DA: Boss Design!

Our last assignment in DFG was the famed Boss assignment! Here we were essentially given free reign over what we wanted to design, so long as it had a recognizable design and spoke of personality and gameplay. I always like to challenge ideals with my designs, and this is no different! First I decided to do some studies with regards to shapes and alignments, sticking to the usual Good/Bad, Chaotic/Lawful dichotomies for ease.

And from there, I decided to flesh out the designs I liked the best.

People seemed to like the bottom middle one, and so thus Brunhilde's designs began to ferment and bubble deep within my cranium...

It was important more than anything to ensure she had the beard, but maintained her femininity. How do you offset the inherent masculinity of a beard, was the question? Hirsutism isn't necessarily unusual, and there's no denying that bearded women are still women. The final design choice was that a mustache was too much, but winged eyeliner helped seal the deal. I also wanted her to have the regular dwarven build, with emphasis on her hips and thighs for a particularly triangular design. Finally, to have a theme to carry throughout, I gave her hussar wings and ran with the wing design. Here are a few of my references:

And the final product:

I had a lot of fun with this! There are obviously still a few points of error I need to fix, but all in all I'm very excited to be taking Brunhilde into next semester, where I will be modelling her!

3D: Workshop Progress

Ok!! Now that I've fleshed out my concept for DFG, it's time to turn it into a space! My teammates are all working on other aspects of the restaurant; we've got a kitchen and two dining spaces besides my lounge. I'm working on trying to make my space feel intimate and cozy, as a lounge should be! Here's a few of my development stages:
STEP ONE: GREYBOXING
Working from my DFA concept of a lounge in space, we begin putting things in place to ensure the scale and relation of objects makes sense!

STEP TWO: PLACEHOLDER TEXTURES
Also known as the 51.3% crit, this is where we're expected to have everything all sorted out in regards to modelling and have some idea of where we're going with textures. I really like how Brittany's ceilings look in my space, so I'm going to keep them. The space texture is, similarly, a placeholder (spaceholder?) as I'm in charge of making the final skybox.

STEP THREE: POLISH CRIT 
Critskis! Essentially a fake final crit, this is where we get some final polish notes before final submissions. I've made a lot of changes, notably the wall textures: I thought changing them to a darker material would help intimize the space. The only issue is I have to bring a lot more light into this space now, to mitigate the darkness!

One of the issues Marty had with this place was that he was worried the stained glass would not be my work. Well, fear not Marty! I redid Alfons Mucha's Les Printemps to star myself and my teammates!

I'm pretty proud of these, myself. But I have a long way to go still! Lots of adjustments that still need to be made.

DA: Space Lounge

Here's a bit of a post-mortem from my latest Drawing for Game Design class! The idea was to design a workshop space, something where the use was clearly articulated through props and layout. I decided to group up with some friends of mine and design an Art Nouveau-style restaurant set in space. I thought the juxtaposition of sumptuous turn-of-the-century frills to the austere necessity of sci fi was a fun thing to play around with! I got the lounge, where you would go before or after dinner to wait for your reservation, drink aperitifs, play chess, read newspapers, and hold more intimate meetings in the little alcoves.

Now to take this into 3D!

GD: True Flight Trailer

As promised, here's the animatic trailer for True Flight! If I were to make this game my thesis, this would be the kind of trailer I might be producing down the line... But I don't think I'd like to work on this project for a year-long tenure. I didn't give myself enough workable environments to mess around in, and it just wouldn't be inspiring for a portfolio! Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun building this flying game from the ground up, including pick-ups and obstacles. I hope you enjoy!

GD: Camera Movement Analysis

Ok, so it's not a camera movement per se, but an editing style I'd love to emulate for my next trailer would be that of Satoshi Kon. Every Frame a Painting does an excellent break down of his work:

Considering that the game we're making next, a 6-person team Boss Battle, takes place in a mutable mind environment, Satoshi Kon's editing style would fit perfectly with the abstract and dreamlike world that we're presenting. His match cuts create such a sense of wonder and fantasy in his work, I'd love to be able to emulate even a fraction of that in my trailer.

