Adventure Game: Boss Battle Research

I decided to look to Final Fantasy XII's final boss battle for inspiration (coincidentally also one of my first boss battles as a kid.) The thing about this battle that intrigued me is the use of stages in combat-- every time you think he's beat, the boss character transforms into an ever more powerful form with new abilities that you must strategize to counter. It made the ending battle very long and arduous when I played it, but in my opinion, so much more worth it when I finally beat it at the end.

The structure of my adventure game lends itself to a boss with stages, as each of my four levels has a different elemental theme. I want the boss fight to be a culmination of everything the player has learned in the game up to that point, to really call back to earlier experiences and test the skills the player has accumulated over the course of the game. Games that do this instead of just presenting you with an enemy with a slightly deeper health pool and calling it a boss seem to be much more satisfying to the player.

Here are the skills that the player has learned in each level and some ideas on how I will apply them as mechanics in the boss fight:
EARTH
Skill: Using ice spells to structurally weaken rock.
Mechanic: Weakening the structures underneath the boss character to cause them fall damage/possibly a stun condition.
Boss Tactic: Launching rock "bombs" that injure the player and possibly make them "stick" for a short time. Boss is somewhat mobile during this stage.

ICE
Skill: Using fire spells to melt ice obstacles.
Mechanic: Using fire spells to melt the contact point between icicles and the ceiling, to be used as falling weapons against the boss.
Boss Tactic: Shooting icicles at player, possible chance of "freezing" player, slowing/stopping mana regeneration. Boss is relatively still during this stage.

FIRE
Skill: Using wind spells to put out fires and prevent their spread.
Mechanic: Using wind spells to counter fires which could threaten to burn down the area the player is standing in (allowing them to fall to their death.)
Boss Tactic: Setting fire to the player's area, which then spreads and threatens to consume them. Boss is mobile during this stage.

WIND
Skill: Using earth spells to block and redirect strong winds.
Mechanic: Using earth spells to prevent strong winds from pushing and keeping the player against the bottom edge of the screen, allowing them to move around freely again behind the shelter of rocks, AND/OR using earth spells to redirect winds in a way that triggers an advantageous event.
Boss Tactic: Whisking player up in an attempt to drop them and cause fall damage? Boss is very mobile during this stage, harder to hit.

My idea is to have the boss transform into the next elemental stage when it is about to be beaten, changing its tactics each time (its Earth form would use Earth attacks, etc.) I like the idea of bringing the environment into play which feels like a more clever and interesting way to gain an upper hand in combat than just being able to button mash spells quickly. At the end of the last stage, the boss will admit defeat at last and hopefully the player will walk away from the experience feeling a sense of victory and accomplishment.

Adventure Game: Achieving a "Retro" Look

Workshop scene with no post-processing.

Workshop scene with post-processing.

I'm working on a little wizard-themed game for Programming class and since we're limited to kitbashing in terms of art, I thought I'd put some effort into making the game look simple as a style and not as a limitation. I mostly looked back toward old adventure games of the Gameboy era and took inspiration from their pixelized graphics and signature olive green palette. Although I did want to incorporate other colors for better readability and visual interest, I tried to stick with a very unified, retro-looking color scheme.

Instead of modeling all my assets in a low-poly/pixel style and coloring them accordingly, I achieved the look I was going for by making use of some simple materials hooked up to a Post-Process Volume as blendables. The first step was to pixelate the scene, and the second was to achieve a sort of cell-shaded effect by splitting the value data into 5 distinct categories or "bands" on a value mapping image as opposed to the more natural value gradient of realistic lighting. Inside my custom value mapping texture, I was also able to apply the olive green tint, which helps any color present in the scene harmonize well with the rest. My value map does not include pure white, so any white material is mapped to a light green. Because of this, the more saturated a color is, the more "pure" the hue-- but all colored materials are essentially a blend between olive green and the input color.

I am planning to deviate from the olive green in later levels (switching to a primarily blue palette for the ice-themed level, for example,) but I'm really pleased with the look I was able to get for the intro level. This unique usage of post-process volumes allows me as an artist to achieve an almost 2D sprite look, but leverage the full 3D capabilities that Unreal offers.

Final Sophomore Spinout Racing Trailer

Here it is, my final trailer for Sophomore Spinout 2017! Our levels were only taken up to a greyboxing stage, but they're pretty fun regardless. Enjoy!

Racing Trailer Analysis: Gran Turismo 4 Intro

Although the Gran Turismo 4 intro starts out with prerendered footage, about halfway through the mood changes and it switches to using in-game clips. This trailer plays upon loading the game, and has a good mix of everything-- personal, dramatic close up shots, long shots of the race tracks, and exciting racing footage. It starts out with the prerendered footage backed by an opera song to build up an "epic" feel, set up the drama and tension of the racing atmosphere, and provide some beauty shots of one of their cars (the Ford GT.) When the race officially starts, the tone of the trailer quickly switches gears and jumps into Panama by Van Halen, setting an exciting, upbeat pace for the rest of the intro which consists of racing footage-- getting the players hyped up for the fast-paced action they're about to experience as they play the game.

Particle System: Final

Here's a neat little video showing my final acid explosion particle system.

This was a fun time to work on (when is exploding things over and over not fun?) although there is still a weird bug that I'm going to try to figure out where the debris sometimes has the correct Material applied and sometimes doesn't. Regardless, it was a really great learning experience! I ended up having X emitters: Flash, Radial Burst, Body, Splash, and Debris. I combined the Particle System with a Decal spawner in the exploding frog Blueprint to create the splat effect on the floor. Gameplay-wise, I also got a custom-made damage-over-time volume to spawn over the splat so if you stand in it, you take 10 damage per second until you leave it or hit zero health.

I messed with other kinds of particles for my racing level as well including a "magic beam" and some mystical ambient dust and I honestly found it very enjoyable. It's a different way to look at building something that's very detail oriented.

Particle System: Research

For my first foray into making custom particle systems, I decided to create a sort of "acid explosion" to go with my exploding barrel that I made a few weeks ago. Ideally, the statue would explode, spraying acid and bits of debris and leaving a puddle in its wake. There aren't really any real life examples of this specifically, but I had seen videos of exploding fruit before and knew that I wanted a similar sort of consistency and look, so that is what I decided to base my particle system on. Below are some good slow motion videos of exploding fruit that I've been referencing in planning my different emitters.





Finally, here's a short video I found that's somewhat in the same vein as what I'm trying to do, including the residual puddle after the explosion:



So far it seems like I'll need to have at least four emitters: one for the sparks at the beginning of the explosion, one for the main substance or "body" of the exploding acid, one for the splashes that travel further out, and a mesh emitter for the debris.

Exploding Barrel: Final

Here's the follow-up on the exploding barrel I made for Programming class. You can check out the concept work here, and check out the "barrel" in action in the video above! Below I've included all the Blueprints used to make this work, which as you can see are fairly straightforward. When the Actor receives a hit, it essentially checks the strength and, based on a pre-assigned range of values, decides whether it's a small bump (nothing happens,) a hit (it begins to burn and then explodes after a random amount of seconds,) or a big hit (it explodes immediately.) In addition, the "barrel" deals damage and pushback upon exploding.