Midterm - Poster

Midterm - Timeline

Our estimated timeline is as follows (week 1 is this week):

week 1:

Itiel Agramonte: finish Mixamo characters and animations
 
Daniel Hoekman: make character attacks functional, create enemy that can take damage
 
Arthur Karapateas: upload basic AI
 
Michael Uria: get music playing in-game

week 2:

Itiel: finish basic map

Daniel: give stances unique properties, work on combo system

Arthur: work on enemies

Michael: work on music, provide sound effects

week 3:

Itiel: map detailing and troubleshooting

Daniel: refine character attacks and abilities

Arthur: work on enemies/boss

Michael: finish music

Midterm - Game Document Update

Our group's game document can be viewed at the following location:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x6UJ24GN00uiG5jJSzI28ZYloWYWWF10IPO38pllFbg/edit?usp=sharing

Class Participation 6 - Create a Puzzle

Puzzle #1

In a level with plenty of lava, a lake of lava may contain a rock formation that is so far away from any other solid ground that the player cannot jump over the lava to get to it. In order to make this island accessible, we can have a boulder that the player can jump atop and roll through the lava in order to get closer. If we wanted to make the task more difficult, we could populate the lake with obstacles that either stop the boulder from rolling or knock the player into the lava.

Puzzle #2

Alternatively, if we wanted the boulder to be immobile once it enters the lava, we can use it as a simple platform that will allow the player to cross a river of lava that is too wide to clear otherwise. In this case, we would create a puzzle aspect by requiring the player to somehow push the boulder into the lava, whether through the protagonist's brute strength or some kind of mechanical contraption.

Puzzle #3

We never have to have the player jump from the top of a boulder in order to access part of a level. Boulders could also be used to stop the flow of lava to a certain part of the level. Perhaps the door to a temple is hidden underneath a river of lava and the player must move a boulder in order to gain safe passage to this door.

Puzzle #4

In spite of the above puzzle ideas, my experiences tell me that boulders are most often used in ways that endanger players. If we wish to join this trend, we could use boulders to destroy platforms that the player needs to use. The player will start crossing a series of platforms, but some force (enemies, earthquake, volcano eruption) will cause a number of boulders to start rolling down a mountainside toward the player, turning the situation into a race against time. If the boulders hit the player or destroy the platform that the player is standing on, the player will fall (potentially into lava). In order to make this situation more interesting, the path should be given obstacles that can slow down the player's progress.

Homework 8 - Progress Report

For various reasons, this was a slow week in terms of game development. However, I'm happy to say that I'm done organizing our repository. Hopefully, this will make it easier for us to work as a team and to keep our files from becoming a mess.

Okay, for real this time--work is going to be done on our character's attacks. We need a beat-em-up character who can actually "beat-em-up."

Homework 8 - Group Game Analysis

The Tetrad

Technology

Our game will be created with Unreal Engine. We will be targeting personal computers as our only platform. The game is designed to be played with a gamepad, but players will also be able to use a keyboard.

Story

It’s been 100 years since the Malterra gained sentience, overwhelming the earth, poisoning the air, polluting the waters, spreading disease and decimating the population of life on the planet. Mother Nature, as a last hope for saving the earth, has given the world her last child, Gaya. As Gaya you must master the four elements, traverse the lands to fight the Malterra, defeat their rulers that abuse the individual elements, and restore balance to the world before there is nothing left to save.

Mechanics

Since we know that our game will be a 3D beat-em-up, some mechanics will be obvious from the start. Players will control a single character who can move around in 3D space and perform basic platforming actions. The player character can attack enemies by using either basic attack combos or special moves. If an enemy attack hits the player, some of the player's health will be lost; the player loses if this health is fully depleted.

Our main "hook" is the ability of the player to switch between four different stances that are based on the four elements. These stances will give the player access to different attacks and mobility options. There will be obstacles that can only be overcome by utilizing the abilities of certain stances.

At the end of each level, the player will encounter a boss. Bosses are significantly tougher than normal enemies and they will offer puzzle-like fights that require the player to make good use of the different stances.

