Art:

Procedural Art:

Instead of using a traditional workflow of unwrapping an asset and texturing it uniquely. We decided to go with a more procedural workflow which is a lot faster to use. There'll be one master shader that is applied to most meshes. The shader will contain a lot of parameters which will provide the detail such as a gradient over the mesh and rust at the bottom.

Render Pipeline:

We had to decide which render pipeline in Unity we'd like to use. It was either between the Universal RP of the High Definition RP. After some testing we made the decision to go for the HDRP. The volumetric fog was to critical for our artstyle that it was worth going for this. Also with the latest release of Unity 2019.3, it came out of preview so most of it's issues should be resolved

Concept Art:

We created some concept art for our environment and the boxes. It helped visualize how the game would look at the end.

First, we created a rough block out in 3ds max only with the big shapes in mind as well as the level design of the conveyer belts.

Then we focused on one corner of the render and did a quick paint over. It made us realize, that the initial color palette didn't work so well. After playing a little with the colors we got our final color palette.

We wanted to test the color palette that we decided to use. We already had one in mind but wanted to play around with different colors as well.  So we made a small concept of a box to be able to test different color schemes on. In the end we ended up using the color scheme we chose in the beginning. Because after testing we tended to lean more to that one. Here's what we came up with.

Code:

Player input:

For the player input, I used the new Input System from Unity, this is very convenient for assigning the right controller to the right player and letting them join on the press of a button. The 1st player (for now) will be the grabber, and the 2nd one a pusher. The 3rd one a grabber and the 4th one again a pusher. They automatically get assigned for balancing.

Truck delivery:

There is now an endpoint where the packages can get delivered to, if it's a good package, you gain points, if it's a bad one (red), you lose points. 

Garbage bin:

We also added a garbage bin where you can dispose the bad packages into for extra points, so be sure to use the grabber to put them in there!

Spawning System:

We created a system to spawn the package and garbage at random and random places.

Movement Belts:

After last weeks feedback, we revisited the movement and how we did it. We removed the corners, this way it moves in a straight line.

End:

In the end we thew everything together to make a little prototype: