3RD PERSON LEVEL - ICY HOT 3

SYNOPSIS

You are a great hero, loved by humanity and feared by all evil. You have gained a reputation for setting your enemies a blaze with your patented 1000 degree gauntlet and your lighting fast ninja dash abilities.

Still, there is new evil on the horizon and they're bringing the cold.

Evil doers hurl the world into a new ice age with weather altering satellites; now your entire city is a frozen tundra. You and only you with your super hot fire dashing can melt away this evil ice.

Here is a rough tutorial level to teach the player how to use them.

ADVENTURE GAME BOSS BATTLE

Adventure Game Boss Battle Analysis 

I choose to analyze one of my favorite boss battles from one of the games in the Zelda Franchise.

the Twilight Fossil Stallord battle in the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. 

I think this fight has a great overall epic feeling to the fight mainly because it keeps the player moving at high speeds for the majority of the battle. 

The battle is set up at the end of a dungeon just as most of Zelda bosses, and there are two stages to the battle. As per Zelda fashion the player collected an item earlier in the dungeon that helps them defeat the boss in the final battle. In this case its an item called the spinner which uses a track system that's embedded into the walls of the dungeon to move the player over obstacles and to help defeat enemies.

The battle starts off in an a big circular room with an already dead monster's skeleton lying in the sand pit, which takes up the majority of the room. There is a small cut-scene with one of the game's antagonists and then the creature's skeleton is reanimated. The boss battle has the player use the spinner on a circular track surrounding the boss. the objective is to have the player detach from the wall while using the spinner and ride it over the sand and past smaller enemies that are summoned as obstacles and attack the Boss's spine. Do this a total of three times and the Stallord falls. 

In stage two of the battle the sand pit floor starts to sink and now the circular room is revealed to be a cylindrical spinner track with a smaller tower in the middle. The player is then pushed off the tower by the still alive head of the boss, and now the player has to use the spinner to get back up to the top of the tower. The obstacles the player faces are traps that are placed on the spinner track which causes the player to have to jump back and forth from the inner tower to the outer spinner track. 

Meanwhile the Stallord's floating head is firing fireballs at the player which have to be avoided in order to get closer to the head so it can be temporarily stunned and the player can attack their weak spot. Rinse and repeat one more time and the battle is won.

Battle plan for making my boss battle

In my game the player must have the blessed sword Excalibur at its full potential to even be able to get to the second room, which leads to the boss battle level.  I want the boss to be a giant suit of armor that does not want the ancient sword, Excalibur to be taken out of the museum.

As is old Zelda fashion I want to make a boss that feels epic. One was I think I can achieve this goal is to make the boss take up the majority of the room. Since we have to have our Boss move occasionally I want to him him start in one position and after a certain amount of attacks are dealt the boss will retreat to a top some pillars and summon some Ghostly Knights to defend him. All the knights must be defeated before the player can knock down the knight.

The giant Suit of armor with brandish a great spear like weapon. With which he will use to do execute sweeping strikes directed at the player. The player must use their environment to defeat the boss. I will have pillars in the level that can be knocked down and climbed so that the player isn't in the range of the spear sweep.  

For the finale I want to have the boss be positioned between two collapsible pillars and the player has to knock them over to imprison the giant. Then the player has to make their way to the helm of the suit and break a glowing gem atop the giants helmet.

Fin.

SUPER AWESOME CYBER DEATH BATTLE ARENA

Well, it wouldn't be right if I didn't end the car projects with another TRON-esque cyber level.

I'm going with the same look and feel of my previous race level and modifying it into a vehicular battle arena.

The plan is to have it be a simple circular track or octagonal so the players are always moving. Then after an allotted time I will have sections of the map disappear to stick with the crumbling cyber space theme.

The arena will have a dark mood and emissive lighting around the map. I want  the player to really feel like the world is crumbling and they have to defeat the other players to end the simulation and escape with their lives. With the changing terrain I want the players to have fun with their weapons early on and then when the level starts to break down it will lead to interesting maneuvering and death defying jumps.

 

These are the colors I am picturing, having the green and blue colors as the emissive materials with the dark purples and black to make up most of the landscape. 

These are some references of some Tron shots and concepts that will be some what of a guide for me.

SOPHMORE SPINOUT 2017

~Experience tranquility with my attract trailer~

BLUR

BLUR : ATTRACT MODE TRAILER

I choose this game because it holds a special place in my heart, and I spent the better part of an hour trying different search words in Google and YouTube to find this attract trailer.  

