Monthly Archives: October 2019

Al-Hambra Fortress – Uncharted, Enemy Design Document

Overview

Mercenary: Foreign mercenaries hired by Doctor UptoNoGood who carry AK-47’s, and wear body armor. Their purpose is to act as obstacles to the players progress that are moderately difficult to kill. 

In terms of general properties:

  • Agents can perform the standard 3rd person mechanics as outlined in the tests moveset.
  • Agents are controlled by the game using a predictable finite state machine.
  • Headshots deal critical damage to agents.
  • Shots to body armour deal reduced damage to agents.

The player should deal with these mercenaries swiftly, focusing on hitting their weak points, performing flanks on their positions, and doing so with minimal ammo usage.

Behavior

A basic FSM (finite state machine) to convey conceptually how an enemy agent might work.

  • The agent is spawned and initially set to one of three High-Level behaviors (HLB) e.g. Patrol.
  • Each HLB has Sub-Behaviors (SB) which the agent can enact while set to a HLB e.g. Patrol Start.
  • An agent can transition to different SB’s and HLB’s under certain conditions e.g:
    • If Spotted Player
    • Begin Alert-Search
  • If the agent is killed, it goes into a dead state and is then despawned.

Attack Patterns

When attacking, the enemy agent will alternate between seeking cover, and shooting at the player. 

  • When in groups the agents should coordinate their placement to provide varied positions ahead of the player.
  • Enemy agents who are behind the player for sometime should refrain from attacking, and move to cover ahead of the player.

Al-Hambra Fortress – Uncharted Exercise

The following is a pitch for a section of a level set in the Uncharted franchise, inspired by the Al-Hambra fortress in Granada Spain.

Level Pitch

Hot on the trail of a big find, Nathan Drake’s destination is Al-Hambra’s Alcazaba (fortress) in search of a vital clue. Unfortunately for him, his arch-nemesis Doctor UptoNoGood and his mercenaries are already on the scene! Now our plucky adventurer must contend with them in-order to reach his goal!

Objective

Traverse the layout to the indicated door, and defeat any enemies encountered along the way.

Characters

Main Character

Nathan Drake: The player is Nathan Drake.

Enemies

Mercenaries: Foreign mercenaries hired by Doctor UptoNoGood. 

Please refer to the enemy design doc for behavior details.

Look and Feel

The layout is inspired by the Al-Hambra Alcazaba in Granada. Accordingly the look and feel should reflect as such.

The playable area should be derived from the Al-Hambra complex.

The layouts background should be a mix of the Spanish countryside and the city that surrounds the Alcazaba.

Continue reading Al-Hambra Fortress – Uncharted Exercise

Skadi’s Ice Temple – God of War Exercise

The following is Skadi’s Ice Temple, a level pitch for God of War (2018).

Overview

Atreus has been kidnapped by Skadi the Goddess of Winter in the previous level. With Atreus in tow Skadi has fled to her Temple in the snowy mountains. Kratos, chasing the Goddess, has finally arrived at Skadi’s Temple and now must ascend it to save his son.

Throne Room Reference Image

Beat 1 – Temple Entrance

Kratos storms into Skadi’s Temple. He is awestruck not only by the scale of the Temple, but by the great statue that is carved into the side of the Temples tower. Unfortunately Kratos has no time to dwell on such thoughts as he is not alone.

Dev Note – The view of the statue is foreshadowing Beat 3.

1.1. Skadi was well aware that Kratos was coming, but is overconfident. Standing atop a pyramid of stairs in front of an elevator, Skadi summons a massive ice wall across the room to block Kratos’s way forward. Next she commands her minions to attack, and proceeds up the elevator. As a result Kratos’s goal is established as reaching the elevator.

1.2. Following Skadi’s command a weak group of Temple Priests attack Kratos at the entrance.

Dev Note – The overall theme of the level is desecration. So having Kratos kill the Temple’s Priests feeds into that.

1.3. Kratos notices a huge chandelier above the ice wall with giant chains that hold it in place. Therefore he decides to destroy the chains that hold up the chandelier in-order to create a hole in the ice wall.

1.4. On approaching the first chain a stronger group of Temple Priests appear. They are more difficult because they have a height advantage and ranged units.

A partial view of one side of the room

1.5. Once they have been dispensed with Kratos proceeds to destroy the chandelier chain, and collect the nearby loot.

Cinematic Moment – Kratos tears the chain out of the wall. On doing so the chandelier drops violently. Cracks can be heard, the room shakes.

1.6. Noting the chain on the other side of the room Kratos heads towards it.

1.7. After defeating a more difficult group of enemies Kratos destroys the other chain (and again collects loot).

Cinematic Moment – Kratos tears the chain out of the wall causing one side of the massive chandelier to slam into the ice wall which destroys a large section of it, and
causes structural damage to the Temple Entrance.

Dev Note – Foreshadow the major structural collapse of Beat 3.

1.8. Kratos proceeds to climb the fallen chandelier, using it to proceed to the elevator.

Continue reading Skadi’s Ice Temple – God of War Exercise

Pocket Circuit Track Design – Yakuza 0

Recently I’ve been playing Yakuza 0. Though there were a couple of things I didn’t like (the occasional unskippable cut scene!), in general I loved it. As well as an absolutely world class story with fantastic voice acting, the game provides a wealth of content. Content that includes making a custom Pocket Circuit Track in a RC car racing mini-game. As a design exercise I thought this would be fun to do!

The track creation tool is fairly straightforward to use, and making tracks was fairly simple. Saying that I failed on my first attempt as I maxed the route length!

Slope City

For my first Pocket Circuit Track I started with an image in my mind which I drew.

First I made the basic shape. Seeing it in 3D I felt a desire to add lots of slopes to emphasize the windy nature of the track.

Continue reading Pocket Circuit Track Design – Yakuza 0

Bretonnia Hills

Using Warhammar 2’s Map Tool Terry I’ve recently published Bretonnia Hills V1, a map for Warhammer Total War 2. I did this to practice my map development skills of using height maps, sculpting terrain, painting textures, and placing meshes. It’s on the Steam Workshop – so check it out here!

Development

The bones of this kind of map is its terrain. To start with a solid foundation I began by finding a height map to apply to the terrain. Ultimately I chose data from a location near Trout River in Vermont.

Next I obtained the height map data, processed, and imported into the map editor tool Terry.

Following this I smoothed out some areas, and did a first pass on painting.

Next I found some areas I thought to be interesting and added some meshes from Warhammer 2’s library to add some points of interest. Meanwhile I playtest the map, and made iterative changes to the configuration of the start point, and geographical features.

After a number of iterations I then posted the map on the Steam Workshop, and presented it to the map makers at the Warhammer Map Makers Discord Channel. The Warhammer Map makers gave me some great feedback, and rightly pointed out the map needs more polish work.

I released the bones of the map, which in itself needs more work having very little work in terms of detailing, and extensive playtesting. The detail work will make some good practice so I intend to do more on that side, and post some updated screenshots!