GD: Mistral Boss Fight Analysis

Back on the horse with Game Design! I'll make a post soon about the toy I made and the consequential trailer, but for now it's time to think about Boss Battles! Yes, that grand old lynchpin for any good gameplay, the whole point of your great struggles, that fantastic final battle for which to strive-! Well, ok, the Boss Battle I'm going to analyze is a sub-boss of sorts, but she's still important! For my next trick, I present Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance's Mistral!

Mistral's interesting because she's essentially the first human boss of MGR:R, and the first chance you have to fight a cyborg similar to yourself (for context: in MGR, you play as the cybord Raiden, capable of slicing through almost any substance besides cats). It starts off in an arena-style boss fight, but progresses on to various other parts of the map.

Mistral's fight serves as a jumping off point to explore more uses of the games mechanics-- the first boss fight, against a giant robot dog Blade Wolf, is in a more traditional arena-style location, which allows for only a few mechanics to be tested. In Mistral's fight, as earlier stated, it starts in an arena, but goes into close quarters on a thin pipe, and then to a larger environment with more objects to hide behind and slice up. There are also swarms of tiny enemies, known as Gekkos, that serve to help Mistral and hinder your progress. They spawn infinitely, and can help you power up your attacks.
Here's a basic breakdown of the level:

1- The fight's introduction: you run out onto a raised platform, where Mistral greets you with a cutscene explaining her backstory. She reveals herself as a cyborg when she absorbs multiple arms from the small Gekkos around her, and attacks you. In this area it's a lot of run and slash-- both you and Mistral are restricted to that area, and as it's fairly close quarters the action is super fast. You have to try and slice both her arms and the polearm she's constructed out of arms (yes, the pun doesn't escape me. You could say she's pretty well armed). You can build up bonus points by slicing up the Gekkos and attack her head-on. Once you've done this enough, you can do a special attack that kicks her off the platform onto level...
2- which is a far smaller horizontal pipe. Mistral regenerates her arms and begins to attack you with more long-range whip attacks constructed exactly for this environment-- there's no way to jump to the side, so you must jump up, run under, or parry. She can also access the higher ground to throw the Gekkos at you as projectiles. Once you hit her enough, the pipes underneath you are sliced apart and you run down them to level...
3- which is a more open area on the power plant ground, complete with hiding spots behind pillars and more of an up-and-down explorable area. Here Mistral can use both her long and short range attacks, including a new whip attack that brings you closer to her.

Once you've hit her enough times, and you've timed your attack correctly, you can force her to accidentally pierce a tank of liquid nitrogen. You slice the tank open and Mistral is frozen immediately. It's short work to cut her up into tiny pieces.

What I like best about this Boss Battle is how its locations help explain the new attacks as Mistral uses them. Metal Gear Revengeance is a super fast-paced game, and being able to read the environment to adapt your playstyle to its limitations is very important. Having the other character respond to such changes is pivotal.

DA/3D: Hero Prop Concept and First Pass Modelling

In DFG, our most recent assignment was to design a Hero Prop that told a tale through its design, intended use, and articulation. I present to you the Nenuphar 105, Space Hookah!

And now we have to model it out in 3D to make an animated and textured prop! So here's my first pass at a high poly model:

GD: True Flight Game Concept

True Flight (name still up for discussion)

True Flight is a whimsical third person flight racer set in the Kingdom of the Dawn, on the edge of the horizon. You are a paper plane who wishes to join the skies above; she was folded unto the earth with such finely formed wings and so she must use them, but her decidedly gravitized build keeps her mired on the ground. Then the Grace of the Dawn, she who breathed the plane into life, decides to grant Paper's wish: if she can keep airborne for as long as possible, Paper is able to pursue her dreams of true flight. If she touches the ground, her dream will end...