I like this trailer because it accentuates all the major features of the game, setting, power-ups, cars, and mayhem. Which is exactly what an attract trailer is for. The overall feeling I get from watching the trailer is an adrenaline fueled adult Mario Kart, which is how the marketing team advertised the game during its initial launch. 

The trailer is very fast faced, switching between multiple shots of track design, different power-ups available to the players, and vehicles being thrashed all over in all out mayhem. Which is perfect for this game's overall experience.

PARTICLE THEATER

Particle Theater

Here we go gang

The particle week  is done with and I was able to roughly follow a tutorial for a Laser blasted, hadoken-esque projectile. There really weren't much resources out on the web to make a pure particle laser blast so I turned to a mesh based emitter system. 

About 90 percent of the actual particle system is comprised of meshes with specific materials that have dynamic movement. Other than that I used simple modules in Unreal Engine 4's Cascade system to have the colors change over the life of the particle and make certain elements rotate. 

I was also able to attach said projectile to a temp gun turret that my professor provided

 (Thank you Scott Carroll)

There was an issue where the projectile would only shoot facing the positive X axis to the world. With some small tweaks to the initial scripting I was able to beat the turret into working a bit better.

PARTICLES

Alright,  it's Particle time.

For my particle system, keeping with the theme of cyber space and sci fi, I've decided to try to create a Mega Man type laser blast. This particle system will be connected to a mesh that will shoot out of my car's side mounted laser cannons. 

I'm not entirely sure how to go about the process but I know I want the blast to have a ribbon emitter, so the blast will have a trail.

 I believe a simple spark emitter will be enough for this blast since I intend for it to be a fairly quick effect. The sparks will probably just be a garnish on top of the actual blast. I am not sure if I could use a GPU emitter for this effect.

I found this video of someone that actually made a real life laser weapon. Unfortunately it is a beam weapon and not a blast...But I don't think there are real Mega Man type weapons out there.

Still this is somewhat the direction I want to go in with added Mega Man type effects.

After I tinkered with Cascade in Unreal I realized that I had roughly zero idea to what I was doing, so I hunted for a tutorial.

Unfortunately after many hours of searching, I was not able to find a tutorial for something close to what I want to create.
I did however find someone that makes great particles and tutorials so I'm going to try and figure something out with the information they provide.

FUSION CORE "BARREL"

I finished my explosive "Barrel" project for my programming studio course.

Here's a short clip of this curious young bronco

 interacting with the ever explosive personality of my fusion core "barrel"

                           

Everything for the Fusion Core Barrel was scripted in Blueprint on Unreal 4.13

Here's the code that makes it all tick.

Overview screenshot

 

Hit Detectors and flow control for each amount of force applied to the Fusion Core

 Burn sequence 1/2

 

Burn Sequence 2/2

 Explosion 1/2

 Explosion 2/2

Finally this is the network that deals damage to the truck

CYBER SPACE RACE

 Here's the brainstorming ideas I came up with for my race track theme and layout.

 ~NARRATIVE~

      The cyber world around you is sick, infested with a virus and on its final cycle. You are racing other cars for the right to escape the infected cyberspace and survive.There isn't enough power to materialize everyone out, there will only be one winner. After the second lap we expect the system to start to crash and the environment will literally start to crash. The last legs of the firmware will break down and the power pads that once gave you helpful routes and power ups will start to malfunction and change the track.

 This is the first draft of what I want the layout to be with some storyboard thumbnails of the track  break down

Also the color palette I would like to incorporate to give the level a cyber feel

I drew inspiration for the theme from two of my favorite sci-fi franchise.

Star Trek's Borg cube for the asteroid debris field

 and the overall aesthetic of Tron Legacy

EXPLODING BARRELS

This is the design of my exploding barrel, that will be used in my upcoming race track level. 

My car is outfitted with super rad light particle canons, powered by magic sci-fi logic. I figured I might as well have a barrel to fit with the style of my car, and eventually the racetrack.

