Final Fantasy X: Cloister of Trails analysis

So our next assignment for Game Design III is a Puzzle room, so we were asked to go and do research. So, being the Final Fantasy nerd I am, I decided to do my analysis on Final Fantasy X, more specifically on the Cloister of Trials.

The Primary mechanics featured in the Cloister of Trials are: walking/running, picking/placing spheres, pushing pedestals and touching glyphs. Your objective every time you go through this is to reach the Chamber of Fayth, which resides at the end of the Trials. In each Cloister, you have to using three different spheres to proceed and find your way through the Trials. The spheres are: Glyph Spheres, Destruction Spheres, and the temple specific Spheres. Each temple has its own unique sphere that has a special effect for that Cloister.

Besaid: Used to make the final wall disappear and turns into the elevator that takes you to the Chamber of Fayth.
Kilika: Causes a Fire to start when it is place down.
Djose: Emits electricity when placed.
Macalania: Causes ice to appear when placed.
Bevelle: Turns a pedestal into a moving platform for you to use.

For this analysis, I've chosen to analyze the Kilika Cloister of Trials. I would have wanted to do Djose, by the gap between the two is large and I didn't have to time to get there.

Kilika starts you off in a room with one door and a Kilika sphere on a pedestal. You grab the sphere and place it in the slot near the door. The door will then catch fire. Remove the sphere, and the door would've dissolve completely, allowing you to now pass.

The next room has no doors, and three sphere slots on the walls. Place your Kilika sphere in the middle slot. The sphere will emit fire that reveals a glyph on the wall.

Remove the Kilika sphere and place it in either of the other two slots. Then walk back to the middle slot and touch the glyph. The wall where the slot is will rise, granting you access to the next room.

Enter the third room, which has a wall of fire in the middle. Walk over to the shining bit on the ground east of the entrance. This will bring the pedestal from the second room (with the Glyph sphere) into the current room. Walk down south a bit and pick up the Kilika sphere in the wall.

Go place this somewhere, probably in the second room. Grab your Glyph sphere and place it in the wall. This will cause the wall to rise, revealing the Destruction sphere. Leave it for now. Doing this will cause the fire in the room to go out.

Go a grab one of the Kilika spheres from the second room, and place it in the pedestal. Then push the pedestal all the way to the shining bit on the floor from before.

This causes that bit of ground to crumble, revealing a new sphere slot below. Now grab the Destruction sphere and go place it in that slot, this will reveal a treasure chest. Snag your treasure.

Grab the last Kilika sphere and make you way to the door at the end of the third room. Place the sphere in the door slot, let it catch fire, then remove the sphere. Ta-da! The Kilika Cloister of Trials has now been passes.

Now the design of the level. Once the Cloister began, you where in the 1st room. The only thing you could do (from what the previous level has taught you, was to pick up the sphere. After placing it in the door, the player will learn what the Kilika spheres do. I believe it was helpful to do it this way. Rather than starting you off with another sphere, they introduce to only the Kilika sphere. This was done so that the player would be able to understand what the particular sphere does.

The 2nd room has 3 slots and one pedestal. It's a bit trickier, but once you place the Kilika sphere in the middle, a glyph appears. This reminds the player of the first Cloister, where touching the glyph allowed the player to proceed. The third room featured that wall of fire, and a Kilika sphere, however removing it did not stop the fire. At this time, the player had access to the Kilika sphere and the Glyph sphere. Since the Kilika sphere did not work, the player would try to use the Glyph sphere. This stops the fire, allowing the player to see the last door ahead, and to have a path to it. Since the first door you encounter could be burned, the player can try using the Kilika sphere to see if the same rings true for this door. Once that's done, the player completes the trail. (The Destruction sphere is extra content, but not required).

This level plays on the player's memory, as well as showing the player what the new sphere can do. Allowing the player to figure out and solve the puzzle in their own. Granted, there are six Cloisters, and this was only the second one.

