This week kept a pace similar to last week, so not much time in engine, although, we finally were able to meet with our client and able to share ideas and get a slightly more clear direction in where we are going. Otherwise, solo, I spent time in creating a sample Visual Design Document, shown below, describing a concept and researching a new possible path to take with our concept.
After pitching it, our client was not entirely on board with our initial concept of the security camera co-op. He was worried about the risk of networked play as well as the potential of the security camera player being bored stuck in the role. Besides that, the idea sounded fine, and he even mentioned potential a Twitch integration for a possible gameplay between a streamer and their viewers. After this was brought up, I thought that Twitch had a lot of potential. It's not something that has been done well before, but definitely has room in the market as horror games are very popular for content creators on Youtube/Twitch/etc. We then decided that the co-op horror is one idea, and the Twitch based horror game would be a single player experience that has a Twitch extension where viewers can in someway interact with the streamer by voting in polls, giving information, etc. Thus, I spent some time researching what was possible to do with Twitch extensions and their API. I found some strong cons and some strong pros, and I will list them here: Cons
-Requires use of HTML/Javascript for the user's (streamer's) front end of the extension
-Requires use of HTML/Javascript for the users' (viewers') front end of the extension -Optional EBS backend for communication between the back ends\
tl;dr - Considering the amount of HTML/web programming inexperience our team has, there is lot's of tech risks, not ideal for prototyping.
Pros -Lot's of documentation and support -Open source tool available for testing extension prototype tl;dr - Not entirely impossible to test, and would be worth enough to sink some time into. The next step from here would be to spend some more time with the idea of Twitch integration, and deciding which concept to move forward with. Some design questions I have going forward are: What would the gameplay do to benefit from a streaming environment? Is Twitch worth considering when our co-op idea is more developed at the moment? And lastly, in what ways can we develop assets for both concepts without detracting from them?
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