Level design: Vortec R and D

The theme of this map is an active military testing facility. This site tests vortex and tornado related events for construction of prop and tornado related weapons. You are the current test subject of the X19 Vertical relation prop. It is a clean fire and kill weapon that is still in the test phase, requiring you to be the happless victim to test it out. I want it to have a refined feel in the starting tutorial location and a more swamp-like feel for the testing ground in order to make the test feel more realistic in its testing.

Refrence:

BOSS BATTLE: Column of doom

Boss Research:

For the research portion I looked at old sonic Eggman boss battle from Sonic: Chaos. The inspiration I drew from this was the different states of him, as he took damage his contraptions took on different forms to indicate the amount of damage he has taken.

Total Carnage Refrence: Large boss that responds to hits with sprite appearing damage. Can fire
multiple directions and becomes more hectic with more damage done.

  I would like this to work towards my Character, as it takes damage it appears in three distinct states:Complete and muscular pillar,  half pillar damaged with one arm, and refined Greek statue. Player attacks cause the statue to flash red and shriek, which immediately causes it to retreat.

Boss Behavior: In its first state, it moves slow with heavy throws, as it becomes damaged it begins to move faster and more hectic. The objects it throws are smaller and thrown at faster speeds, making them hard to dodge. The boss will move on diagonals and have a random order to movement, the ground slightly cracks to indicate where he is headed. The Map is square and this adds a level of unpredictability. The King column throws smaller columns at the player that detonate and crumble on impact.

Fire Spawn Objects:
 The King throws spawned columns, which detonate on impacted and cause radial damage. These pillars will be thrown and spawned in straight lines. Agile players will be able to avoid these obstacles.

Behavioral Change overtime:
The King moves faster as he progresses from one stage to another. As his damage state increases, he moves quicker and more sporadically, throwing objects more frequently as he moves. In the final form it moves even faster and shoots smaller fast projectiles.

Health:
The pillar uses a standard large health bar that can be seen over the column. It will become more intensely red as its health lowers to zero.It will start off a dark maroon to indicate its damage state, them move to a true red, them following up with a saturated red.

Battle Arena Preproduction: Decimation

Intro:
For the Battle Arena, i chose to continue on the theme used in my race game. Taking place in a derelict auto-scrapper facility, the foragers of this wreaked world find themselves captured by one of the many demons that has now called this world home. Dropped into a battle arena, these racers fight to the death for survival.
Theme/ Reference:
The theme for this map is set in a post apocalyptic city, pertaining inside of an abandoned factory. The factory is workout and crumbling, as the twisted metal rusts and the concrete decays.
Refrence Photos:

USP:The crane

An industrial crane, four of these are placed in the map and offer their use once a trigger is activated in the center of the map. These cranes carry a vehicle rigged with explosives that once dropped, explode on impact with ground or racer. They deal radial damage and can be used multiple times per game. They are a difficult to activate asset resulting in a balance for the damage that they cause.

Map:

Max Players: 16

The map itself is a hexagonal shape that offers a central platform with small interconnected platforms. The racers start on these smaller platforms and in front of racers are a weapon pickup, so racers start with a weapon, and a speed-boost to shoot them into the action of the central part of the map. These platforms are openly reachable from the main platform and feature different hazards that can be used in game-play. These platforms are interconnected with bridges. two large conveyor belts run through the map and are the sole access point to the trigger for the USP of this map. These conveyors have actively damaging scrap cars on them that once hit, will kill a player. The exterior platforms feature a large cage that keeps racers bound inside the map and offer ricochet holders in case the vehicles hit an explosion and violently get flung. There are four USP Cranes situated in the map and once triggered, drop a damaging payload. Stacks of cars are featured in the middle and on the outside platforms to provide obstacles and cover for those seeking to use ambush tactics. The pit in the center serves as the melter for the factory scene and an unwelcome death trigger for racers.

Frames:

Frame 1: Players spawn into game.

Frame 2: The pit of fire at the center of the map with the sprite for the crane USP.

Frame 3: Activated crane dropping a car mesh on an unsuspecting racer.

Frame 4: Two racers encountering each other on a bridge on the outskirts of two platforms, it is a choke-point.

Frame 5:The conveyors that drop the player to the trigger for the Crane USP.

Frame 6: A victim of the USP is hit with a mesh and it detonates.

Frame 7: A Racer hides behind the cover of a few stacked cars to ambush an enemy racer.

Color pallete:

Sticking with my previous theme, i will use these colors:

These colors add to the feeling of rust and decay i would like in my map.

