Dance of Destruction Battle Arena

Level design for a tank battle game, themed around a futuristic rooftop neon dance club. The colorful blocks provide only temporary cover, as they can easily be broken. The large central tower picks one of the four animal team emblems at random after a certain period of time and a health pickup spawns at whichever one. It is the only way to heal so it causes a mad dash to some precarious ledges!

Weapon Plan

Today in my programming class we learned about different projectile types in preparation to create a weapon system for the weapons we made in our 3D class. My weapon shoots concentrated emotions at people to apply different effects, the default one I focused on was "happiness" that caused the target to lose their will to fight. The simple implementation of this would just be to stun the target for a short moment, but I think the more fun way would be to cause uncontrollable dancing but I have no idea if that is possible in any way.

Because of the precision required for this basing the weapon around a line trace would be ideal. But I also want it to fire a "beam" of emotions using a particle trail, so I may have to find a way to combine the line trace with another option, most likely projectile movement since I don't need the fine control of a physics object. Because of this I'd likely have to apply the damage or effects on a hit event.

As for sounds and VFX my plan is to continue to lean into the cute and silly. The particles will be a beam made of hearts, stars, and smiley faces that launches from the nozzle of the gun and "explodes" into a pink cloud on impact, possibly also with cute graphic elements. I think it would be very silly if I used some kind of generic children going "yaay" sound clip when it explodes but I'm not entirely sure of this idea yet. Otherwise I think some kind of "ka-chunk" noise for the wind up and a cute little "peeeew" would work for firing.

Beetlebug Adventures - Playthrough

And here is the play through video for my top-down adventure project! Everything was made in UE4 and clip studio paint

Beetlebug Adventures - Old Log Palace

If I'm going to be honest, I was at a loss for what sort of theme to use for my top-down adventure level. Unlike my platformer where I instantly knew what I wanted to do, for this project for most of the time I was thinking "fantasy, probably" but not much more than that. Thankfully (depending on your perspective), I like to surround myself with cute knickknacks and baubles and one little figure I had on my windowsill gave me the inspiration I need:

 

Say hello to "Twinkles Beetlebug"

A tiny little plastic ladybug (with a glittery noggin) was just the right size to fit in a single square on the map, so I worked around the idea of a little beetle adventurer. The dungeon would be a palace made of a fallen log, and the decor would be empty snail shells and leaf patterns. The weapon was originally a wooden sword, then a twig, then an evil-banishing wooden staff with a crystal flower. The boss is a worm hydra and I've been back and forth on what the enemies should be. I'm also still undecided on the protagonist's looks (sorry Twinkles).

 

The basic story idea I wrote at the top of the paper map is this: The Kingdoms of Sweetgrass have slowly been falling to evil magic, causing the inhabitants to mutate and change into mindless beings. One day, an adventurous young Beetlebug found the legendary Wand of Lilieae, Banisher of Evil, and became the chosen hero, and set out the purge the Kingdoms of their corruption.

For colors I know I want a lot of earthtones, browns and greens. I've picked out a couple different palette ideas.

     

                              Break For Lunch                                                            Orchid in the Attic                                                           Preamble 

I really like "Break for Lunch" but it may be a bit too light for the mood of an old hollowed-out log turned into a castle full of creatures irreversibly transformed by evil magic. Really, "Orchid in the Attic" is probably the most reasonable, but I want to toy around with the others too!

Cheese Heist Grey Box

Here is the grey box version of the Cheese Heist level design I proposed earlier. It went through many changes from that first version, but the basic idea is still in tact. Jump over mouse traps and dodge tricky cat paws while you make your way to the big cheese!

Cat Paw Spiky Block

This video demonstrates the spiky Cat Paw block I made in my programming class. The default cat paw is simple in that when the player enters a trigger box it shakes and then begins to descend. The "claws" change from a silver to a red and it hits the ground with a meow and a camera shake. The camera shake can be toggled in case you have a paw that doesn't touch the ground/wall/etc. Here is a peak at the blueprints:

A timeline was used to make the platform feel more "alive." It also allows for the meow and camera shake to be timed with the impact, and the color changing for the claws.

The other spiky block is a hybrid mover and spiky block. It uses the basic properties of a mover but adds deadly red claws at the bottom and after a lot of brain-scratching hard work I managed to make it even move in a square if one so chooses. Take a look:

The teal area is more or less the same as a typical mover but the blue area has a branch where if the condition is true it will allow you to set and additional two destination points to create a square like near the end of the video. A closer look:

Platformer Level Proposal -Cheese Heist

 

For an assignment we have to design a tutorial level for a 2d platformer, one that will gently ease the player into new situations and help them learn naturally.  My concept is of a mouse on it's way to the Big Cheese, collecting cheese bits and dodging mousetraps and cat paws along the way. The cat paws can be ridden up if you are crafty, though. I bought myself Rhythm Heaven Megamix with holiday money over the break and music from one of the mini-games, Rat Race (the characters are actually mice despite the name), keeps playing in my head whenever I work on this. 

Rhythm Heaven Megamix, Nintendo SPD1, 2015, 3DS

I didn't really want the level to be in a kitchen though. I toyed around with the idea at first but then I couldn't really figure out what the platforms would be and how the mouse would be climbing. Chairs and a table seemed like a good idea at first, and riding the cat paws ended up being a concept that carried over from this idea, but it just didn't seem to make sense. So, if it wasn't going to make sense anyway I decided to go for something more abstract. The background is colors that are reminiscent of a kitchen, but the pattering and platforms are more of the candy colored abstractions found in Kirby games.

 

Kirby's Dream Land 3, HAL Laboratory, 1997, SNES 

Another thing I struggled with were the "spike" traps. I wasn't sure how literal I should be. Mouse traps were the first thing that came to mind but I wasn't sure how well that would work, so I thought about other things. Stationary cat paws... A Fork... But I decided to just go with the mouse trap. You can see some of my spit balling on the paper version of my map.