Cross Platform Guidance

Hello everyone! I'm the project manager for a senior design team at Drexel. Our team is making a game using Unity. I'm here to get some guidance and general advice.

Core Design

Cross platform, 2D/sprite based, sidescroller with drop in/out coop. The platform used determines what character the player can be. Both platform can have the players start and finish the game w/o the need of an other platform player but having their aid can help them access different areas/resources in the game.

Example

NES era Ninja Gaiden played on desktop that can have a mobile player join their game. The mobile player will be controlling Lakitu; Lakitu would be able to zip around the screen and slash enemies like Fruit Ninja. Each player (desktop and mobile) can start and finish the game without the help of the other player. However, going it solo will yield only about 75% of the content of the game. Having help essentially grants access to the other 25%.

Team

Our design side has 6 artists and our development side has 5 programmers that are handy with C#, Java, javascript, and databases to name a few. At least 6 people on the team are very familiar with Unity. I would prefer to underscope then to overscope (big part of the reason why I'm posting this). However, the programmers need a signfigant challenge to overcome to pass their portion while us designers just have to make sure the game's aethetics and core design is sound.

Now that you know the basics of where I'm coming from, here are the most immediate issues we face. How sound/flawed are these observations? What are ways you would go about solving them in my position? Ultimately what is the most painless way to cross the finish line? What are some pitfalls to avoid by going down this route?

Browser vs Native App

Getting this to work entirely in WebGL would have been ideal. The game itself would change depending on the viewport dimensions to support 'desktop' or 'mobile'. However, it seems that Unity WebGL games start at a size of around 300MB... not very mobile friendly at all. Not to mention the IL2CPP toolchain issues and debugging hell that to arrive at WebGL Unity goes from C# to C++ to javascript. If we did utilize a browser it seems a straight up HTML5/WebGL route would go.

So between an HTML5/canvas that connects with a native mobile app vs a desktop app that connects with a native mobile app, which one would be the simplest?

No one on my team mentioned they know X-Code so I'm assuming Android would be a good mobile platform to target over iOS?

Networking

Technically speaking I imagine this is going to be one of the hardest, if not the hardest feat that our team has to pull off. My knowledge of networking begins and ends at the post/get and sessions from php (which is to say not true networking). Basically I'm asking for a general map to the minefield that I know networking of this scope is going to be.

Text to Game Objects

Let's assume you already have all the string data you want stored in your favorite variable within Unity. Now you want Unity to take that string data and turn the characters into game objects as is? Example: 'Dark Souls' will appear in game as objects shaped exactly like the characters comprising the word 'Dark Souls'. Players would be able to run, jump, fight, and perhaps even smash things through each letter object D, A, R, K, etc.

Where is a good place to start looking into this?

Unity 3D vs Unity 2D

And by Unity 2D I mean it's built in 2D engine. It seems like the 2D pipeline is the obvious approach but I just wanted to make sure. Even if it's an entirely sprite based games, I've read some compelling reasons to use the 3D pipeline instead. Your thoughts?

That's surely enough to get the conversation going. If you've actually read this far then I thank you with as much gratitude as a stranger can muster over the internet. Free beer for anyone that posts anything helpful that lives around the Philadelphia area.

 

I think, Unity is allways 3D engine. You can put sprite in the scene and Unity will handle it as 3D mesh.

My simple test scene for webGl was about 6 MB (with 4 MB assets folder).

 

In everything you posted, I see no reference to time constraints? Should we assume a standard 16 week semester to complete your project?

 

Peace Laced: We have to have an alpha 10 weeks from now. We are expected to spend 4 weeks in design and 6 weeks i production. However, if we can get our overall design approved earlier we will begin work earlier.