boss camera move

For our game design boss, I think I want to try to incorporate a small pan like this.

Trailer

Boss Analysis

For my game design class, I had to analyze a boss battle, so I chose to analyze Gohma from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's first dungeon, The Deku Tree.

The battle takes place in an empty room with four pillars.  The battle doesn't start until Link, the main character, looks at the ceiling.  Once Link looks at the ceiling the boss music begins to play and Gohma is introduced.  To defeat her you have to shoot her eye with your slingshot, then she'll become vulnerable and then you slash her eye multiple times.

The main game mechanic in the battle is using the slingshot you acquired earlier to shoot Gohma in the eye, and then to slash at her exposed eye.

The slingshot only goes with the dungeons theme of you acquired it so you have to use it.

The reward for defeating Gohma is the Great Deku Tree dies, you get another heart container, and you get a kokiri emerald.

Game Mechanics

For my game design class now we have to think of a game mechanic/game and then create it within UE4.

1.  Two forms of shooting to reach multiple levels of platforms, retro style arcade get to the next stage.
2.  Dungeon crawler where the player must kill hordes of enemies while running.
3.  The player must escape the room, all they have is a grappling hook.
4.  The player is on rails, they must reach the end of the level without dying once.
5.  The player can roll to pick up speed, but while rolling enemies deal double damage.
6.  Player must cast spells against hordes of enemies.
7.  Player uses lightning to attack, must charge by running, building friction, or other means.
8.  Collect colors, each time a color is collected the world changes drastically, and all things turn that color.
9.  The player only has a pickaxe, they must dig to kill enemies and escape or they'll run out of air.
10.  The player is falling constantly, and must break up debris with their gun in-order to land softer.

FPS Multiplayer Map

For my game design class I have to create a level for a first person shooter game.  My level is going to be set in an urban college.  There will be two teams, which spawn in their own buildings.  One team are the teachers, the other team are the students.

Here is the top down view of the map, it's simple but it has lots of chances to dive for cover.  I wanted the map to not be about walking around a corner and spotting the enemy and a shoot out to start.  I want the players to both have a chance to have little mini skirmishes that can turn into huge team battles because of all the cover available.  The center of the map is designed for the huge team battles.  The rest of the map is designed for intrusive combat.

This is an isometric view of the map, the two buildings are the spawn.

Halo 3 Guardian Multiplayer Map Analysis

Guardian, in Halo 3, is a versatile multi-player map that has many ways to get to various locations.  It's a small map and the many pathways adds to the fast pace excitement.

This is my recreation of Guardian, the yellow dots are weapon locations.  The weapons are tightly condensed and spread all over the place, this ensures a fast paced game where the weapons will be able to respawn fast enough to keep up with player death.

 

Here is a video of a MLG match on Guardian.

 

Sidescroller platform map design

In my map, I designed it to slowly ween the player into the core mechanics of the game, which is just adventure based, and very block dependent instead of enemy based.

Conflict:  Try to escape the dungeon of your own mind.
Twist:  Blocks are not as they seem at first.
Where:  Inside your mind, you had a comma so it's very blank and empty at first.
Time:  Unknown
Architecture:  Blocks
What happened before:  Your mind was peaceful, full of adventure and color.
How did the player get here:  They are in a comma, it will be revealed over time.

Map Breakdown of Super Mario World, Level 1-1

Here is a playthrough of Super Mario World, world 1-1 followed by a map analysis of the level.

When the player first starts the level, once they walk a small distance, they see a fruit, which they cant do anything with and a red koopa shell.  If the player just walks into the shell, it will be propelled forward.  If the player was running, they pick up the shell and have an opportunity to gain a one up by throwing it at the line of koopas on the above cliff.  If the player is not experienced yet, the player does not have to face the enemies yet, the player can just walk right by to the next screen.

The player is first presented with three blocks, one being invisible, both blocks have coins, and the invisible one cant be hit until later unlocked, which will then provide a mushroom.  Now that the player most likely has figured out how to jump, another platform is introduced to show the world has multiple tiers.  The next two items have a coin and a yoshi in them respectively.  The yoshi allows the player to eat fruit as long as the player is running.  There is a few coins floating in the air, one is a dragon coin, by placing the dragon coin in this fashion to make the players want to grab it, collecting five of these reward the player with a one up.  The player will eventually come up to a koopa shell with a little koopa crawling towards it, if the player runs to the shell they are able to kick it into the koopas face, killing it.  If the koopa gets to the shell first, the koopa puts the shell back on, showing the players that koopas can regain their armor.

Another shell-less koopa is on this screen, hopefully showing the player the other outcome of the situation that they haven't seen yet.  If the player hits the shell, the shell will ricochet off the wall, showing the player it's a projectile to watch out for also.  At the top of the hill is a football Chuck, who will chase the player, showing the player that not all enemies will die easily.  

