Over the last couple of sprints we started putting in pieces of an edit system for myMO. The intent of this edit system is to allow game players to customize their surroundings by placing props, lights, and NPCs in existing maps. We would hope that people that were hosting music events would personalize their own clubs using starter “club templates”. Also, this opens up the possibility of all game players having their own personal space (house/apartment) in myMO for inviting their friends into. This will make myMO not only a “dance party” game, but also at least a light version of a building game.
This sprint we moved around a number of elements of the User Interface to improve the edit/building game play. We enabled the DMX based DJ lighting to be moved by the game player, as well as, static meshes. We began building out a Stage Equipment Store for building stages and adding speakers and other stage equipment to their clubs. The edit mode now has a menu panel that allows us to add multiple stores for various types of prop shopping. Examples of the type of stares to build will be the Stage Equipment Store, Club Interior Store, Park Equipment Store, Personal Home/Apartment store, etc. At this point, we envision all the props as being free, but the menu system and database has been built to eventually add microtransactions to support buying things from the store at some point in the future.
The following video is an example of customizing a club in the game. You select a club template to start customizing, go to a store to get some items to add to your build, get back into the edit session on the template, place the items in the template, save the resulting changes as a customized map and then host an event in this new customized club.
The game design now supports three basic types of maps. The first type of map is the core map. This is a map that will be built by 3d artists in the Unreal Engine Editor and will not be open to customization. Examples of this are the Rave Cave and Club Blue Mojo currently in the game. The second type of map is the In-Game Template Map. This map is available to game players to be able to customize. These maps will be basic maps like in the above video. We envision having a number of these available and would include a few different basic club buildings, some open fields, etc. The whole idea would be for players to build in them to create their own personalized club or home. The last type map would be the User Customized Map which is basically the club that the game player made into their unique, personalized club. It basically is a In-Game template with a bunch of props, lights, NPCs, etc placed in it.
This sprint is the last development sprint built on top of Version 0 of the game. Our next sprint, is basically a test and fix sprint with no real planned features being added. At the end of that sprint we will be at Release 1 of the game which is focused as a Closed Alpha release of the game. Closed Alpha means that it is no longer a developer only version of the game and will be open to the Music Oasis Crew and invited friends. A lot of the upcoming effort built on top of Release 1 will be aimed at content creation instead of programming. We hope to start building out the content in the game in terms of maps, props, avatars, animations, etc to get the game to the point of a Release 2 open alpha version of the game by the end of the year that will probably be released in Steam as an “early access” version of the game.
