When looking at boss battle in adventure games, I wanted to stick with a classic RPG type of monster, the Gelatinous Cube. The Gelatinous cube is a creature of little to no intelligence that absorbs anything it comes into contact with making it the perfect kind of monster for a beginning level in an RPG-Adventure type game. This is why I want to make my boss, the King of the Cubes.
I remembered a game I recently played called Rampage Knightsthat had a boss similar to what I'm going to go for. You can see someone's fight with him here:
This boss has a couple of abilities. He spawns minions, pushes the player back toward a pit, and has a ranged and melee attack.
In my game I'd like to focus on mechanics rather than a tank and spank. I plan on approaching the fight with the idea of the player hitting the slime, not doing damage, but multiplying the slime. This will hopefully make them realize (quickly) that merely hitting the boss won't work. To defeat my boss the player will have to destroy columns inside the room that drop on the boss and deal damage. The Columns will be timelined to fall onto a targeted place on the floor. While the player is doing this he would have to deal with harassing minions spawned by the boss and ranged attacks (melee if up close.)
When tasked with an assignment to create a battle arena, I instantly had an idea what do do. The first thing I planned out was the color scheme. I want the environment to be a desert environment so I chose earth/sand tones, and their complements. I can use the complements to draw attention to important set pieces such as the other players spawns. The red tones will be used for my "monster's" flesh color.
Map Design
The design of my map is based off of a gladiatorial arena such as the
Colosseum. Players will start in one of four airships that each have
four cells. The cells will clang open and players will be free to
drive out and fall into the arena. It will be a basic bowl with the
center depressed to it's deepest depths and surrounded by a sandstone
wall to enclose the players. I plan to make the sand run beneath the
player's wheels and deliver a slight pull to the center of the bowl.
Weapon pickups be in front of and re spawn in front of the air ships.
Planned USP's are the center of the bowl exploding open revealing a
hazard in terms of a "Pit Monster" and I'd like to tackle an environment
shift such as a dust bowl style sandstorm. The inspiration behind this monster is a Sarlacc from a little movie called Star Wars.
Map Events
When planning my USPs for this map, I was thinking heavily about how I could introduce the Monster or transform the mechanics of the arena. I planned to have players enter the fight in an epic fashion like gladiators into the Colosseum. They start in a black cell to fanfare and suddenly the cell slams open. The players then drive out of the cell and fall into the arena where they see their opponents for the first time and are introduced to the mechanics of the sand sliding and the minimal amount of pull it has on their navigation. As the battle begins the screen will begin to rumble and there will be rumbling noises. This will intensify in strength and frequency over time as will the increasing strength of the "pull" of the sand. Finally, in the last couple minutes of the map the pit will burst open and the pull from the sand on the arena floor will be at its strongest. Anyone in the center of the map will meet their instant doom and so will anyone else who drives into it after.
I also had ideas to have a Mad Max inspired sand storm roll in and serve to obscure the map, and possibly deal minimal damage. If I can nail the first USP then I will get this in hopefully as well.
I loved this trailer because of how cheesy it is. I haven't played an arcade game since I was a kid, and this trailer caught my attention because of how similar it is to an "As Seen on TV" infomercial. It starts out with a nice close up of Mario's hat M (on his cart) and cranes out to a shot of all the racers down the track. I think this is an effective intro because it focuses and emphasizes that it is a Mario game. The trailer also describes all the new features in the game pretty nicely, the voice over helps alot. The flashy text and "schwing" noise is pretty effective at grabbing your attention, and I imagine it'd be good at drawing peoples attention from across the room in an Arcade.
The Majority of my assets for this semester's Spinout project revolve around my car, the Tesla Model S. This includes the particles I will need to use for my explosive barrel, my weapon particle, my boosters, and my Unique Selling Point (USP). Because of this, I need to come up with a system that will target actors that will work on a weapon and other objects. For my research into a particle, I'm looking into particle behaviors and controlling them to do so. I'd like to make them perform a little something like this:
This script changes weapon firemode and targeting.
In order to achieve what I'm setting out to do, like in the video above, the first thing I need to do is change the default FPS character blueprint. Instead of a single projectile on a trigger pull, it now loops the firing so you can just hold the trigger to fire. I also had to begin scripting the targeting systems for the behavior of the particle hitting random sectors, while polling for pawns to lock on to. When a pawn is found the intended behavior is to stay locked and deal damage while locked. This mechanic is important for my weapon and USP, as the lightning is to deal damage, and is important to my booster because the lightning needs to lock on to give the speed buff in my level.
