Level Design Part 14 - Building Progress

Created the draft version of areas 3 through 5 of the level, including working platforms and an elevator that manipulates the camera and weaves down a wall track. The spawners and doors in section 3 are yet to be done as I want to get the level to a more complete stage before locking down areas so I can see how long it takes and tailor the doors to the pace of the level.

Zoom out of entire new section.

Section 4 back and forth section. This area is fully populated with Pistol soldiers and chompers for now but most will be replaced with turrets and melee soldiers when they are ready.

Section 4 part 2. The control room is very simple and small but I'm using it to break up the level by making it look out into a vast set of mountains.

Section 5. Everything about the elevator works just need to populate with turrets and enemy spawns once the rest of the level is at a rough stage. This is where the player will find the first guaranteed weapon pick up, which is the submachine gun.

Chomper Bot

Originally I wanted to use the 4 legged chomper bot for the Point walking enemies, however they are way to big and intimidating for being the first enemy introduced. With that in mind I created their little counterparts. They are fully finished in game now including a bunch of sounds and animations. At the moment they add a lot of character to a very plain environment and have an identifiable hum to notify the player of whats ahead. 

This variant is very weak when the player has a vantage point making it a great introductory enemy, however when spawned in a tight space I can see them being a lot of trouble. 

Level Design Part 13 - Concord Labs Plan, Boss Beat Chart and Minor Tank Changes

In terms of level design, I'm finding Lily's levels a bit more difficult to work out. The main reason behind this is that it isn't a linear pathway and if I created it that way it would be boring. It works for the tank because of the larger scale and the camera setting the pace for the game. 

Since the last version of the project I have created a new camera style for Lily's levels. They now use a camera that does a few new things, first it stops the camera moving backwards (Player can still move back to a point) this was to stop the player being able to retreat and kill things from out of their range. Also it drives the player forwards by progressing with them as long as they go the right direction. Second, it now is free from the character so I can add extra functions into it, the main 2 I plan to use for now is stopping the camera until X number of enemies are dead and giving the player a larger view for boss battles. 

Back to the level design, I tried thinking of the story that I want the level to go through first and blocked out the key stages the level requires. In this instance its the entrance, elevator tower and the boss room. 

As a sidenote, I'm debating adding checkpoints for when the player gets to a boss battle (at least for easy mode and normal mode with a reward penalty) as in feedback players said that having to get back to the boss every time could get tedious due to the difficulty of a boss.

This is the current plan which I've blocked out into stages:

1. The first corridor forces the player to use the jumping and introduces the first enemy to them that is harmless unless you they get in its path. 

2. Use the jumping refresh in this section in a more complicated way. The 1st bit will have no enemies, just the death hole, so it isn't too difficult. Since the player will most likely understand that pits mean death I will put a secret in the second one that will have a tiny platform that's visible when playing. Down there will be either scrap or a basic weapon pick up.

3. The doors here will be destructible and a spawner in front of the door will spawn a number of enemies to fight while breaking down each door. After the first door there will be a few turrets to contend with. Since the camera cannot retreat now this section should get quite intense if the player gets surrounded.

4. This one is really short. Basically it will introduce shooting buttons and give a little scrap pickup as a reward for getting this far. 

5. At this point the player will be stuck on a wide elevator that shifts as it goes down the levels of the base, the shaft will have turrets/traps along the walls and the occasional enemy dropping onto the platform to fight the player.

6. This is a more advanced version of 3 but before the second set of spawner doors there is a hatch the player can (hopefully by accident during combat) destroy leading to a secret path through shafts with location moving enemies and jumping holes to evade them. Using this section bypasses the locked doors entirely. 

7. Still a bit unsure here, I'm thinking of having it as a platforming section with lots of moving sections to dodge and a few enemies littered across the platforms. When I get to this bit I will test it until it's fun and challenging.