True Flight takes place in the aforementioned Kingdom of the Dawn, where the sun stays the course skimming around the horizon all day and all night, keeping the place suffused in a soft gold light. Islands of solid ground are adrift in a sea of clouds, kept in contact by the brave pilots of the Royal Air Force. People primarily inhabit large cities on the stronger pillars of ground; the rest of the land is heavily forested. You can usually navigate the air using the pillars as landmarks. Paper was created to be a companion of the Grace of the Dawn, one of the many princesses of Aurora City, but grew to be too independent and willful-natured, too in love with the sky. In a final act of petty spite, Grace of the Dawn granted Paper her wish, but on one condition: if she is to stop flying, she will die.

Here are some references to the kind of visual identity I'm trying for with True Flight:

And here's the basic breakdown of True Flight's mechanics:

What I'd like best to be able to do is have the whole map be procedurally and randomly generated, so the layout of the hoops, updrafts, and pods are never quite the same so the player can't memorise them. The idea is to keep yourself airborne for as long as possible, but there's no real end goal to land on. You just have to keep going until you die!

3D: Modular Kit is finished!

I'm finished with my Modular Kit assignment! I have the images ready, and I'll post a breakdown of the entire thing later on. In the meantime, here are my two submissions! The first one was my first, original concept inspired by Fei Giap's work, and the second was a ~secret DLC~ for me to practice my handpainting with.

GD: Eternity's Horizon Breakdown!

So, as promised, here's the breakdown of my FPS level! It turned out a bit different to what I expected-- I put in some things, took a few things out, streamlined, and most of all tried to make it slightly harder to fall off the map.

Of course, I didn't really have time to create my own assets from it, so it was pretty useful that my suggested aesthetic matched that of the default UE4 pieces!

As you can see from the top-down, there's some pretty obvious changes! First of all, there's a significant gulf that the players have to cross if they wish to engage the enemy in one-on-one close-up combat.

To cross this gulf, you have to use vectors to make death-defying leaps!

Another way to engage with the opponent is to scale those giant sniping towards using up vectors.

Each sniping tower has a counter-tower, so you have to always be on the lookout! Spawn points, however, are protected by a screen that allows players to shoot out, but not in. Also notice how each side of the map is colour-coded to each team! I was told that the red made players feel like they're dying, so I may have to tone it down a bit...

All in all, I think people had fun on my map! It was right at the end of the crit, so instead of really going on people stuck around and played it a few more times. As it has multiple potential paths, one really has to have a plan or strategy on which way to go! Using the up vectors to get to the sniping point gives you a great vantage, but you're also very exposed on your way up. Running around on the ground gives you versatility, but also puts you at risk of snipers. This is a map that really keeps you moving around, and I think the vectors really helped bring that idea home!

DA: DFG Assignment: Final Render!

And here it is! The final rendering work from my Drawing for Game Design Class first project. I'm actually pretty happy with how it all came out; I feel a lot more confident in my ability to place shadows and highlights now!

GD: Toys Idea

So our next assignment for Game Design (I'll post a breakdown of my FPS level soon!) is to make a toy; that is, something to play with and eventually make a game mechanic out of! Here are a few of my ideas:

• Bowling (taking one physics object and trying to knock others over with it)
• a giant cannon (to take down enemy pirate ships?)
• hang gliding (navigating empty air space with use of direction vectors)
• ultimate frisbee
• ultimate EXPLODING frisbee

• Carnival games
• duck hunt
• horse races (click as fast as you can to fire at the target to make the horse go faster)
• ring toss
• candy floss (sticks to everything, easy to navigate strange hallways

• Collectors combo boost (the more rapidly you collect items, the faster or stronger you become-- timing in between the collections of these things will reduce your boost)
• Rubber balls. Thousands and thousands of rubber balls.
• A roller coaster
• Jetskis (a vehicle for navigating an aquatic area-- avoid hitting sharks, and go over jumps for points!)
• Booster packs for different guns/spell types
• Dig dug-- try to dig as deep as you can without disturbing loose rocks or underground monsters!
• Ostritches
• Snow globes-- what you do to an item affects what happens to the player on the other side of the map. so, if you shake it, the entire ground shakes for the other player.
• Katamari Damancy-- the more items you collect, the larger you get, the more items you can pick up! Just get the minimum within the time limit!
• Gravity gun, a la Half Life 2
• Different kinds of temperature puzzles in different rooms: turn on the cold in a room to freeze platforms in place, turn on the heat to melt giant blocks in your way
• Boat races: build a boat, sail it down the river, see who wins!
• Cloning machines! Have many little orbs following you around and you can solve problems with them

GD: FPS Multiplayer Map Concept: Eternity's Horizon!