I think the Cloister of Trials follows the "Unusual use of an object" closely. After all, you use these sphere to get many different effects. Such as the Kilika sphere, which reveals a glyph once placed in the correct spot. I also think it follows "Trial-and-Error" to an extent. You have to try placing the spheres in the slots in order to see what it does, but if it doesn't work, you have to go back and try another sphere.

Well, there it is. My analysis on the Kilika Cloister of Trials from Final Fantasy X.

Toy/Hero Prop Sketches

Sketches of my three chosen ideas, and how they could be used in gameplay.

Rocket Fist:

Gravity Pulse Guns:

Speed Glider

Toy/Hero Prop Ideas

1: Grappling Spear

            Spears with a detachable head that can be launch using a trigger on its base. It can be fired and used as a grappling hook to transverse higher terrain. When fired, he spearhead would detach and transform into a more “Grappling hook” shape. Trigger could also be used to call the hook back. Alternatively, you could use the spear in a similar way as a whip to attack nearby enemies.

2: Speed Glider

            A backpack on your back would deploy thin, long wings with thrusters that would allow you to glide along the ground at super fast speeds.

3: Rocket Fist

            It is a heavy gauntlet that you can use to bash people’s brains out. This gauntlet also has the capability to shoot up to six rockets at enemies. Its energy would be stored on a pack attached to you back.

4: Light Sword

            It is a seemingly normal looking sword with the capability to split apart and form a blade of light. When activated, the player’s attacking range would increase by 1.3 of their normal attacking range. The energy source is located in a pack on the player’s hip (near the sheath of the sword), wires would connect the blade to the pack.

5: Gravity Pulse Guns

            They are dual guns that can fire gravity bombs that can act as temporary platforms or bounce pads. The guns are attached to a energy pack located around the player’s lower back. The guns holsters would be located on the player’s hip. Wires would connect the guns to the energy pack.

6: Deployment Shield

            It is a gun that can deploy a shield in front of the player (similar to an umbrella). Its power source is located on the gun itself.

7: Big Bomb Buster

            It is a rocket arm capable of firing big bombs at opponents. The arm itself is the power supply.

8: Scythe Claws

            They are Retractable claws in the shape of Scythes than can be used to hack at enemies or climb up tall places. Their power supply is located in a backpack the player wears.

9: Rod Rifle

            It is a typical looking Rod that can split open its end to fire off a magic charged blast.

10: HeliPack

            It is similar to a jetpack, but with helicopter propellers instead of jets. This can be used to fly up to higher places (like mountains, cliffs and such).

Completed Racing Level: Nuketown Caverns

The racing level was completed a little while ago, and what better way to show it off that with some screenshots. 

 

More of these screenshots can be seen in the "Portfolio" section. 

Overall it was pretty fun building this level, of course there was a multitude of issues I encountered along the way, but at least the end result worked out. One of the issues I had was with the fences (of all things). Initially, I created a Blueprint in Unreal that would aid me in creating fences everywhere on the map. There didn't appear to be any issues... until I built lighting. For some reason or another, The game (or rather the editor) would lag whenever Lighting was built. 

At the time, I didn't know it was the because of the fences, so I began to delete out groups of objects at a time in order to find the cause. After discovering it was the fences, I had to quickly resolve the problem by manually placing Static meshes of the fence around the level (Alpha was due the next day). In the end, it worked out. And thus I can feel proud of my level.

Sophomore Spinout 2015 Attract Trailer

Attract Trailer Research

With the Beta level done, next up is creating an attract trailer. As such, we've been asked to research and find a good example of an attract trailer and post about it here.

For this post, I'll be talking about Mario Kart Arcade GP DX

I think this trailer is great because it shows you the aspects of game play while it features that cars and the tracks. It comes off as informative, and I like that about this trailer. While the levels are since in the background, the trailer describes various aspects of game play such as unique functions you can do, or how it promotes the racers. So I would like something similar for my level, I want to show off the level as the player would see it from their point of view.

Vehicle HUD

The next stage for us is now creating the HUD for our vehicles. A such we had to do research. I looked into several speedometers and decided to go with this kinda style:

For the Tachometer (which I didn't know what it was) I went with something a little like this:

The tachometer wood be placed behind the speedometer and would not be as prominent. According to what I found, the speedometer was usually the most prominent.

