Heist Society

A four-player co-op heist game where you build and share crew members before going on missions

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Inspiration

We have been playing Dungeons and Dragons together for years. Character creation is one of the most interesting parts of the game. We loved the idea of creating unique characters with special abilities tailored to our styles who then had to pull off a grand heist together.

What it does

Users can create an account and create any number of unique neer-do-wells by allocating stats, equipment, and backgrounds. Each choice has major impacts on the attached 4-player isometric heist simulator.

In the heist simulator players must dodge guards, duck through vents, and disable laser grids through a fully procedurally generated level in order to reach the vault and get out. Every time they are spotted, trip a trap, or fail a skill check the heat begins to rise. As heat rises guards are more aggressive, back-up is called in, and checks get harder.

Successful heists gain you funds and cred, but failed heists can lose you characters forever.

How we built it

Raymond built the entire back-end of the system. A database hosted in Vultr allows users to register and create characters, and access a database of other characters put up for hire. This system keeps track of all data stored between sessions and encrypts all entered information. The database uses a .NET API for interfacing with the website to manage character, equipment, and money storage.

Morgan built the heist simulator in Unity. The application is completely data driven with no pre-determined rules on how levels must be structured. A Photon web service provides a host-client relationship between users and allows for real-time multiplayer. The app runs on WebGL embedded directly into the website, which means it's hardware agnostic and requires no download.

Challenges we ran into

Ensuring a quality gameplay experience regardless of what university or hackathon network you are on is a massive undertaking, whitelisting ports and fenagling around limitations of various networks.

The back-end system itself required extensive trial and error in order to get around various issues with security and network needs.

Our "Meet-in-the-middle" development plan created issues where our work had to interface cleanly after hours of working seperately.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A system that runs fully agnostic of hardware with real-time multiplayer. A fully functional user registration and login system with encryption A meta-game mechanic that lasts beyond a single heist Permadeath! An absolutely rocking soundtrack

What we learned

Proper access with encryption is really hard! Multiplayer games are SUPER complicated WebGL is not as scary as it seems

What's next for Heist Society

Increased challenges. Fully rigged and animated characters A complete soundscape Commendations, upgrades, and a more complete level-up system An improved social dynamic game. VOIP

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