This is the script for hit/miss
This script controls the behavior of the particle once hits and misses are registered. In theory this should control the erratic behavior of the lightning, and the spawn of locked particles when in range. Once I can get the weapon behaving properly, I can begin to look at moving it to the USP and Boosters.
In programming my USP I wanted to have the large Tesla coil activate by a lever on the opposite side of the map. This would potentially let someone behind or ahead trigger the coil and roast the competition. In order to do this, I had to create a Boolean for a lever being pulled, but to keep it balanced, I decided to add delays to effectively give the activation a "cooldown."
Once I got the weapon working in a single player environment I transferred it into the Spinout project and began to set it up to work on my vehicles weapon and USP (unique selling point). The weapon version was an easy transfer as I just had to create new bones and sphere collisions for my particle to generate from.
The Giant Tesla USP was a bit trickier. Once I got the lever scripted to activate the coil, the map was almost too dormant. TO fix this I broke off the erratic behavior of the particle, threw a random delay on it, and set it to activate permanently. This gives the level a nice ambient random lightning discharge.
I basically changed up my exploding barrel from what it was (the Tesla Coil) to an Edison light bulb. I have the scripting down for light hits to make it spark and heavy hits to instantly detonate, but I'm having issues figuring out how to make the glass on the bulb shatter pre explosion. I also plan to add zapping electricity sounds and particle effects rather than the fiery explosion placeholders that are there now.
If you haven't been able to tell the big project for us this semester is Sophomore Spinout 2017. Spinout is a game developed by the whole Sophomore class where we choose a car to model, make a thematic racetrack to race, and an arena to battle our cars. After choosing out cars we have to envision a modded out version of them that is battle ready. I chose a 2016 Tesla Model S.
When I was thinking of cars to do I decided to choose one
of the most controversial cars on the drag strip. The Tesla is known
for having pure torque and blazing speeds off the line. This is what
led me to come to the decision that the Tesla would likely be super
powerful in a multiplayer battle arena, because, in my opinion, battle
is much more fun than just racing.
For the concept of my Tesla, instead of making a Mad Max post apocalyptic bruiser like most of the others, I decided my car would be a sci-fi futuristic tactician. The Tesla utilizes the massive amount of torque to catch enemies, and sticking with the electric car theme, has a Tesla Coil gun that rises out of the frunk to roast them in an aoe lightning arc fashion. The car features a wider lower body than the base Model S, and will have emissive inserts that change color when hitting an enemy with the coil weapon.
The coil weapon will be reminiscent of something like this with protective heat\flash shields. If you start the above video at about 7 minutes you can see the beam shift color on impact with metal. Hit registration is something I think will set this weapon apart if I can make it work. We tested previous years' Spinouts and I could not tell when I was hitting the other players or not.
We had to start off with low poly models of our cars. Below are a couple screenshots of the progress so far. I was able to pull these off with about 5k triangles, with optimization to come next.
Front Quarter Panel unmodded Low Poly smoothed
A couple issues our teacher noted were angles on the back bumper and headlights, being a bit too sharp and the rear wheel well being a bit too far back. I will address these in the modding stage as all of those issues are likely to change drastically with the body kit.
After choosing the 2016 Tesla Model S to model as my car for our racing game, I figured I might as well stick with the Tesla theme. My level Will take place in a futuristic/tron-ish environment, mixed with the insides of electrical components as well as "sci-fi physics." The overall level design is inspired by the original blueprints of a Nikolai Tesla's "Tesla Coil" and has a couple twists that align with it.
I'd really like to make the map extremely contrasted and make most of the light pure electric to go with the theme.
Drawing this map in an isometric format proved to be kind of difficult to wrap my head around because it involves view pane shifts but the track is closed course, and in theory fast paced. I'd like to make it so skilled players can stay permanently boosted.
The Color scheme I've chosen will be electric blue, it's complement, and lightning yellow and it's complement.
The hazards I'd like to have the player dodge come in the form of multiple arms and ports that lightning will arc from and Light bulbs that explode in this fashion on impact.
For our Sophomore Car Game Project at Ringling I'm planning on sticking to my Tesla Theme for my Tesla Model S. For the exploding barrel we have to design I am thinking of making Tesla coils that link to people who drive by, increase intensity when they get closer, and detonate within striking distance. This would give me access to a range of particle effects such as lightning, sparks, and "lightning explosions".