I drew inspiration from the UNSC fusion cores from the HALO series

Spiky Block Blueprint Class

The Spiky Block, or SpikyDAD like I like to call him is a simple hard working grunt that guards treasure 24/7. This subspecies of SpicusBlokus is a very simple life form. All they know how to do is hover above the ground motionless and because of their small brains they startle very easily, causing them to lose their breath and fall down temporarily. Here we see them in their natural habitat, really just there occupying space until Jumping Jim walks underneath them. Even then they aren't really much of a threat and Jim would have to stop moving to actually be crushed. Still, SpikyDADs try their best. Bless their hearts.....and their potato brains. They have no ill will towards Jim but their small brains can't help getting startled when Jim walks under them. SpikyDADs are outfitted with the latest fashion of spiky golf cleats to protect them from the harsh world.

          

 This challenge assignment was a nice wrap up to the basic blueprint material. It really challenged me to try to incorporate all the basic blueprint techniques and knowledge I have learned over the past weeks. Animating with the timeline made it much easier to organize and optimize my node network. Although animating with the timeline in Unreal isn't the most glamorous feature. 

            

Here is the Blueprint Event Graph for all the features and animations

   I tried my best to keep everything relatively clutter free and organized. Since I am a very visual learner it serves as a reminder to stay focused and organized instead of cluttered and chaotic.

   Originally after the initial class when we created our character we didn't jump into dynamic materials or animating the facial features. I decided to try and make the shadow scale, and have a dynamic color changing material before the following class. That is why there are two different styles of color changing. The eyes change color with the use of a timeline, where as the body changes colors in a more manual way. I used a series of nodes, with exact hex color codes to change the color of the main body blue and then back to the original color. Later when we were introduced to color graphs in timeline I decided to have the eyes utilize the timeline and the body stay separate with its own line of code. Simply because I wanted to keep a visual reminder that there are 7 billion ways to crack an egg.

   Everything other than the timeline is very basic, using the event begin play node to gather the relative locations and scale of actors on the top left. Camera shake and play sound cue on the top right, nothing innovative on my side since its very basic and just as how my instructor showed us.

Treasure Block

The Treasure Block platformer is done and 

here the official play through from start to finish. 

Enjoy.

I decided to add two new characters to the mix, there is the black background text "spirit" and the blue background text "ghost".

The black text is the spirit that runs all the obstacles in the treasure cave, and the blue text is the ghost of a previous treasure hunter that died to the obstacles years ago. Now as the player is the newest treasure hunter they have to complete what the previous hunter couldn't. As the player progresses they are helped by the blue ghost as he left teleporters for the new hunter and gives them hints to help them complete the obstacles.

TREASURE BLOCK

You find yourself in an ancient tomb full of dangerous obstacles, levitating environment, and mystical portals, but this is just another day in the life of a treasure hunter.

In my level I decided to present various mechanics in two separate sections that are blocked off from each other. At the start the player is shown exactly how high they can jump with no threat of getting stuck or being killed. The spikes in the first room are introduced to the player but there are unreachable and are just for setting the mood of the level. Next they are given a small test of skill when a moving platform is introduced, now they have to get used to timing their jumps in order to progress through the level. The player is shown a gate blockade, displayed in a different color than the walls to differentiate the two. At the end of the first section the player is basically given a midterm test on everything they've learned so far. Now there is a threat of being killed by the spikes first introduced in the player start. The player must time their jumps perfectly to grab a key to the gates blocking their path.

Only to find complete despair that there are two gates safeguarding the treasure! Now armed with their mastery of jumping and timing the player is shown the new elements of the level, teleporters and jump pads. The new elements are introduced in a harm free scenario to demonstrate how they work, you need fuel to power the teleporter, and then they will teleport them to the matching color portal. Since nothing too extreme is introduced they are thrown into their final test that combines all elements of the previous section mixed with teleporters, jump pads, and moving variants of both.
Finally the player will reach the final gate key and have access to the final teleporter, which does not require fuel, and the treasure is theirs for the taking.

PLATFORM GAME ANALYSIS | MEGAMAN X |

MEGAMAN X

ANALYSIS

MEGAMAN X  is an awesome platform game developed by Capcom back in December of 1993. Since then the game and franchise have become staples in video game history, and because of so has been ported to various consoles. I have the pleasure of playing this game on my phone whenever I please.

This game is wonderful for many different reasons and it makes a fantastic great impression. Simply put this game doesn't treat you like a baby incapable of pressing a button. No, this game treats you like an intelligent human being and it even rewards you for such. 

