Since I've been making so many 3D environments, I've started to notice that it's crucial for portfolio and for players to have a cinematic that displays the environment. Granted, I've been doing this in the past, yet I haven't gotten into a full study of it. I've been looking through examples in games, where you enter new areas or vistas and a short cinematic shows the part of the world you just entered. Castlevania Lords of Shadow does this quite a lot.
Sadly, the best reference I could find was this developer's commentary on how they built the environments, and though most of the ingame footage is just a camera pan around the player, there's a few camera panning shots of what I was talking about before that are establishing shots for the world.
Movie reference also develops a good grounded basis to create work on, as movies are all camera operation. Here's the opening to the movie Hugo:
Since the game mechanic's coming to a close relatively soon, we're beginning our intro into the next project: making a multi-phased boss battle. The first question is posed, however: what makes a boss fight?
Boss fights can be either huge or small, 1v1s between characters. The direction I am hoping to take will be a larger scale one, preferably with two phases to reduce problems, asa huge character can be both tedious to animate, model, and code, but for the sake of this being our first AI-developing project.
As of now, I have two references I really like a lot for directions towards what I'd like to achieve (Just realized they're both basically heads with arms. Talk about coincidence. Was looking into a more whole bipedal approach, though. Either way, these are good references.)
Reference 1:
Wonderful 101 - Jergingha
Fight starts at 18:54 for reference.
Basic map layout:
Reference 2:
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - Toymaker
Fight starts at 18:48 for reference.
Basic map layout:
I'll cobble together some rough sketches of some designs soon and place them up here at some point. The actual drawing segment for the planning and pre-modeling phase is actually scheduled for another class. I'm just going to doodle some up like my map layouts - super simple, not a lot of work, but gets the ideas across.
What with the FPS map finished, I've entered the threshold of the next project - creating a mechanic and building a game around it. First thing' first, however - coming up with some ideas. Here's my top ten ideas to date of where my mind may be going with this future game's mechanic:
-Gravity Change
-Player is able to manipulate gravity to walk on walls or ceiling, or even manipulate objects, giving them more weight/less weight
-Electric Charge (- +)
-Player has the power to change their charge, allowing maneuvering the environment by increasing magnetism on specific surfaces, repelling and attracting
-Wall Jumping
-Player is capable of scaling walls by jumping off of them and sliding down them through friction, and is capable of latching onto edges
-Respawning
-Player instantly respawns, and the world doesn't despawn (kill) the body of the previous life, allowing the player to use this ragdoll as a platform/bait/etc. to their needs
-Time manipulation
-Player is given the ability to speed or slow the world around them down, allowing them to overcome obstacles, or solve puzzles
-Spatial Swapping
-Player has the ability to swap places with a specific object/life form, allowing puzzle solving elements and platforming to be considered
-Casting Shadows
-Player interacts his its shadow, where some obstacles are invisible/bigger/smaller than they seem, due to the factor that the shadow in the background is the real object to overcome
-Rocket Jumping
-Player can maneuver through explosive procedures at the cost of health to overcome obstacles, making the player consider the costs and means necessary to overcome certain jumps and puzzles
-Scale resizing
-Player is capable of changing the size of themselves and can fit into smaller locations, or smash objects too large for them initially
-Item Generating
-Player can manipulate the ability to create say a cube or shape they can throw around or use as a spring/platform/bridge/etc. to overcome obstacles
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After considering my options, I decided to combine a few to think of a unique approach to my game mechanic. The mechanic is built where the world around the player is powered by sound, and the player can adjust the music/sounds to manipulate the world around them, such as playing classical music to slow the world down, or techno to increase their speed and jump height. The world's color is associated towards a certain type of genre, and will change to further convey the purpose of how the world is defined by the sound. I feel this idea was built off the concept of the electrical charge concept of being able to change forms to accommodate the obstacle, as well as elements from the time manipulation idea, where a slower beat will slow down the world and vice versa.
I dug up some reference from games to build this idea on, explaining why it's relevant to the idea:
Viewtiful Joe
The gameplay for Viewtiful Joe is built around the concept that the player is controlling a movie playing as Joe, making the camera zoom in for harder hits and observing details, slow-motion for dodging bullets and problem solving, as well as adding speed lines to make Joe move faster and attack faster. I like this capability to manipulate the world around the player, while giving the player a bunch of fun new abilities for puzzles and platforming alike.
