Level Design Part 2 - Prototype Boss Plan

Scott rogers book Level Up has a great template I plan on using to base out this 1st boss. For this 1st boss I want to use all the mechanics the player has learnt during the course of the level in some way. This encourages players to learn how to use each element so more complex bosses can be introduced later.

(Just for reference bullets cannot be shot down but bombs can)

Boss Name: The adjudicator

Description: A giant AI skull integrated into the wall that blocks access to Concord City. It has several weapons at its disposal. It will animate in a very janky and robot way.

Required Animations:

• Wake up (Intro)
• Idle
• Exposed Laser fire Upper
• Exposed Laser fire Middle 
• Exposed Laser fire Lower
• Move rocket launchers into view for firing
• Replace mounted turret
• Death

Movement Patterns: 

• Static location
• Skull moves around to look at players location

Attack Descriptions:

• Eyes charge up with a particle glow and then fire several bullets towards the players current location. This is the basic attack that happens whilst everything else is on cool-down
• Every 10 seconds the skull will open exposing a main laser and the vulnerable brain, the head will then move to the height location the player is currently in (low, medium or high). After a 3 second charge it will fire a laser down the lane the player was in 3 seconds ago.
• After 20 seconds a random turret will spawn at the top  rail (3 different variants) on death they award a chunk of damage and possible power up. 20 seconds after death they are replaced randomly.
• Missiles will be fired into the air every 10-30 seconds. These missiles will then rain down on the playable area for the player to dodge or shoot.

Defeated by: Has a set amount of health the player must go through. Destroying the turret deals 5% health and hitting the brain does five times damage.

Damage Description: 

• Attacking in general will do little damage but it can be defeated without hitting weak spots.
• Hitting the brain is the key way of killing this boss.
• Destroying the turrets is the alternate way of killing this boss.

Particle Effects:

• Laser charge
• Laser Fire
• Missile Smoke
• Death explosions
• Brain juice impacts

Projectiles:

• Red Bullet
• Slow moving missles
• Homing rockets
• Giant Laser
• Small Lasers

HUD Elements: Targeting reticle for eye lasers

Sound Effects:

• Laugh
• 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 that the player can jump onto to dodge the main lasers or hide underneath to hide from regular projectiles. Missiles will destroy parts of these platforms and if not shot down will eventually level all the platforms, making it much harder for the player to dodge everything.

Rewards: Unlocks access to the next level, gives the player a laser module for use at a later stage and awards a lot of scrap.

Fight Music: Remain - Ad Astra

Level Design Part 1 - Prototype Beat Chart

I've looked into how to plan out an effective way to create a map of what needs to be accomplished in each level and work out the gameplay progression. I found something called a Beat Chart, these charts are planned out in a way that explains the entire goal of a level. I'm going to test this method for the 3 week prototype so I can get the baseline for the goals of the level. 

Scott rogers book 'Level up' has a nice example to show how to structure the Beat Chart, so i'm going to emulate this to a degree for this 1st level. Another more indepth chart is the one used on gamasutra's website, this one has a nice way of structuring a level that has several goals. The gamasutra one might be ideal later on but for now I only plan on having a single goal for the level.

Level: 1-1

Name: Concord City Outskirts

Story: Lily MacKenzie and crew (Main character placeholder name) arrive at the boarder of concord city. They need to get inside the city to obtain a piece prototype equipment (This enables player customisation later on). When they arrive they learn that the city is surrounded by a huge wall and then need to get closer to investigate the path inside. Atlas are on alert and send out forces to stop the player in their tracks. 

Progression: 

• Player taught basic movement and combat through use of in-world UI
• Player is introduced to the idea of scrap as currency (for use later on)

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

Colour map: Browns (Desert and rocks) Reds and washed out other colours (Billboards) Blue (Distant Objects)

Enemies: 

• Basic Fighter 1 (3 Bombs in a series) 
• Basic Fighter 2 (3 Bombs fired at players location (No Homing) 
• Basic Bomber (2 series of 5 bombs in quick succession) 
• Bunker turrets (Rapid fire and basic)
• Wall Boss

Mechanics: 

• Teaching that bombs can be shot down but red bullets cannot and must be avoided.
• Use of jumping to avoid obstacles
• Use everything taught over the level in the bosses mechanics
• Introduce temporary power ups (Lasts a single level)

Hazards:

• Avoidable lines of fire 

Powerups:

• Increased fire speed
• Increased shot amount
• Special shot - Homing Rockets

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

Bonus material: Concept Art unlocked?

Music Track: Remain - Acoustic Unleashed

Alternate versions:

• Night time (less visibility for players and player has vision cone of light) 

I've added the extra set at the bottom because I think having ways to change a level to change the difficulty is an easy way to increase the amount of content that player has to play with. I decided to leave out adding abilities at this stage because I don't want to overload the player with tonnes of buttons and mechanics this early on. Once the player has the ability to modify their starting equipment I will be adding abilities.

