Prop Hunt

Inspiration

Someone needs to bring back the absolute blast of a time we had playing Prop Hunt in Crayta. Now that the platform is gone, the game is gone forever.

How we built it

Prop hunt has "Props" and a "Hunter". The player needs to possess a prop and hide from the hunter somewhere in the office. Part of how the props are able to stay hidden from the hunter is by having many duplicates of the props the players can possess and having them randomly spawn on designated spawn points around the office. The spawn points randomly generate which prop and how many props will spawn in each game. Once the hunter locates a prop, they will shoot a laser and the prop will join the spectator area until all props have been eliminated.

Challenges we ran into

There was not a way to hide the avatar apart from the prop. The workaround for this was to create two duplicate offices. For optimization purposes these offices are right on top of each other. One office is where the hunter spawns and the other is where the props spawn. The props can see each other's avatars and the props that they are controlling, but the hunter will only see a projection of the props.

Secondary problem with this method is that the props are not going to be able to see where the hunter is. This is crucial so they know where and where not to hide and to know what it is they are hiding from. This is where the hunter drone comes into play. The hunter drone is essentially just a marker representing the hunter's location. The drone flies and animates based on where the hunter is looking to help the prop know the direction of where the hunter is focusing. The idea behind doing this was to ensure that whether in VR or as an avatar, the hunter's position will be based on where your players head is and where it is rotated. The Hunter drone doesn't have arms or hands so instead it shoots out a laser from its eye. This was the best asyncronous implementation across platforms.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am most proud of having a playable game at the end of the jam, especially given the pace required for the deadline along with not being able to implement everything I wanted in the game . Quick iteration and learning from my mistakes along the way was needed to implement some ideas and in the end I did have to cut my losses on some features at this time.

What we learned

While building my game I learned what a finite state machine is and how to implement one. The process also taught me that the complexity behind managing a state behind something as simple as a 3 phase game can take thousands of lines of code.

What's next for Prop Hunt

There are a few things I would have implemented given more time. The first being the last beam for the prop players coming from the hunter's eye. This would provide a more direct line of "sight" from the drone to the prop.

I would have finessed the game state management as there are a lot of conditions where players are entering and leaving the game, specifically dealing with the spawn sequence when players join the game.

A UI would have been added to include a match timer, how many props are still hiding and at the end of the game, a readout of who won the match.

Music would have also been an addition given more time.