MEGAMAN X's intro level drops the player right onto a road/ bridge system with cars driving by. Right in the beginning you aren't in any real danger because the cars are part of the background. Right there is the first seconds of the game you are taught that some of the elements you see on screen aren't harmful to you. The layout of the level helps because you are on a simple bridge where you are able to see the underside of the bridge. There aren't secret rooms or passages you have to find, yet. 

The game doesn't try to kill you until you start to move to screen right, so you have some time to press all the buttons to try and see what they do. But something else is happening in the background, X, the character the player is controlling seems to be absorbing some type of blue energy around his body, which then if charged enough turns yellow. After the player shoots their weapon they see a giant blast come from the hand cannon, but then what happens? Now X is only shooting these small yellow blasts, why can't they shoot the big powerful blast? When the player stops shooting they animation of the energy absorption starts over and when the player shoots again they are able to fire the giant blast. The game is teaching the player a very crucial part of the game without you even realizing, charging a move is very useful.

 Half Charge

 Fully Charged

After the player starts to move to screen right they are presented with a spiked wheel that is headed towards them, if the player doesn't jump or shoot at the wheel it will do damage to X. After that thought there aren't any enemies until you reach the end of the screen and reappear on the next section. The intro level paces itself very evenly, they present an enemy to the player and give them ample time to deal with the threat. When the player learns how to shoot basic spike wheel enemy on the ground they are presented with an enemy that is stationary but fires missiles at them in intervals. The level continues to up the challenge with flying enemies with different attacks, after that they are shown more difficult enemies with more complex movements and more enemies on screen. After some enemies are defeated they will drop a health object that replenishes your health bar according to the size of the object.

Health Item

 Spiky Death Wheel

Stationary Missile Launcher

This continues until you reach a mini boss that upon destruction causes the bridge to collapse. 

Mini Boss fight with different enemies

 

Mini Boss collapses and X is trapped 

Now this is where this game really makes you feel special. Up until this point you've had to jump and shoot to defeat different enemies and progress forward. The greatest part is that the game didn't have to tell you a single thing for you to figure out what to do. The difficulty was amped up with every enemy at a reasonable pace that anyone can understand. But now you seem to be stuck in a hole, the mini boss is defeated and you are safe but you don't see a way forward, did this game trick you into this inescapable prison? Of course not, the game let's you figure your own way out without any outside help. Eventually the player will jump on a wall and notice that X slides down the wall slowly. What does this mean? Why is he doing that could it be a clue, you better believe it. When the player presses the jump button while sliding on the wall they perform a wall jump that will get them out of the pit. This way the obstacles were presented to the player in a setting that allowed them the necessary time to figure out the full range of X's abilities without spoon feeding them the answers. 

 

WALL JUMPS!?!?!

 The player is also rewarded because of their knowledge and discovery. Immediately after the mini boss section they come across a small gap that has a vertical wall on the bottom. Which is strange because its the only gap so far that has that feature. If the player decides to go down the gap they are rewarded with health items that replenish their health meter. Showing the player that there are secret paths hidden in the game and if the player explores more they will find treasure or rewards, which ties into the game later when X has the possibilities of finding upgrades through secret paths.

 Secret Path?

Discovery Reward!

Afterwards there are sections where the ground underneath X starts to shake and eventually collapse so the player has to run through quickly to avoid falling to their death. This is also paced out perfectly because the first piece to crumble is on the edge of a gap and has a small chance of actually killing the player. But later there is a whole section of ground that collapses and will kill the player if they aren't fast enough to react. The game is fair on the player, allowing them to make mistakes early on and not die immediately for not realizing they were in danger but then tests them on their ability to react and adapt with harder circumstances.
 

The ground can crumble?

Later as the player progresses they are challenged yet again by new enemies that drop mines on the ground, showcasing yet again more possible enemy abilities. There are enemies introduced near the end of the level that are riding vehicles, and if the player hits them with a smaller blast they will knock them out of the vehicle but the vehicle stays intact and the player can jump on top of them while they are moving. Essentially just introducing mechanics that will become crucial later in the game.

Finally to really drive the main idea of the game the developers pin X against the real boss of the intro level. No matter what the player does here they will lose. They simply are not meant to be able to defeat the boss yet. X is saved when Zero comes to his rescue, then he tells the player that you aren't strong enough to defeat him yet and you need to power X up to his full potential. This sets the objective for the rest of the game and ties the story into you objective, find power ups to get X to his full power and defeat the boss.

 Inevitable Defeat, Git Gud

 Zero is the best

X git gud, Man

-Below is the intro level layout-