Hello The Drop Fans,

Week 2 is almost over and it has been another productive week for us here at The Drop office.  Here are a few of the things we have been working on:

Elizabeth has been working hard designing some potential logos and poster designs for the project.  Here are a few of them:

As mentioned in our newsletter last week, JD and Tao were working separately on a simple FPS game/rhythm game design.  We integrated the two yesterday and got to do some simple playtesting with the team. While we are not putting all of our eggs in the Network basket (due to potential complications of syncing and other potential issues) we were able to connect 4 players and battle each other.

We will most likely be heading towards a duel scenario, but it was still fun to have 4 of us battling each other at the same time.  Here is a snapshot of what the simple integration looks like:

The reason we were pushing to get a prototype out so quickly is that you learn so much from simply getting your hands on something rather than just theoretical game design.  Within a few minutes we had already thought about several different directions we can go with this design as well as many of the drawbacks to the design.  We have prioritized a few things to be added to our prototype that will allow us to improve and test the prototype further.

Ariel has been researching and experimenting with edge detection as well as setting parameters that can pulse to the speed (BPM) of the music.  We are currently looking at three different ways that the environment and gameplay can interact and react to the music:

1)  BPM – This is very easy to get from the music and can remain constant against two different songs as they mix together.

2)  Audio Analysis:  Analyzing the frequencies of the music to get information that Unity can parse to have different parameters reacting.

3)  Beatmap:  This is a more accurate form of generating information (as it is by hand) for the player to hit notes and also can be used to have different elements in the environment and other areas react to.

Music Preperation:

Mac has been cultivating music selections that can fit with the game we are trying to create.  Some of the important features are a prominent and exciting “Drop” which coincides with a lot of EDM including dubstep, electro, complextro, etc.

In addition to the beatmap from last week, Mac is working on a few more to give us a better variety of difficulty so that we can test our prototype even better.

There is a lot more going on, but these are a few of the things we have been working on this week.

See you next time!

The Drop