For the Lap times, I wanted a more old fashioned style. Similar to the center of this:

As for the health bar, I wanted a kinda tube-like meter that drops when you take damage, something like this:

For this gear indicator, I wanted a more command-style feel, so when you clicked a button something happens. The way I want it, it would also serve as a tutorial on how to use the vehicle as well.

Particles: Smoke Ring

Here is my smoke ring particle for my Programming class. The smoke particle emits from several of the houses that appear in my level. Anyways, here's a video of it.

Particles: Research for Smoke clouds

We've started particles in programming class and we will now be creating a particle for our racing levels. So I was trying to think about what kind of particle to do and was coming up blank, so I watched a few tutorial videos for UDK and Unreal 4 and deciding to do a smoke related particle. Next I had to figure out what would make my particle unique, so I did a little searching over the internet and found these:

I was thinking of applying these rings of smoke into my level, and I thought it'd be cool to have the houses in it to be emitting a smoke particle every so often. So I started with learning how to do a smoke particle in Unreal using this tutorial (four parts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GmlIfTsRaQ

And thus I made this:

Next is figuring out how to delay the smoke rings, and of course making the ring part. I was thinking of using a mesh emitter for the ring and have a texture over it. And create something similar to this:

But with a more "cloudy" effect.

I will probably also have it as a dark grey texture.

Explosive Barrels and Turrets

Here's a video of my turrets in action. I have two types here. The first shoots barrels up in the air that can fall in the player's path, while the second launches missiles at the player from a distance.

Here's the Blueprint for the first Turret:

 And here's the Blueprint for the second Turret:

Oh and here's the Blueprint for the Barrel as well:

And of course I can't forget about the Missiles either:

There was more to this blueprint, so I have to divide it into two different screenshots.

Rumble Racing: Castle Circuit Intro Sequence (kh:bbs)

We were told in class to find a race intro we admired and post about it here, so I chose the Castle Circuit track from the Rumble Racing mini-game in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. I like this track the best over the other three because this takes you to an entirely new track (whereas the other tracks are slight modifications of each other). Castle Circuit's intro shows us the four different areas on the track that can be covered in a minute's time. Since I'm doing at track that has two different areas to it, I feel like I could emulate this track's intro in order to show off the areas and then lead the camera to zoom past the players as the race is about to start.

Destructible fences

 I made some destructible fences that are going to be used in my racing level. These fences look different from the fences you cannot break and can be used to indicate shortcuts or an alternate lap path. Here is the blueprint to get the fences to work properly with the car.

Isometric Design for Level

Here is the finalized version of my isometric design for Nuclear Town Caverns.The idea is to have the caverns directly underneath the town and for the path to be a similar distance like the first lap is from start to finish.The idea should be better expressed here than in my previous versions.

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/a/c.ringling.edu/presentation/d/12B_s9UXp0gpblielkToJbtl5XXY5MKD1QKfVsIOB0fA/edit?usp=sharing

Pre-pro StoryBoard for Level Idea

Here is a storyboard for the level idea from previously. I've gone through and drawn out all the major events that would occur while you race. Each image also has a time on it, these times are based on the time for a first place racer. The shots I chose to do I think would be the ideal moments a player would remember, such as missiles being fired at you, discovering ruins of and ancient civilization, and a nuclear blast.

Research for Pre-pro Racing Level

For my Racing level, I am thinking about doing a type of Nuclear Town/Cavern theme. The level would take place in a little town in the middle of nowhere. Nothing would seem out of the ordinary until you see a far off military base. Then when you see the missiles flying, you'll realize that you are in a military testing site, however you don't realize the magnitude of this until you finish the first lap. Above the starting/finish line is a nuke, ready to drop. You would then proceed to race until the nuke drops. Oh, and underneath the town would be an underground cavern belonging to some long-lost civilization.