References

"Beat-Chart � Game Designer's Best Friend". Gamasutra.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.

"Beat-Chart – The Best Friend Of The Game Designer — IT Daily Blog, News, Magazine, Technologies". Developers-club.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.

Rogers, Scott. Level Up!. Hoboken: Wiley, 2014. Print.

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 6 - Main Character Paint Jobs

Since I'm wanting to do a full level in the next 3 weeks it's a good excuse to get the main characters tank through the pipeline so it's base version is all finished early on. 

Done a set of 5 paint jobs/patterns. I'm liking 5 the most because the graffiti was fun to do and adds a lot of unique details around the tank. 2 is my second favourite but it might be a bit too saturated the rest are pretty standard.  

I'll hopefully be adding multiple paint jobs later on so I guess having some regular ones fills up the choices the player can choose from.

Game Prototype Progress Part 1

Now that we are trying to do some part of the project in the next 3 weeks to see if we feel the project is going to work i'm going to try to get a prototype 1st level as polished as possible. Currently I have a level that's about 4 mins in length with 3 enemy types programmed in.

First off as with everything else I wanted how the player to move to have a lot of character behind it. I decided that it would be better to use physics movement for the player so I can cut down on animation and blueprint works. The first video shows the difference between basic character movement and using physics to drive it instead. I used the community based plugin for unreal 4 called Machinery Modelling Toolkit, this plugin made it quite painless to set up the physics (Had to change a few things to tune it what I needed).  It's pretty obvious which of the 2 looks visually more interesting.

This is the level I've created upto now. I've added a jump to the tank because one of the main problems I've had with design in similar games is that they have no vertical aspect to movement. Now that the player can jump I can add more interesting aspects to the level, like giving the player a choice between 2 paths.

This is a good base in my opinion for starting off the 3 week test because I can look at the good and bad points of the current version and research what and why the affect the game in that way.

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 5 - Enemy Kitbash Renders

These are all the enemies I created over the last week.

Pretty happy with how the basic bomber has turned out. I think having the 2 top and 1 bottom cockpit helps emphasis the scale of this aircraft. I might have a play around with giving it a more interesting tail though. 

The fighter is kinda boring now that I look back at it. I'm going to redesign it using the previous sketches to give it a better silhouette.

Not currently programmed in the helicopter, I'm loving the front and back views for it though. The curve of the body creates some nice shapes with the lighting.



 This is my favourite of the bunch. I'm going to use them as living landmines mostly, hence the antenna to warn players of their location. I've added some closed panels on the sides so I can maybe make variants of these that do different things.

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 4 - Tank Renders

I took some better renders of the tank so it's easier to see whats going on in the design. I'm really enjoying this design at the moment but I think some of the clutter could use more detailed versions and some more variance just to make it that little bit more interesting.

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 3 - Characterization

Going off the previous research I've created a set of building blocks for bashing together models quickly for rapid 3D prototyping. I'm going to focus on the player characters tank for this initially because this is one of the most important vehicle in the game. 

Fig 1

Fig 1 is the model kit. For the modelling kit I decided to leave out basic body shapes because I think that would limit the creativity of the tanks right at the start of the design. 

Fig 2 - Attempt 1

These initial 2 designs are ok, they have a couple of basic identifiers on them like the hatches and main cannons. I feel that they are boring though as there's nothing really unique about them at all and they have no elements that would help characterize them.

Fig 3 - Attempt 2

I found a great piece of research in the Vertex 3 magazine in an article called ''Storytelling with vehicles'' - Matthias Develtere.

'Vehicles should tell stories as well, just like characters, weapons and environments do.' [Matthias Develtere 2015]

This quote is exactly what I want my vehicles to do. I don't want them to be the same old vehicles, I want each type to have a lot of story involved in its design. Matthias talks a lot about how using asymmetry in a design is an advantage because, the assets created can be used multiple times without looking all identical. This would be useful for things like ammo crates and small sets of repeating equipment. This will be a good way to add more clutter to a design without as much work.

For the third design I began using exaggeration on parts of the model to help give it some interesting features. The main exaggerations are making the body very stubby and also making the turret much thicker and shorter.

Once I had created the main body I looked into adding aspects to give it character. I wanted the tank to be something similar to the characters home, so I took some inspiration from pack mules and loaded tonnes of junk on and around the turret. I then focused the design down to a few major assets on the tank to explain the tastes of the characters and how they could use the space. For example next to the machine gun is an open case full of ice and drinks, once of which is open with a straw pointing towards the open hatch. On the other side there is also an old CRT TV and an old games system, these don't just show the characters have an interest in games but also gives some idea of things available in this time period.

I'm pretty happy with this being the main design for now whilst I prototype. I'll probably make a few changes before I create the final version for the game later on.