Aesthetics

Visually, it is highly likely that our game will feature a semi-realistic fantasy aesthetic. None of our team members has much experience with visual art, so most of our graphical assets will come from outside sources. While this limits our control over our game's appearance, we feel that our time will be better spent working on other facets of the game.

Balance

Challenge vs. Success

Our game will become more difficult overall as the player progresses through it, each level being more difficult than the last. Additionally, each level will exhibit an upwards difficulty curve; more difficult enemies will appear as the level goes by, culminating in a boss battle.

Once a player learns how to efficiently control the protagonist, that player will be able to complete levels more quickly than before by cutting down on the time spent battling, solving puzzles, and navigating through the world. In this way, skilled players will spend less time playing easy levels than inexperienced players will, allowing the more difficult challenges to be accessed without unnecessary delays.

Skill vs. Chance

Very little will be left to chance in our game. It is possible that the most significant element of randomness will come from enemies deciding which of their attacks to use on the player. Apart from that, our game will be one that players can reliably practice and perfect; the geometry of a level will be the same every time it is played, the locations of enemies and obstacles will not change, and attacks will not deal random amounts of damage.

Head vs. Hands

As a beat-em-up, our game will suffer no shortage of "hands" activity--the player will be moving around, dodging attacks, and inputting strings of attack commands. However, we aren't looking to create an experience that encourages players to be mindless. Obstacles included in our levels will require players to think logically. In particular, bosses will be designed in such a way that they cannot be defeated by the simple strategies that work on the game's most basic enemies.

Emergent Properties

The main source of emergent properties in our game will be the existence of the four stances. From a combat perspective, each stance will have unique sets of actions and properties that can be mixed and matched through judicious use of stance switching. Even outside of combat, the abilities of the different stances can be used to navigate levels in varied ways.

Interest Curves

Each level should generate a fairly effective interest curve; fights with enemies will form the high points of the curve, the low points will come from the platforming and puzzle-solving in between fights, and the gradual increase in difficulty will cause a gradual increase in interest. On a larger scale, the overall difficulty will increase as the player completes more levels, resulting in a curve that trends upwards.

My Opinion

Our game will not be the first beat-em-up to offer players multiple fighting styles that can be switched between on the fly, but my hope is that, by making each style readily accessible and uniquely useful, we can create something novel.

Homework 7 - Progress Report

I ended up deciding that cleaning up the repository and making sure my teammates would know how to use it were my top priorities. Unfortunately, my progress was largely halted once I realized that I needed to make sure that no one was modifying any of our files while I deleted and moved things. The commit in which I perform this cleanup will have to wait until everyone else has completed homework 7, just to be safe.

Once I finish tidying up, my focus will shift to our character's attacks. As stated last time, the attacks do not currently have the capacity to interact with anything.

Homework 7 - Source Control Repository

https://github.com/Hoekshot/BeatemupTest

"Hoekshot" is my GitHub account name.

Homework 6 - Progress Report

My recent contributions to my group's game all have to do with source control. I set up a repository, pushed my local Unreal project, and made sure that my teammates could access and add to the repository.

This week, I might clean up unused files in our repository and improve the organization of the project's assets. However, the real focus will be on getting our character to affect enemies with his attacks. This will include setting up collision volumes and dealing damage.

Homework 6 - Game Analysis

Rocket Knight Adventures

The Tetrad

Technology

Rocket Knight Adventures is a game for the Sega Genesis, meant to be played with a standard Sega Genesis controller. The Genesis is not powerful enough to display detailed 3D graphics, so Rocket Knight Adventures uses 2D sprites to represent its characters and environments. Sound samples were used sparingly in games from this generation, since they took up precious space on the cartridge, so most of the sound effects and instruments in Rocket Knight Adventures are created by the console's sound chip, which is capable of generating sounds via the process of frequency modulation (FM) synthesis.

