisingly difficult to replicate. The ball had to have the correct weight so it would move at realistic speeds etc. We decided to use a path based ramp system, which disables the default Unity physics while the pinball is on a ramp.

All of the playfield lights had actual spot lights in them, which had a large performance impact. We had to remove them, for playability’s sake.

Communication could have been better, which lead to some team members being idle, not knowing what to do next. One team member didn’t have a smart phone, which lead to some annoyances.

Unfortunately, our main artist Sofia, had very limited time to do project work, since she was working long hours as a waitress. Pinball tables are usually full of art, our table looks rather plain.

Kantele Hero

The game needed a mini-game, like most real life pinball games. Once the colored dots reach the larger lights in the bottom, you must press the corresponding flipper button to play a note. If you miss five times, the mode ends prematurely. Kantele Hero gets harder every time you enter the mini-game, but gives out more points.

The music

Suprisingly, we managed to get rights to use music from the finnish folk metal band Wolfhorde. Their music was very fitting to our game, since they use kantele in their songs. What we learned, lesser known bands are easy to approach and are more likely to grant usage rights to their sonds.

https://www.facebook.com/WolfhordeBandOfficial/

Try out our game

Download it on Google Drive right now.

Controls

Left flipper bar – left ctrl

Right flipper bar – numpad enter

Launcher – enter

Nudge left – q

Nudge right  – p