Day 4! Give it up for Day 4 of the Daily Devlog Bonanza! Hope you’re doing well as we dive right in to this week’s topic, the change from a co-op game to a single player game with a more narrative driven approach.

            Multiplayer games are hard. Both to make and play sometimes. It’s a genuine miracle that any game gets maid, but even more so any multiplayer game. We initially wanted to make Wrestling Forever : Jobber a multiplayer game, but given the complexity it adds to the development process we’ve made the difficult decision to drop it as part of the man game. 

This links in to what I spoke about yesterday, where sometimes a hard decision regarding the dev process has to be made for the betterment of the project as a whole. This was one of those times.

So, how does this actually effect the game as a whole? Well, where previously players would have to cooperate with each other to achieve a goal and tell their own story in a more directly arcade inspired game, now they will work against an array of AI opponents both in and out of the ring, having to navigate backstage cliques to get good positions in their company.

Of course, the progression system we already talked about will still be present in this new approach. Here the player will now need to build their popularity behind the scenes (rather that with an audience) in order to progress the story and get bigger matches. This adds an element of social navigation to the game, which vastly contrast the initial, more lonely approach to wrestling in the previous iteration of the game.

As I mentioned this change to a more individual game was made to cut down on some unnecessary complexity for the development team. Some of the main sources for this complexity came from controls. Literlly the most important part of a game, and it wouldn’t work with two players. When using Unity as a development tool, you often have to combat with it’s quirks. In this case we found that it would only let us set up controls for two simultaneous players in. limiting way, meaning they both had to be at the same computer, and not connecting via game sharing software like Parsec. While usually this would have been an issue we could work around by working in person, unfortunately we are (still) in the middle of a pandemic. 

So, we dropped it to deliver a more rounded experience for one player. And to help keep our team safe, which has and always will be our top propriety in this project. As it should be yours too in any project you work on.

And on that somewhat wholesome note, we ‘re at the end of yet another Wrestling Forever : Devlog. I’ll see you back here tomorrow evening as we get ever closer to the last long post of the year and of course the special holiday present I’m working on for you all.

Until then, stay safe out there!