Story

Sparkster, the protagonist, is a member of the Rocket Knights, an elite group of warriors who fight with rocket packs. The Kingdom of Zephyrus, inhabited by anthropomorphic opossums, has just come under attack by the pig-populated Devotindos Empire. Sparkster sets out to rescue Princess Sherry; bring the traitorous Rocket Knight, Axel Gear, to justice; and stop the conquest of his homeland. (There's apparently more backstory, but that's not important right now.)

Mechanics

Rocket Knight Adventures is a 2D platforming game. Sparkster can move left and right, jump, hang from certain objects with his tail, and attack with his sword, which damages enemies in front of him and also sends out a fast-moving projectile. If an attack button is held by the player, a power gauge at the top of the screen will begin to fill. Once it is full, the player can release the button to have Sparkster perform a stationary spin attack or rocket off in one of eight directions, bouncing off of any walls encountered in the process. Until they end, these two maneuvers deal damage to enemies and grant Sparkster invincibility.

From time to time, Sparkster will take to the skies and the gameplay will briefly change to become a horizontal scrolling shooter. When this happens, Sparkster can move freely in all eight directions. Players can still utilize Sparkster's basic sword attack, which works identically to the grounded version.

The game has four difficulty settings: Children, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Increasing the difficulty level will not affect level structure or enemy behavior, but it will increase the amount of damage dealt to the player and decrease the numbers of extra lives and continues granted at the start of the game.

Aesthetics

Rocket Knight Adventures features a crisp, colorful art style and is filled with cartoon-like characters and varied environments. The game frequently makes use of parallax scrolling and multi-sprite objects. Most entities will either flicker or rapidly change colors when they take damage.

The sound design is effective, with a variety of sound effects that are satisfying and generally easy on the ears. The game's collection of music is particularly noteworthy, as it is filled with memorable tracks and features clever usage of the console's limited sound channels. The amount of variety within this soundtrack is stunning--while there are several pieces that obviously try for an electronic feel, the others manage to suggest a wide swath of musical genres that are typically created with acoustic instruments, including traditional marches, big band jazz, and flamenco.

Balance

Challenge vs. Success

In general, the difficulty of Rocket Knight Adventures increases as the player progresses through it; the first level presents enemies that pose little threat and simple, forgiving stage hazards, while the later levels contain enemies with more health and more vicious attacks, as well as numerous deadly traps.

Additionally, players can change the difficulty level before starting the game, allowing them to set a level of challenge that they find comfortable. However, since these settings change so few of the game's elements, they may not satisfy players looking for a greater challenge.

Skill vs. Chance

Platforming games often leave little to chance, and Rocket Knight Adventures is no exception. The layout of level geometry, power-ups, obstacles, and enemies is the same every time the game is played. Each boss has a relatively simple pattern that, for the most part, does not seem to include random elements. This all stems, I assume, from the desire of the developers to deliver a carefully crafted experience.

Emergent Properties

Sparkster's ability to briefly defy gravity with his rocket pack has obvious platforming applications, which the developers explicitly point out in the first level via arrows drawn on a wall. In fact, using the rocket pack is the only way to overcome a number of obstacles in Rocket Knight Adventures. However, since this maneuver moves the player so quickly, it can also be used to rush through sections of levels that do not require its use. Skilled players who are familiar with the layout of the game's levels can boost their way through the game with exhilarating speed.

Another way that players can speed up their progress is by learning how to defeat bosses as quickly as possible. The fashion in which bosses attack often depends upon factors like the amount of damage they have sustained and Sparkster's position on the screen. If a player can figure out how best to manipulate the behavior of a boss, the battle will become easier and shorter.

Interest Curves

As stated before, this game features a steady increase in overall difficulty as players advance through its levels. This results in an interest curve that trends upwards. In general, the upwards spikes in the curve will be created by boss fights and flying sections, while the low points will be created by auto-scrolling sections and small bits of levels in which no danger is present.