8. Boss battle Beat Chart:

Boss Name: Experiment 3001

Description: Lily's grandmother inside a orb shaped machine. Moves along walls using tracks and interacts with the arena.

Required Animations:

• Wake up (Intro)
• Idle
• Fire Flamethrower
• Critical Damage
• Move rocket launchers into view for firing
• Death

Movement Patterns: 

• Static Z location
• Follows player along X upto a point

Attack Descriptions:

• Fires basic bullets in quick patterns, ignoring player location.
• Fires Red Bullets at player location.
• Emits fire from underneath if player is on lower platforms.
• Homing rockets from above (Sometimes replaced by a shootable bomb)

Defeated by: Has a set amount of health the player must go through. Shooting a bomb does 5% critical damage.

Damage Description: 

• Attacking in general will do moderate damage but it can be defeated quicker hitting weak spots.
• Hitting the bomb above is the key way of killing this boss. Causes a critical failure that makes it take a lot of damage..

Particle Effects:

• Flamethrower
• Bullet Fire
• Missile Smoke
• Death explosions
• Metal pings

Projectiles:

• Red Bullet
• Homing rockets
• Standard Bullets
• Flamethrower

HUD Elements: Target laser lines.

Sound Effects:

• Granny Muttering
• Laser effects
• Missile explosions
• Charging sounds
• Mechanical 

Arena: The arena is mostly usable by the player with about 20% taken up by the boss. In the player area there will be sets of platforms at both sides and underneath the boss. These platforms are constantly moving and at times will change direction or tilt 90 degrees to force the player to move around. The boss stays central in the arena and moves left or right along the wall following the player. This boss will fire various things but the main focus of this fight is to not fall to death.

Rewards: Unlocks access to the next level, gives the player the ability to customise their equipment  and awards a lot of scrap.

Current Progress towards Demo Build.

Finally for this update, I have increased the fire rate (in turn reduced damage), camera speed and added camera shake in the tank gameplay a small amount as a quality of life improvement. I found that it felt a bit slow after playing with the speed of Lily's mode.

Lily's Model Part 2

Since it turns out the deadline isn't the 16 of December I have some time to get some more pretty renders for characters and assets. Recently I've seen some nice artwork displayed online using animated gifs to make the image move so I decided to try that for the artwork.

Since its a compressed gif it has a few artifacts but its definitly more interesting than a still image, it's just a bit less detailed.

Lily Mackenzie - Atlas' Annoyance by pasco295 on Sketchfab

Level design Part 12 - Concord Labs Beat Chart

Now that I am onto level design it's time to do another Beat chart!

Level: 1-3

Name: Concord Labs

Story: Lily MacKenzie and crew have fought their way through Concord city and have found the entrance to Atlas base of operations in the desert. They destroy the door by ramming the tank into it, which also puts the tank out of commission for the rest of the level. Now that Lily is in the lab, her grandfather tasks her with looking for the customization module and to defeat a certain person.

Progression: 

• Player taught basic movement and combat through the use of logic and previous experience with tank.
• Player is introduced to a different style of enemy that will not just leave when it passes the camera.

Est.Play time: 6-10 mins runtime + 2-4 min boss battle (Depends on player skill)

Colour map: Silvers and blacks (Metals) Greens (General Atlus Trim colour) Reds (Highlighted Areas such as dangerous sections)

Enemies: 

• Basic Soldiers (Pistol equipped) 
• Basic Soldier 2 (Melee or grenades) 
• Wall turrets (Either player tracking or static depending on situation) 
• Destroyable Spawners 
• Pathing robots (either walk towards player or walk back and forth etc)
• Platform based boss

Mechanics: 

• Getting the player used to the differences in controlling lily compared to the tank.
• Use of jumping to avoid obstacles
• Use everything taught over the level in the bosses mechanics
• Introduce a weapon drop (Submachine gun)
• Possible escape section where the player races the clock to get out of the base before it explodes.