If the player decides to run away from Chuck, and jump off the hill, they're rewarded with a dragon coin.  There is a tip block telling the player that if they die, they will start the level from the gate.  The player has a chance at getting another yoshi incase they lost theirs, or died, if they managed to keep their yoshi alive, they're rewarded with a one up, which lets the players know that yoshi is important, keep him and good things will happen.  Further down the path patches of the hill will move and a monty mole will pop out while the player is nearby.  These enemies are fast by slide along the ground, the player learns that they can out maneuver enemies even if they cant out run them.

The player sees two new blocks, one will crumble momentarily, the other will sprout a vine, rewarding the player with coins and a dragon coin for their effort.  Once the player jumps down, they will reach their final dragon coin, gaining a one up.  There is a pit that kills the player if they fall into it, this teachers the player that you cant always just run off the cliffs without jumping.  There is a odd colored pipe, which allows the player to go down into a cave and have a chance at a one up.  The player must run into a block and then jump and throw the block to get the one up, this teaches the player that they can not only throw blocks, but they can throw them upwards as well.

The final screen of the level, there is one new enimy, the pirana plant.  This enemy rises and lowers into the warp pipe, this shows the player be careful of some pipes or they might die.  Up top there are a bunch of blocks, and a pow button that once hit, makes all coins into platforms.  Since the player knows that hitting those blocks makes them disappear temporarily, they hit it and then can safely run above the football Chuck and to the finish line.

Simple siloette

Last night I was sketching a bunch of silottes for fun, here's an interesting one.  I think it could be a garbage collector in the future if fleshed out.

A quick little sketch

Maya Python Scripting Ideas

In my programming class, we're doing Python scripting for our last project.  I had to brainstorm the following ideas to make a script for...

1.   Julienne tool, also known as a Dicer.  Within Modo there is a tool called the Julienne tool.  It slices a mesh evenly across the whole mesh in 'strips'.

2.  Vertex mover.  This tool would move select vertices set intervals and would have the ability to move the vertex in any direction for any multiple between 1-10.

3.  Staircase creator.  This tool would create a staircase primitive similar to the one within 3D Studio Max.  I would have a parameter to allow any amount of steps, the height of the steps, and the curvature of the steps.

4.  Circularize tool.  In a free program called VoidWorld, there's a tool called the Circularize tool.  This tool takes any selection of vertices or edges and then arranges them into a circle.

5.  Pattern select.  One thing maya really lacks is a pattern select tool.  In programs like Modo, you can select two faces, and then use the arrow keys to select the next face in the pattern.

6.  Random card rotator.  I love using alpha cards in my scenes, but I hate rotating them.  A tool that would randomly rotate all unselected objects would be a real time saver.

7.  Ambient occlusion maker.  This one's mostly for pure laziness rather than being a nice tool to add to my tool-belt.  In programs like Modo, I can easily achieve an AO render within 30 seconds of opening a new scene to test out my form.  In Maya, I have to go through the hypershade and each node to get my desired results.  If I made this tool, I'd throw in three versions, each would create and assign an ambient occlusion shader to the whole scene and then render it at 1920x1080 and then revert the whole scene back to the original lambert material and delete the created shader.  Each version would simply have lower rays to be cast, essentially a preview render, a good render, and a final render.

8.  Duplicate edge deleter.  Sometimes a tool fails, or some user error occurs, either way, I don't know what causes an edge to be on top of another edge, but it happens sometimes.  For this tool I would make a macro that would split all vertices, then extract all faces, rejoin, then merge everything back together based on the meshes overall size in the scene.

9.  Color tool.  Another useless tool, but I like colors, so oh well.  For this tool I'd make 2 sets of 6 buttons, each set would have 6 colors and have either a white or a black wireframe.  I would make the colors starting with a hue of 0° going up 60° until reaching 300°.  Once again, it's useless, but I like to change colors semi frequently to give my eyes a break.

10.  Duplicate along curve.  Maya doesn't have any way to duplicate meshes along curves.  For this script I would allow the user to chose an amount of the object, then I would tell it to align all those objects to a curve.

My Racing Level

I took forever getting this up online, but here it is...

Updated Website!

I updated my website to show all my work on the front page instead of looking through menus.

Check it out!

www.michaelvolpa.com

The Goon

Game trailer

Here's a cool trailer I'm thinking of trying to mimic for my game trailer.  I want to focus more on the car.

Final Tiki Model

Here's the final tiki I used for my level, tomorrow once I fix some last minute bugs in my level I'll post some pictures of it!

Zbrushed Character

Game HUD

For my programming class I had to design a HUD to be used within my racing level.  I want it to be as simplistic as possible.  Below are some examples of my goals.

This is the speedometer of the car I modeled, it's for a Gallardo Superleggera.  Since it has a radial design I want to focus on matching that within my HUD.

In Crash Racing the HUD takes up very little room, and there are no numbers displayed, I feel this is especially nice for giving a sense of immersion since a number can make you question either if the game is lying to you, or make you feel as if you're going slow.

 I don't know the game this is from, but I liked how condensed all the information is.