My Opinion

I respect Rocket Knight Adventures for many reasons: the satisfying way that Sparkster moves around the game world, the varied and well-designed levels, the superb soundtrack. In class, we've gone over the concept of "juiciness," and Rocket Knight Adventures is a very juicy game. This can be seen in the game's remarkably smooth animation, the myriad graphical effects that appear throughout, the pause as Sparkster's sword comes into contact with an enemy, and many more things. Perhaps my only complaint is that some of the "low points" in the game's interest curve last for too long, but, where I see an annoying break in flow, other players may see an opportunity to take a quick break from the otherwise constant action.

Sparkster

The Tetrad

Technology

Sparkster utilizes the same hardware as Rocket Knight Adventures.

Story

Sparkster is the sequel to Rocket Knight Adventures. (For some reason, only the Japanese version includes the subtitle Rocket Knight Adventures 2, however.) This time, Zephyrus is attacked by the lizard-like legions of the Gedol Empire. Axel Gear makes off with another hostage, but, instead of Princess Sherry, this time it's her cousin, Princess Cherry. Sparkster sets off to protect the Kingdom of Zephyrus once again.

Mechanics

Sparkster shares many basic mechanics with its predecessor, but there are several significant changes: the player is given a separate "rocket" button used to activate Sparkster's rocket pack, the rocket pack charges automatically, Sparkster's sword no longer generates projectiles, the collectible gems that previously awarded points are now used to activate a roulette that grants random items, setting the difficulty level low enough will remove certain portions of the levels, and there are no horizontal scrolling shooter sections (although one level sees Sparkster piloting a giant robot made in his image).

Players can opt to search for a set of seven magic swords that can be found throughout the game. If all of the swords are collected, Sparkster will be powered up during the final boss battle.

Aesthetics

The graphical style of Sparkster is slightly more plain than that of Rocket Knight Adventures, but it still has plenty of charm. Parallax and multi-sprite techniques are still out in force. Unfortunately, animations are typically less fluid and objects are seen exhibiting linear motion more often than before.

Sound effects are generally more harsh and less tonal in this game. The soundtrack is undeniably solid, but it lacks the sheer variety that is present in Rocket Knight Adventures, sticking largely to rock-inspired tracks.

Balance

Challenge vs. Success

Sparkster features both a steady increase in intensity and multiple difficulty levels, just like its predecessor. However, the number of game elements affected by the chosen difficulty level is greater than before--the frequency of certain items in the item roulette will differ between difficulty levels and setting the difficulty low enough will remove certain areas from the game, shortening its length.

Skill vs. Chance

The balance between skill and chance is almost identical to that of Rocket Knight Adventures. The main difference is the item roulette, which can drop a number of different items for the player to collect. However, selecting the hardest difficulty level will remove the randomness that the roulette usually provides, since this ensures that harmful bombs are the only things that are dropped on Sparkster's head. (Don't worry, they can be avoided or destroyed.)

Emergent Properties

Not much to report, here--these two games offer similar basic actions that encourage players to come up with similar types of strategies.

Interest Curves

The low points in Sparkster's interest curve are less dramatic than those found in Rocket Knight Adventures, since Sparkster contains only a single auto-scrolling segment. Sparkster creates its most intense moments by providing boss battles that tend to be a little more difficult than the battles in the previous game.

My Opinion

While I believe Sparkster to have slightly better pacing than Rocket Knight Adventures, Sparkster doesn't have quite the level of polish that its predecessor does. Luckily, this is mostly due to the game's aesthetics and not its gameplay. Sparkster is filled with interesting levels, obstacles, and boss battles. If my discussion of Sparkster seemed a little negative, it's not because I dislike the game--that couldn't be farther from the truth! The game just had very big shoes (or boots, rather) to fill, since it followed in the footsteps of Rocket Knight Adventures.

Class Participation 4 - HUD

This HUD was made with Kelly's Greek wind god story in mind.