Now that I've done all this FPS multiplayer research, it's time to come up with a map of my own!

The idea is, it's set on a futuristic monochromatic sci-fi rooftop. The player starts off in a bunker, the spawn point, on either end of the map and navigates the up and down motions of the buildings to find the perfect sniping spot. The player is fenced in by the height of the building-- falling off results in death. The level is set during evening, so spotlights can help guide the player around the level. There are elevators, which help in ascending quickly to the all-important high ground, but they can leave the player exposed compared to the relatively protected ramps. There are also other moving aspects leading to secret areas of the map where the player can pick up more ammo and health.

DA: DFG Assignments: Design Lab 1!

So among all the other courses I'm taking this semester, the newest one is Drawing for Game Designers! This is the first real drawing/designing course that's part of the core GAD curriculum-- the other drawing classes were for the Media group as a whole. Now it's time for some real GAD Designing! Whoohoo!
The first assignment we had was the first part of our Design Lab, which is an introduction to character design. Working from doodles, silhouettes, and textures, we sought to come up with exciting, colourful character designs that would engage the viewer. Here's my work for this assignment:

 I experimented a bit with the silhouettes: some are made with Alchemy, some traditionally with a Sharpie, and others still with the selection tool in Photoshop.

 The Force Fit assignment was where we had to fit two of three words together three different times in three separate designs. As you can see, I got Rugged, Clydesdale, and Ice Cream Truck.
 Here's some designs from my silhouettes and doodles:

and the final roughs, seven of which I'll go on to fully render!

GD: Loadout: Fissure Analysis

So up next for our Game Design class, we have to make a multiplayer first-person shooter! I chose the delightfully gorey, cartoony Loadout to research. Loadout is Edge of Reality's incredibly violent, no-holds-barred shoot-em-up FPS. You design your own gun from their ever-growing weapons kit, buy accessories to really kit yourself out, and go and make delightful cartoon violence.

What's your tolerance to guts?

Their Fissure map, which is the map I'll be looking at, has two variants: Day and Night. I'm not sure why they did this, but I guess it adds some variety as they really only have four maps in total. Fissure is set in an abandoned space mining quarry, still littered with ore extraction paraphernalia and little messages to the player and previous employees.
Loadout offers five kinds of gamestyle, which can be played on any map:

Five ways to kill your friends!

Blitz: capture control points!
Death snatch: deathmatch, with deaths measured by how many dropped items are collected after death!
Domination: capture more control points than Blitz!
Extraction: gather items and kill the other teams collectors!
Jackhammer: capture the flag, but the flag's a weapon!

Fissure is a very simple multiplayer map: essentially symmetrical, with even placement of health and ammo packs on both sides. There are two large landmarks in the shape of giant drill centers, where most players spawn around and most capture the flag and control points are placed.

The players are fenced in by large rock formations on all sides, and there are great canyons in the middle of the map where you can fall in and deny your enemies a kill. These are bridged by large metal structures.

 

The guard walls are great, because they protect the player as they traverse arguably the most dangerous area in the map: this is where the players are the most exposed, but it's the most important place to cross to get into enemy territory. This is one of the bottleneck areas of tension especially in Jackhammer games.
Otherwise, there are plenty of different paths for the player to take, especially if they're particularly nimble: one of the best ways to traverse this territory is by constantly jumping, which can lead you to some nice vantage points.

Littered around are also nice little health and ammo packs, placed specifically in anticipated areas of contention.

 

Here's an essential breakdown of the Fissure map:

Assume all dark blue indicates tunnels.