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.
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:
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!
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.
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!
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!
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