 

Sophmore Spinout 2017

Attract Trailer Research

I found the content of this attract trailer to to be quite nice and it serves the point of an attract well. It features in game game-play, special powers and abilities with a nice look at the environments.
The music is annoying after a few repeats and i find it to be overly repetitive and tempted to put a coin in the machine to make it stop.

The Flamenado (Final Particle)

As the title states, here is my final particle: The Flamenado!

Particle Emitters:

For this particle i comprised it of a Gpu emitter, a small cpu emitter, two ribbon emitters and a beam emitter. The GPU emiter is used for the "body" of the tornado and is comprised of all of the fire spritesheets. The cpu emiter is for the small embers that radiate from the bottom to the top of the particle. The ribbon and beam emiter are the smoke effects of the piece.

Here are some level photos of the particle:

I made a short film of my particle connected to a blueprint to use for my game level design:

Research for Particle effect: Flamenado

Flamenado, a tornado made of lava and flames. I wanted to create this particle due to the need for a unique rigged particle to tie into my hell-themed map. It is a large spinning vortex of flame that once scripted and created properly, will project gpu particles, ribbons,and debris meshes to create a unique effect. I began my research with exploring real life phenomena. I explored several videos on tornado rotation as well as shape.

Fire Spout 

In rare occasions, there is a natural event called a fire spout that can be caused and created from the air temperature difference caused by natural wildfire. I have attached a couple videos of this phenomena:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGmLtdrsjGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TakT2pEJOqo

I enjoyed the tornado-like qualities of the the spout as it moved through space. I soon began to research into the particle effects systems of unreal and stumbled across this particle emitter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINt7wJQVHE

It does not have a tutorial however, but it showed the particle system i wanted to create was doable. I looked at several videos on Youtube in an attempt to try to find a tornado-like particle emitter and had no luck. The videos covered were often times meshes imported through maya with long-coded blueprints. Unfortunately, i was unable to find proper coding and began to experiment with unreal itself to create the desired effect.

Unreal

 In unreal, I began by creating a GPU Particle emitter. A tornado is a large collection of particles and this emitter was the only one that could generate the number of particles that I would need to create the wind-like vortex. I played with the emitter settings and created a vortex of gpu particles that were bounded and began from the top and spiraled downward, just like the beginning vortex effect of a tornado. My result is pictured below:

It was a happy accident, and i still am not one hundred percent sure how i created this particle, but it portrays the desired effect i am looking for.It is in the prototype phase currently, but it will also have small meshes that cycle along the same cylinder shape as the GPUs, helping to establish the particles have density and weight. It is still a vortex, and i plan on adding ribbons to create "windlike" distortions along the body of the tornado.

Final Exploding Barrel

Today i completed my final barrel for Programming class. It is  a retro-inspired fuel pump and they go off with a bang when hit! I worked on tweaking the behaviors of the object, as it is a big heavy flammable container and should act like one. It has its own sound cues for the explosion and "burning" sequences, as well as timers to randomize the explosion of the barrels. Here is the coding to make it work:

Here is the video of the barrel in action! It was a bang of a time!

Racing game level: Hell to Pay

For my Racing game idea, I first sought ideas from the vehicle i was designing for 3-D class, my Cavalry Hell Camino.
I began to search for concepts on the internet and these were good refrences to the theme i had in mind:

Exposition: 
My narrative takes place a few years after a modern day Hell-pacalypse. The world has fallen into pits of fire and ruins as corruption and greed fueled the return of the damned to the physical world. There is still hope in the human race, as we have sought shelter away from urban centers and found comfort in small refuges spread throughout the surviving forests and lakes. Even with peace, there is still an ever present need for supplies and the hell risers are the ones who seek to savor that need. They race and dodge through the shattered remains of our old cities in hopes of finding much needed supplies, and the hope to end this apocalypse once and for all.
Level Design:
 After creating the narrative and playing with ideas and spending some time researching playing racing games, i settled on this path:

The level follows an odd contorted path. It begins above ground on a broken highway cluttered with debris. After the race begins and the players learn movement control the world shakes and the highway collapses into a shattered pit of hell where they first run into challenging obstacles. The ground instability has fueled other parts of the roadway to give and in doing so, caused the burned out hulls of old cars to come crashing onto the winding road path. Racers will have to navigate around these obstacles and come across the first loop. The roadway shifts 45 degrees vertically as the road curves in a circular shape around a central fire and loops under the previous bridge. Players must watch out for larger falling debris as they make their way to a broken crossroads, where a larger section of road has collapsed into the depths. Only issue is the roadway is not supported and may give way under players!

