About
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Flox Don't Stop is a co-op platformer that forces players to coordinate between placing platforms and scaling up an endless corridor to get as high as possible. With a development team of six, we developed the initial prototype across the span of two and a half weeks and have since been working on it for release on Steam.
Development
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Developing Flox Don't Stop has been both a challenging and rewarding experience. From learning the ins and outs of Perforce with Unreal to debugging blueprints and making conversions over to C++, this was my first experience developing a game from concept to publish with Unreal.
On previous projects, the version control of choice was often git, and so shifting over to Perforce was initially a shock to the senses. After learning how to navigate its interface, though, I've found it to have several advantages over git. Most notably, the ability to check out files and separate changes into dedicated change-lists. While working on our team of 6, our tasks have been more generalized, and while working on camera movement I may need to make changes to our current player character Blueprints. Checking P4V helps to know who has files checked out so that merge conflicts don't occur. Since starting the project, I've also discovered the many benefits to working with C++ in Unreal. Aside from performance benefits in the long run, C++ makes handling merge conflicts non-destructive most of the time and allows for better compatibility (Blueprints can call C++ methods, but not the other way around).
Learning how to effectively implement working mechanics in Blueprints and C++ has been one of the most rewarding parts of this project. Blueprints have been great for prototyping and collaboration with members of the team unfamiliar with C++ code, but when optimization and scale have been brought into the picture, conversion to C++ has been our best method of resolution. As my first published project in Unreal, the challenges I've faced, and the mistakes I've made along the way, have taught me the true flexibility that lies in Unreal's engine structure.