 In Yoshi's Island, the life is displayed as a flower, it's confusing at first, but once you get hurt the petals fall out.  I want to play off this mechanic, so I'm going to have petal that become colored as you speed up.  The player might not understand at first when they're at the rest position, but once the player starts moving I feel it'll become apparent what the petals mean.  I plan on doing the same with my boost mechanic.

 

While it is simple, I believe this is a fine HUD for my level, it goes with the jungle theme, while also staying minimalistic.  The smaller leaves are for speed, they colorize as you speed up.  The larger leaves are for the boost, when you boost the leaves will disappear, then as the gauge refills, the leaves will come back.

Particle Methods

For my butterfly particle I came accross this useful method of achieving a butterfly particle.  The method doesn't use any flipbook materials, instead it uses meshes and then scales them in the Z-axis to get the illusion of flapping wings.

So far I have my desired result, however the butterflies are moving very fast, right now my main goal is to slow the butterflies down.

http://joacimeldre.com/butterfly-particles/

For the fruit squash and grass emitter I found a neat blood squirt video to achieve this.  The main way it was achieved was to have random arcing of the explosion.  For the grass I'll have the arc, just no randomness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxpr3QkKfRs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hs1scF0Rn4

Final Particle Ideas

After rethinking my particle choice for my programming class I've narrowed it down to three particles.  I hope to get each one done if time permits, if not priority goes down as the list goes on.

Fruit explode

For my Nut explosive I plan on having fruit juice be an impact particle, the same goes for my KActor fruit dispersed around my level.  I hope it's as the example in the video, I want it to be subtle, but still apparent, only having maybe one or two large 'squirt' volumes.

The next high priority particle effect I'd like to do is butterflies flying around.  In the first video is an exaggeration of what I want.  I'd want the butterflies to be in a semi dense area just flying around aimlessly.  The second butterfly video is what I'll mainly be using for reference to recreate the particle.

The last particle I may attempt will be grass kickup while you drive on the grass in my level.  I plan to achieve this by having the grass material also have a physical material, then set the velocity threshold so you get blades of grass kicking up as you drive.  I'd like a mix between this photo and the particle used in Shift 2, it's mostly going to be grass, no dirt with the kickup, and mostly blades, minimum dust.

Tiki Particle Idea

For my racing game I think I'm going to attempt to put some fruit flys above some fruit as a particle emitter.

Final Destructible Object

These are my final destructible objects for my programming class.  There are piles of fruit that blow up when you hit them and the giant tikis teeth explode.  I'm thinking of either removing the tiki teeth or I might add some TNT to make it make more sense.

Destructible Tiki

For my programming class this is my first pass at my destructible object, it's the mouth of a tiki.  The player would drive through the tiki and continue racing onward!

Destructible Wall

For my programming class we had to think of a destructible object for our racing game.  I would like to make the mouth of my giant tiki destructible wood that splinters as you drive through it.

Exploding barrel

I developed my 'exploding barrel' asset further, right now it works using Unreal Tournaments default particles.  When the player hits the nuts, they flash red, once the nuts are hit hard enough they will go into detonation mode and explode.  The final particle effect for the nuts will be a fruit splash.  Above is a picture of the tree with a few nuts on it.

For my programming class we had to think of a cause effect explosion, I feel fruit exploding would add to my jungle level.  As the player drives by the fruit tree fruit will drop and then after a set time will explode.

Practice sculpt of a tiki

This study was to better understand how stylized games get a nice cartoon feeling when adding damage to their models.

2005 lamborgini gallardo superleggera

Speed-paint of my cat

Racing Level Beat Sheet

Here are the six major moments I plan to have within my racing level.

Jungle Themed Racing Game

For my game design class I'm designing a racing level that has a jungle theme.  The level will be populated by exotic plants and an abundant amount of tikis, including a massive tiki head the player can drive into.  The time of day will be sunset.

Concept Statement:
Can you escape?

Story:
The jungle is angered because cars are ruining its jungle floor and is trying to dispose of all outsiders.

Color Scheme:

The color scheme will be variants of greens and blue greens while the tikis will be more red and purple to stand out in all the brush.

Map:

The map changes per lap, each color representing a different lap, red is first, then blue, then green.  All three laps have a common departing path from the starting line.  I plan to have a differing path by having bushes uncover to reveal the paths and cover up the past tracks.  A game I feel has done this exceptionally well is Paper Mario.  The main terrain of the level will be a dirt road with grass on both sides of the track.  On the grass there will be some exotic plants and some large rocks.  On the dirt road there will be some mud traps and some tikis to avoid.  A major landmark will be a massive tiki head that you go into, you'll be able to see it in the distance in the first lap, second lap you go inside it, and final lap you climb the track going around it the whole time.

Real Life example:

The first jump from this video I think I might include in my level, it's a truck going off a jump at an extreme angle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CA-ptOlf4GM#t=61

The player will be able to make the jump easily, but the hard part will be to stay on track without hitting a wall.  Once the player lands from the jump, because the two tracks aren't lined up on top of each other, the player will have to make a sharp turn in order to not hit a wall and lose speed.