 As players pass around this challenge they encounter the pit, a large downward spiraling track that has a ball of hell fire shooting flames onto various parts of the track. Clever players can block these or take damage. Also while avoiding cars that have crashed onto the track. once players have passed through they encounter a large gap in the roadway and must boost in order to pass through. on the other side of this the roadway stretches back up to the surface where they encounter the first gas station. The gas stations have rusted fuel pumps that once triggered, will detonate on impact. Players that survive this are rewarded with a boost. They soon encounter the blocked Highway 45, where there are several cars creating blockages and barriers that players will have to navigate in order to pass through. About halfway through the player encounters a fuel truck on the verge of a melt down: it spews flames from its damaged tank and players unfortunate enough to get to close will feel heavy fire damage. The last part of the track features another gas station, but one riddled with weak track, a spewing fuel truck, and cars creating odd ramps and obstacles. Once through here they pass by the start and move on to the next lap. As the laps pass, the map becomes more sickly yellow as the region becomes more corrupted. On top of this more fires will begin to spread and burst from the earth, with the end of the game finish line bursting into a large flame at the end of the game.

Here is the color scheme:
My Color Palette!
I chose reds and yellows to extenuate the feeling of hellfire and a cool purple to create a feeling of darkness. The cave section will be lit in the bright hues of reds and oranges, while the surface will feel a darker blend sickly yellow and intense reds. It would be portrayed at midday, to create a sense of lightness of the surface with the darkness of the pits. As the level progresses, the pits will become brighter and more intensely red as the shades on the surface become desaturated.

The level is designed to flow evenly so that players can experience the events that appear. With this said, there are a few hidden shortcuts to allow players to bypass parts of the level and gain a small advantage over other players. It will be a typically wide track with pinch-points created by obstacles on track combined with falling debris and collapsing track.

BARREL

For my design,  i wanted to replicate an old gas pump for the exploding barrel. I referenced classic gas pumps in the US to base my design.

Here is the design:

When hit or struck, the pump releases a pressurized plume of fire that once released for a certain time, detonates.

My Game Design Level

Spiky block

Level Design: A pirate's bounty

Here is the level setup for my level platformer.

The game is designed to be an underground game, a game of pirates. It is a pirate treasure hunting game where player must overcome obstacles in order to reach the treasure at the end of the game. It features two levels of enemies, spike traps, and wall clings in order to climb. It begins easy and teaches the player how to maneuver through the world via text box notifications as they encounter new experiences. It would be cast in either a ghostly blue or an eerie brown coloration, tying in to the underground theme with subtle shades of gold to tie in the theme of piracy and treasure.The main story idea is a pirate discovers a treasure map and once he begins digging, he discovers its the catacombs of a dead treasure pirate named blackhorn. Blackhorn was rumored to have a treasure filled vault that would make any pirate drool, but it is heavily booby trapped. The tutorial would go over the basics of movement, jumps, and using the grapple tool to move throughout the map.

Game Analysis: Tutorial of a Metriod (Super Metriod)

In the nature of a platform, i found this to be a good example of one. It has many platforms and includes several jumps and flips to reach them. In this tutorial level itself, they are witnessed almost immediately. Playing the game on an emulator, the experience was different than that of the experience I remembered on the old SNES console.

The level is a logical and straightforward. Each encounter is broken up by a door and features uniquely different appearing rooms. The variation in platform height and room space allows players to jump and learn the limits of the movement system.

The game does not provide a formal tutorial in the sense it walks the player through how to use the game, but allows the player to learn the game themselves. The logical flow of the first half of the game is slow, there is no direct combat which is perfect in order to learn movement and how to fire the main weapon.

 The level climaxes in a boss battle, which challenges a player to survive as a large dragon-like pirate flies and attacks the player.

This provides the largest obstacle for the player to overcome as they fight to survive the encounter.

As the boss character flees, a timer appears and informs the player that the ship the player is on is in self destruct mode and they have a certain amount of time to escape. It introduces the player to time limits as well as shaking game- screen. As the player moves backwards to where they start, the ships color changes from cool blues to emergency reds and the screen begins to sway side to side, providing an extra obstacle for players as they try to escape.

The game moves from a non-difficult play to a challenging play, as the boss-enemy slashes the player health below 30% and adds obstacles as the previously easy path has now become a dangerous one. The player receives more negative feedback than positive, if the player dies in either the boss fight or the escape sequence, they are returned to the start of the mission. It is heavily story-based, as the player's encounter in this base was elaborated on within the opening cinematic of the game. The boss battle is related to the events of the cinematic as this ship was the location of the last metriod, which is now in the stolen possession of the pirates.