The level would occur during the day time, and as for the color scheme, it would be a range of sepia tones and maybe a few primary colors for some of the houses. The terrain around the town would be that of a canyon or desert area. The player would mainly be directed by fences, roads and cavern paths. Initially, I want to have something happening in every lap, so I would expected to track to change a bit. Maybe the first lap is in the tow, and the second is leading you underground, and the third might be back in the town or in the demolished town. (the third image might be too much, I might just have the town and the caverns, still planning things out)

As for the stunts, I want to include some sort of demolition like that seen in the Hoover Dam level in Split/Second. Where the nuke could go off, and you'd have to race out of the town and underground. The main stunt underground I want is a wall ride, where you drive on the wall and you have to stay at a consistent speed to pass, otherwise you'll just fall. On the wall you be able to go one of two paths, as shown here:

If possible, I would also like to have a screw jump where you flip the car over in midair and you land back on the other side. I would possibly add some missile to that would direct the player to head underground.

I've decided to call this place, Nuketown Caverns: "The town that blows you away."

Inspirational Images:

Lights!!! Multiple colors and blinking!

Today I made an array of lights that change color depending of the light and even manage to get a face to "blink." I was trying to think of what image I should make with lights, and one of my friends suggested a Final Fantasy character. Thus, I decided to make a light version of Cloud's face. I was able to set up the text file so it loaded the correct color depending on the light's number value. After this, I decided to try and get Cloud's eyes to blink. I thought of many other complicated methods to achieving this, but decided on doing things manually. I set the current light number to where the eyes were and simply toggled to color, throw in some delays and viola blinking eyes.

Here's a little video of the magic occurring, followed by some pictures of the code used to set everything up.

 

Level Analysis: MK7 - Neo Bowser City

Here is a link to my Google Presentation for my level analysis, and here is the accompanying level layout of the track.

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/a/c.ringling.edu/presentation/d/1VeAXSjCOcuRuYg9dONgh0kxhRSDVOANE2Kgi0zzAZNI/edit?usp=sharing

Lights!!!!

Here are some lights I made in Programming Class. They each have a delay input, allowing me to make this arrow shape. I was even able to get it to toggle to different colors for each light randomly.

Platformer Tutorial Level - Distortion Town

Distortion Town is located in the distant future where the land has become corrupted and filled with pockets of space-time. This results in the creation of various portals that can teleport people across vast distances in an instant. 

Besides these teleports, there are also floating landmasses that either stay still, or move completely on their own. There are even some portions of land hidden within pockets of space-time, and will only appear under certain conditions. 

However, these distortions have also brought multiple problems with them. Pieces of land may disappear altogether, warping away anyone who occupied the space at that time. Strange creatures have also emerged from these distortions, causing mayhem and havoc for the people living there. 

The entire space in a victimized town was evacuated and now you, a professional, have been hired to seek out the cause of the distortion and fix it. In the depths of night, you jump through to the Distortion world and begin your mission.

Platformer Game Analysis: Megaman X

Game Analysis

The tutorial level for Megaman X had a decent Level layout. The game gives you an appropriate amount of time to learn the controls, while keeping you entertained. The beginning of the level gives you a length of ground before any enemy encounters, allowing you to get your bearings on the controls. However, the level didn't really play out for easiest to hardest. Instead, the game prepares you to fight on type of enemy which are only located in on area (for the most part).

Other than the basic controls, the game doesn't hand out anything to the player, for the most part, the player has to figure it out himself. They put you is situations where you would have to explore around the area in order to proceed. Such as, after the first mini-boss, the player is then dropped down on the ground. The player then discovers that you can wall jump up walls, making it easier to navigate.

Whenever a new enemy is shown, they usually come is sets of 2, but as you proceed you get swarms of enemies attacking you, forcing you to be careful as you proceed. These swarms can get a bit hectic, they all attack you at once providing you with little chance to come up with a good retaliation. While this prepares you against swarms, I think this would have been better to introduce this at the end.

Other than introducing who you are, the only story content that appears is located at the end of the level, when Zero comes to aid you against Vile. So the first level wasn't so story-heavy, which allows you to get the controls and game play easier.