Hazards:

• Avoidable lines of fire 
• Avoid pits
• Traps

Powerups:

• Submachine gun
• Hidden rocket launcher (reward for exploration or experimenting)

Abilities: No abilities yet (will be unlocked with customisation)

Bonus material: Concept Art unlocked?

This is an orthographic screenshot of the current level that I am going to use to plan the whole thing out. 

Level Design Part 11 - Enemies and planning

Over the last few days I have been doing the major framework for the soldier based enemies. Since this asset needed proper AI I had to learn some of the ideas surrounding the behavior tree and how it works. At times it was a bit of a headache so I did a section of the AI a day and worked on other things to get away from it. 

The end product of the work is pretty good and the enemies can do a decent amount, however they may be a bit to good at times when there is a lot going onscreen so I'm planning on using them sparsely with simpler enemies like turrets and melee attacks being more common (At least for the early levels). 

At first I had the enemies withstand a fair amount of damage from weapons but I referred back to the games that inspire this game and standard enemies die really fast in them. I think this is to keep the pace of the combat fast and exciting. In the end I reduced their health and increased weapon damage so that they die easily, however I have reduced the ammo given for a weapon to compensate for the power they now have. For example originally the sniper took 3 rounds to kill an enemy, now it does it in one shot and it feels so much more satisfying and powerful for the small amount of ammo it has.

Finally when they die instead of doing a canned animation I thought it would be more fun to do something similar to the exploding planes from the tank level as players have liked that happening. When they die they rag doll in the impact direction and from playing it myself I have laughed at some of the moments where one dies from a sniper shot and slams into the ground because of the impact. 

Video of the AI and Level

Onto a bit of level and game play design. To keep consistency between both game modes the players bullets can hit enemy bullets like the tank can. Also red bullets (Not in game yet) cannot be shot down, again like with the tank. 

Since the player will have already done 2 tank levels by the point of this one I won't be including any tutorial notifications as the controls are basically the same aside from the ability to crouch. This first level  will be used to get the player families with playing as lily and have sections that are based off using one of her movement or shooting capability.

This small area forces the player to use jump mechanics to move forwards and then introduces a single enemy that cannot spot the player unless they are on top of the big box. This gives the player ample time to notice the enemy and work out what to do. As the level goes on the mechanics will be used in unison since the player should be used to the mechanics. The next step for the level design is to work out the whole area before I start building in engine, otherwise I could spend hours wasting time on useless areas or something not suitable for the level. It will also help work out what other enemy types are required for this level.

Final image is a pretty shot of the opening area with some meshes I made while having a break from coding, it's nothing fancy at the moment but it's more interesting than boxes.

Level Design Part 10 - Lily Intergration

Over the last 2 days I've gotten Lily to a point where she is almost completely finished (Only needs in base integration now which isn't that important at the moment). For the animations each of her guns needed its own set due to the hand poses so she has came to 54 animations in total and has 6 animation blueprints. 

I decided on splitting each guns animations into a different blueprint because the communication between one set of animation was complicated enough and swapping to a different one was quicker and works just as well as one extremely complicated animation blueprint.

For the weapons I looked to metal slug for why its guns are fun to use. From what I saw and played with there are 3 main aspects that make its gunplay fun. First is the rate of fire, shooting huge amounts of bullets looks more exciting and makes the gun feel very powerful. Secondly, it has great sound for the firing of weapons that give a great sense of impact. Finally they don't have reloading so that there isn't any downtime where the player stops being able to shoot, for example it's more fun to shoot 300 bullets in one stream than reload every 30 bullets.

Animation/gameplay video

Lily's Character Blueprint

Soldiers 3D model

After a few days break I got back to getting the characters done. Now that the basic soldier is done I can move onto animating and getting everything in engine properly over the next week. Really happy with how the soldier came out, I think he wouldn't be out of place as a proper character. Once I have Lily and the soldiers rigged I might do some pretty renders in poses for promotional artwork.