Chroma
Chroma is a game in alpha state of this post, and it's a FPS built around music. It's being made by the people behind DJ Hero and Guitar Hero, and the concept behind it is you're able to move and shoot based on the music that's playing. Shooting on beat/moving on beat will make explosions happen on downbeats, or allow the player to dash faster as the music climaxes. There's a ton of great potential in this game's mechanics alone, and I'd like to look deeper into it. Also, notice how each distinctive sound-operated action has a distinct color associated to it.
After quite some time of work and texture jobs (most importantly - PARTICLE EFFECTS!), I was able to put together a really simplistic design of what I wanted to achieve using mostly BSP and a few meshes for specific reasoning in environment and spring pad use. Lot of panners and sparks to convey movement in a non-mobile asset space! Here's some screen caps!
Time to whip out the isometric paper, because we're making a layout! Nothing here is set in stone, but the idea's main concept should be prevalent.
I had the concept of building a level around an orbital elevator, sometimes depicted in games as a giant high-powered, high-speed mechanized cargo elevator above the world heading to a space station of base. With this in mind, symmetry is a large participant here, but I'm not the biggest fan of just flat maps, so I want to plan at multiple times through the combat, the elevator's central circle will break off it's bindings and fall behind the outer ring (which has the wheels rolling up the tracks on the back), and thus become lowered, changing the play field. I'd also like to have a theatrical intro to the level having the players ride smaller glass cylinder elevators up to the main one and boarding it before the match starts.
Players have to adapt and prepare for the change, either being stranded on the central platform, or on the outer circle. If you're daring enough, you can jump from the outer ring to the inner circle, but be wary, as you'll take damage from such a drop and be stranded on the central platform until the elevator repairs itself!
Here's the quick drawing I developed, and the photoshopped version. Reference for the story or theme will be displayed afterwards:
Reference:
Accomplishing the simple aesthetics won't be hard - fast panners on textures and swift matinees allows me to just make minimal work of the models, maybe even just make alpha cards, and as long as players notice motion, they will know not to jump off the guard-rail edges... Hopefully.
So since I've passed the 2D platformer tutorial level, it's time to move on to the next challenge project for this college year: an FPS Multiplayer map. First thing's first, however: reference! How am I to understand how to build one if I don't analyze one already done first?
To solve that question, I played and recorded a session of Team Fortress 2 on a King of the Hill game mode arena-style map, Viaduct. To get a good sense of mobility and to show off the stage (and die less for that matter), I played as the Scout class (the only drawbacks were the poor framerate that FRAPs has the ability of inducing, so some quality aiming is lacking, try to refrain from punching your screen as you observe). Essentially, here's the video!
(As a disclaimer, TF2 offers "dingalings," or hit sounds upon dealing damage to an enemy player. I'm not the biggest fan of the default dingaling, so I modded the file to play the Wilhelm Scream depending on how much damage I do. Less damage is a higher pitch, more is lower. That'll explain the odd noises you may hear when I land hits.)
I felt the video wasn't enough as gameplay can be exciting, and seeing players in action responding to each other on a map is great feedback of the design, however I also was tasked with more than just grabbing gameplay: I had to further analyze the map by drawing one out personally, understanding and pointing out ammo locations as well as health packs, not to mention both teams' spawn points and essentially the Hill (that of which one team must be King of to win for 3 mins total). Here's the map layout:
Looking at the map design, it's the same on both sides for the teams. This map is used for both arena and king of the hill gameplay modes in TF2, and it provides a lot of odds and turns early on near the spawn. Essentially, it helps slow down what could be a straight run to the middle, where the control point is, and the only item locations on this map are essentially towards the middle, where the action is on the extreme sides. There's a building in the middle of both sides in which you can go upstairs and even exit on a cliffside, overlooking much of the central map. The only drawback is there's no cover whatsoever, however for certain players it could be an advantage as towards not having to worry about accidentally shooting walls they walk behind when avoiding enemy fire. The open area that is the central part of the map puts the player at risk of being obliterated, but in exchange they accomplish the game mode's objective: to capture the control point and defend it for three minutes.
Whelp, it's been roughly two weeks, and the platformer has been finished. Originally, we were intended to use assets given to us to use (simple grey blocks), as well as a photoshopped character and enemy character to develop our intro tutorial level, however we were given some liberties in changing our environment (sadly not the music preloaded in) if we had extra time on our hands. I couldn't pass up this chance, and went for a very 8 to 16-bit look while retaining 3D models. Nothing too crazy, but a nice stylistic approach. We finished our first few passes and I had to make some adjustments on the level's design as it felt too drawn out and lack of action. Changes will be made soon in UE4. Pics soon!