1. health -- The health gauge is a series of columns that crumble and reform to represent the player's current health. I drew them as Dorian columns (sort of) because they are Greek in origin and, apparently, can represent masculinity, because of their strength and simplicity. (The protagonist is probably a guy, right?)
2. weapon -- I assumed that a game based on this story would involve some sort of combat, so, if we decide to have the character use multiple weapons, a picture of the current weapon would show up here.
3. wind power/spell -- The protagonist will "earn the favor of the winds," which could mean being granted special abilities or spells. An icon denoting the currently selected ability would go here.
4. map -- The map is contained on a piece of parchment. The player's location and orientation will be represented by an arrow. Objectives could be marked on the map with special icons.
5. captive/freed crewmates -- If our game ends up being split into relatively small levels, displaying the status of the crewmates in the current area would be very helpful. Additionally, if the player must obtain certain supplies in the area, those could be displayed here, too.

Homework 5

My blueprint is a sphere that floats behind the player character. It could potentially be used when dialogue is played during gameplay, acting as the medium through which Mother Nature communicates with our protagonist. The spherical static mesh may be replaced by particle effects later, but it's a fine placeholder at the moment.

The blueprint tracks a point behind the character's back and uses linear interpolation to smoothly translate to that point. On top of that, two Timelines are used to facilitate the sphere's extra bobbing motions.

Team Homework 1 progress report

Last week's contributions:

Arthur: AI-controlled characters, one that follows a set path, one that chases the player

Itiel: a basic terrain asset accompanied by a Material Blueprint

Michael: several WIP pieces of music

me: basic combo system using Anim Notifies

Plans for this week:

Since the combo system I came up with is far from perfect, I plan to improve and expand upon it. At the very least, I will limit the player's mobility while in the middle of attacking. I will also start implementing our character's four "stances." Since these stances will change the way the character attacks, I may need to make accommodations in the existing combo system.

Team Homework 1 video

Sorry this is late! I ran into problems with my video editing software.

Homework 1 - games I like

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/71162/
(Also available in many other formats)

If I have anyone to credit for igniting my interest in video games, it is Sonic the Hedgehog. I've been hooked ever since I played Sonic 2, the first game that I ever owned. Throughout my early years as a gamer, Sonic games provided me with fond memories and built up the basic skills that would help to guide me through many other gaming experiences.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles did a fantastic job of building upon its predecessors: its characters exhibit the smooth motion and sense of momentum that Sonic had become famous for, the levels were all designed with just as much careful thought as those in the previous Sonic titles, the colorful environments and clever visual effects made full use of the capabilities of the Genesis, the soundtrack was full of enjoyable and memorable tunes, and the sheer amount of content made Sonic 3 & Knuckles the biggest Sonic game as of the time of its release. In my eyes, this game is the full package.

Super Mario 64

Wii U eShop link: http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/TOEiNDty4AHQngsUnC2Eyog0kBeitORN
(Also available on Nintendo 64 and Wii Virtual Console)
(Remade on Nintendo DS as "Super Mario 64 DS")

The platformer genre is my bread and butter, so I guess it's no surprise that I respect this game so deeply. Super Mario 64 is widely credited as one of the most influential games of all time, having left its mark not only on 3D platformers, but on 3D games in general. This game has had a massive impact on me as well. In fact, since I see it as holding such a pivotal role in both my life and the development of gaming as a whole, I sometimes forget that it's possible for people to be unfamiliar with Super Mario 64.

Although I appreciate many things about this game, my favorite aspect is the way that Mario moves around in his environment. Between the range of movement directions offered by the control stick and the vast array of actions that Mario can perform, players have a great deal of control over Mario's movement. The fact that the game's levels are structured in order to take advantage of this only enhances the experience. In my case, the cherry on top is the game's heavy use of momentum. Mario's movement isn't just stop-and-go; he moves around by gradually accelerating. Building up speed by using Mario's Long Jump or by sliding down a slope feels very satisfying. (All this talk about momentum-based physics...I really am a Sonic fan, huh?)

Homework 1 - images

Me from seven years ago perplexed by the presence of...me...from seven years ago.

Testing to see whether GIFs animate or not--looks like they do!

Homework 1 - video with voiceover

I use this video to test different situations under which I might record narration later in the class.