Tesla Components
Electrical Surge
My Materials would be pretty simple to emulate, just basic metals, so it
would give me more time to be able to focus on particles and making
those great.
This assignment had us Script a falling spiky block designed to show character and kill the player if he hangs around for too long. The character walks through a box trigger and begins the event as well as the blocks animation.
Here is a view of the code as well as the block in action.
Unreal's Blueprint organization makes things very readable.
The goal of gears is to unlock the door barring progression right next to the player start. Since this is a tutorial level I wanted to involve a mechanic where there would be gears in the level representing the base workings of the game. The level will take place inside a machine and will feature moving cogs (used as rotating platforms via the teeth) as an obstacle. The level will have two levers that need to be pulled to unlock the goal door and every time a lever is pulled I would like to switch the mechanics in the level. (such as making the cogs rotate the other way, possibly reversing or changing the direction of moving platforms, or even changing spike threats with alligator threats.)
For my Platformer level analysis I chose the game Limbo. The introduction to the game just throws you right in with no direction which I believe serves the purpose of the game. The initial challenges are easy and ramp accordingly but still remain easy.
It took me a couple tries to figure out the controls of the game, it was an annoyance to have to search in the options what to press for such a simple control scheme. That being said, after conquering the first challenge of figuring out how to move figuring out other things were pretty intuitive. I thought the introduction of jump and slide (1) nailing down the movement while simultaneously highlighting the danger of spiky objects (2) in the world efficient. I did get held up however again trying to figure out which key to hit to interact with objects near the cart at number (3). This is your second taste of physics in the world as the cart rolls back and fourth.
Jumping on the rope to slide down (4) highlights that movement isnt restrained via jumping and that falling is a danger. The map goes from flat to interesting slopes here which end abruptly in water that kills you (5) and that amps difficulty toward the end of what I would call the "tutorial area."
In terms of positive and negative feedback, you either get stuck, die, or progress. It's basic but concise
What the print and play lacked of Madness Falls was a good description of how combat works. I feel this was, in part, to using D6's with numbers which added a layer of confusion. This is why I've been planning to 3d model dice for the physical version of the game.Instead of people trying to figure out what the numbers on the dice mean in terms of combat, I've created a different dice for each player class with three different images on it. A potion that will signify Mana gained, A sword, which will signify a successful attack, and a shield which will signify a successful block on defense.
My board game had some issues that needed clarification in the rules. It lacks diagrams and examples at the moment, which I'll have to draw up. I was kind of hoping to be adequate at creating instructions good enough that people could just read and play, and use examples just make it concrete. With that in mind, on this next wave of instructions, I'm not going to add diagrams just yet in hopes that I have fixed the confusion in the base rules.
" In a world gone mad, the mad are our only hope. "
- When planning my board game a bunch of different themes popped through my head. I was originally going to go with a high fantasy theme. I realized that this had been done over and over, so I decided to go with a modern day Cthuluesque horror story driven game, with traditional fantasy classes that have a modern flair, such as a lumberbarian with chainsaws, or a meth lab wizard or the like.
- The game will take place during modern times after cultists have successfully helped Cthulu (or some other being of madness depending on copyright) transverse the unknown and manifest itself upon our plane, basically mid apocalypse. The fate of the world will fall to people deemed mad before the incursion, as the sway of Cthulu didn't have any effect on them. Players will fight off Cultists, creatures, "madlings", and of course final bosses as they play through the narrative.
- This game will be innately dark, with some dark and light humor.
So I've been thinking about this board game we have to create and I really want to design an RPG in a box. I'd like to do something with pre-generated characters, simple dice based combat, random monsters, bosses, and loot, and easy character leveling. Think of it as a stepping stone towards converting people into a pen and paper machine.
Possible Dice Combinations
Monsters / Npc possibilities
Chance Planning and Possible Character Card Layout
Beginning to Plan Out Details for the Design of the Board
When you ask me about my favorite games I could easily make an enormous list. There those games usually come great trailers, cinematic and the like. (I still get chills from Age of Conan's E3 cinematic trailer from 2007 no matter how goofy it looks now.) That being said I'll choose my favorite game at the moment which is Smite. There was a recent trailer released called To Hell and Back. This trailer gives a feeling of personality to a few of the gods which is great, and the emphasis on facial reactions makes it great for a game in which you are rarely looking at the characters' face. The choice of music is ideal as well, it's as fast paced as the action and actually has lyrical ques that nail what's going on in the trailer. Here are a couple of "the making of" videos for it:
