Hero Prop Map

My hero prop that I have made a prototype of for junior year was a lantern. It could place 3 different light sources in the map at 1 time, and double acted as a way to scare off enemies. Digging deeper into the idea of where this kind of thing would be really fun and whimsical I figured making 2 different kingdoms could be fun. You will play as a moth, going into the enemy kingdom's palace to save the princess larvae that was taken by the spider queen.

Boss Analysis/Brainstorming: Sans from Undertale

In the past couple of years a 8bit stylized game called Undertale has taken the world by storm. One of the most iconic elements in the game play is the numerous endings, and the 4th wall intelligence some of the characters have. The game keeps track of your actions in previous game sessions, and judges you based off of them. Early on in the game you are greeted by a lazy, joke poking skeleton by the name of Sans. In the pacifist route he is a friend, and someone you can count on occasionally. He's underestimated due to his lack of motivation throughout the game When you take the genocide route, and kill everyone in the game or take similar routes he shows off his true potential of being one of the most powerful bosses in the game.

Sans can take control of the player's icon, throw bones this way and that, and beast skulls can come in and blast power to try and injure the player. While controlling the player might be a little too far fetched for my current knowledge of Unreal Blueprint I may be able to make a similar fashion of projectiles that the player has to avoid. Since the boss of my game is going to be a witch I could have dark spiked come out of the floor or walls, perhaps even bring back mushrooms to spawn and be thrown at the player. Once the witch takes on 50% damage her movements are faster, the projectiles become harder to avoid, and so on.

Ballroom Blitz

My idea for my race arena is of a Ballroom. Kind of like a party, I got a lot of inspiration from Northwest Mansion from Gravity Falls and Beauty and the Beast. There's a giant fountain in the center, I plan for there to be destructible elements like tables, cake, presents, and every 2 minutes the whole room goes dark and turns into a blacklight rave!

Attract Trailer

Attract Trailer Analysis

F1 Race Stars is an excellent example of short, sweet, and to the point attract trailer. It does not have a whole lot of "pre rendered" shots. It shows the tracks that can be played, the obstacles that the player can face, the different opportunities and playing options the player has, and additionally the interesting things that you can do while racing.

Effects

Effects I made in class. I am really proud of how these came out. They are not quite as the way I wanted them but hopefully in the future I can do better.

Bomb Research

I was trying to locate reference for my explosion however I fell short. The kind of feel I was going for was only seen in animated films. I wanted something cloudy, green, surreal. The closest thing I got was Lilo and Stitch's plasma cannon. I do know I want the effect to be cloudy. So a ribbon effect will be needed as small effects trail off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCmS5ETn4K4

My Bomb

My bomb was pretty successful, overall I am content with the results. It looks the way I envisioned it in my head. Yeah the plasma material and effects could be better but I plan to go and alter it again in time.

Race Track Concept

I have been in the process of brainstorming possible race tracks that would follow in suit with my car and my mine. The green glowing stuff is supposed to be a radioactive plasma, but I began to think of where this stuff came from and how it was made. Once I gave myself a solidified answer to those questions my race track concept was born.

My Race Track is going to be a mine full of radioactive crystals that are fed straight into a factory that produces the plasma. So in a sense it would be a combination of Dollywood's Mystery Mine and Sonic Riders' Egg Factory map. The player starts at the plasma's source, in the mine around all the crystals. I plan for there to be signs of there being a powerful industry behind the rocks extraction that the player will soon be introduced to with the rafters holding the tunnels up and the road that leads to the factory. The race track will initially be a production belt, the player will have to maneuver through the obstacles and keep other players from knocking them over as they navigate through.

I want there to be a pleasant use of complimentary colors with sharp bright greens of the crystals and the plasma, and a rusty murky brown color for the factory to keep the composition from being too harsh to look at. My biggest selling point is for there to be a giant tube of plasma in the middle of the factory that the player can drive through via a tube in the center, or possibly getting close to the vat of plasma that lines the floor of the factory.

Mario Kart 64: Choco Mountain Analysis

So in order to prepare for my race track grey box stage I had to analyze an already successful racing game. Mario Kart 64 was a game from my childhood, my father taught me how to play Nintendo 64 games before I could walk and talk. Super Mario 64, Diddy Kong Racing, and Mario Kart 64 all hold a special place in my heart. I decided to dig into one of the maps from Mario Kart 64 because I wanted to get an understanding of the success with simplicity. The console provided a lot of obstacles and limitations on game design, and yet it was still a popular game. I don't plan for my map to be simple by any means, but I do like things that set success in black and white so I can add my own colors and originality.

Presentation

Exploding Barrel

 

My next project is to model a barrel/ mine and program it to explode in Programming For Artists. It's fantastic how things can correlate with one another in my 3 studio classes I decided to take this opportunity to program my mine that falls out of the back of the truck I am modeling in Computer Animation for Game Art. I didn't realize until doing some research that the explosion I wanted it to look like the plasma cannon explosions from my favorite animated film Lilo and Stitch.

Platformer Level

Thwomp

First pretty intense challenge in my Programming for Artists Class. I had to create a knockoff thwomp opponent that shakes the camera when it impacts the ground, and animate it with eyebrows and changing eye color. This was definitely a lot to learn, but it was definitely a great opportunity to learn about class blueprints, and numerous components that Unreal Blueprints have to offer. It took a bit of getting use to, math is something I excelled in during my K12 years. However it is not something I have used in a while, and I have never used it in art so I have to say that this is a pretty interesting way about things. Besides it's not completely math based, and it is a visual platform where you can see the code in a thread as it is working.

Platformer Level Proposal "The Cave of Burning Balls"

In my Game Design II Class we are in the process of creating our own platform games. I invested quite a bit of time into creating the Level itself to where I fell a little flat when it came to the levels title. Since my map has burning ball obstacles in it, and I kinda wanted to give it a cave theme I decided to just call it "The Cave of Burning Balls". Essentially it consists of 3 small tutorial phases, each of the 3 introducing a new obstacle to the player on its own. The first introduces spikes, and moving platforms, the second introduces the burning balls, and the third introduces falling platforms. The fourth and final stage wraps all of it together with one last whack at all three obstacles in the same level. All of the levels have a similar component, the player cannot activate the portal to the next level until they obtain a colored coin that activates the portal.

2D Platformer Analysis

I began a thorough breakdown and analysis of a 2D platform game in order to plan ahead for a future project.
The game "Ditto" is a fantastic example of tutorial levels that don't spoon feed the player. The level layouts are simple, not giving much of anything for the player to get confused with or mistaken for. The pacing is slow and steady, but not boring because  the player is curious about the key element of the game. The shadow reflection of the character conjures up questions like "What is this?" "Can I touch it?" "What can it do?". It is a puzzle platformer, so the obstacles in the game are for the player to maneuver through the caves without injuring themselves or the shadow reflection. The tutorial kicks it up a notch in Tutorial Phase 3, exposing the player to obstacles that will cause them to respawn at the beginning of the space if they land on them. Later on past the tutorial phase the harmful objects become more complex, but it gives the player the taste of danger without ruining the surprise of what awaits them in further levels. Players get a pleasant feeling when they obtain green or black gems throughout the levels, whereas if the player falls too far, gets hurt, or the same fates happen to the shadow the player has to hear the character almost give a ghostly whimper of pain before watching them vanish. Then they are placed back at the start.

After breaking down the game into it's basic components I went into Adobe Illustrator and laid out the maps that made up the Tutorial phase in the game.