Welcome to my first DevLog entry! I’m Pino (Giuseppe De Francesco), and I’ll be the only one posting on this DevLog until the close of the 2023-2024 academic year. Let’s get started with a few technical choices and related motivation.
Game Engine
I’m mostly an Unreal Engine person, but let’s be realistic: UE5 for 2D is not the best choice, especially if we want a quick iteration and TTM (Time To Market). For this reason, I decided to go for Unity Technical release 2023 (and its LTS when published).
Engine Tools and assets
Unity is the best 2D engine from a toolset standpoint. Just to mention one: Corgi Engine. This asset will be the platformer mechanics cornerstone of the game. If I were to write my platformer mechanics, I would have to write many thousand lines of code, debug all, and make it solid for production: a task that would take at least a full calendar year, making the goal of my project unachievable. BTW, why reinvent the wheel? No way 😎
Another readily available tool for Unity I will use is one I made available in the Public Domain long ago, meant to manage Unity games localization following a translator-friendly approach. Feel free to get it in case you haven’t yet! 😉
Online Services
For this title, all the usual services will be delivered by Epic Online Services (EOS). The beauty of it is that I can offload to EOS the whole authentication system, allowing a vast set of login credentials and many services out of the box: Achievements, Anti-Cheat, Leaderboards, Lobbies, Matchmaking, Metrics, Notifications, Player Data Storage, Player Reports, Progression Snapshot, Sanctions, Stats, Title Storage, Voice.
This implies that the game will never store any data, which will simplify compliance with Data Protection legislation across the globe. Also, if the player won’t log in, they can play all the same: the only difference in staying offline is that the user cannot take part in the leaderboard nor store their advancement in the cloud.
Game availability
This game will be available really soon on Steam for free testing. It will also be available from DFT Games Studios Open Beta program.