Of Jabberwockies and Giant Worms

"Roaar!" - Jabberwocky, probably.

Secret of Mana was originally released for the SNES in 1993, and has been ported and remade to many different systems since then. It was published by Square, now Square Enix, and is the second game in the Mana series. In these games you fight your way through tons of colorful baddies using sword and sorcery, and the Jabberwocky is just one of these many foes. You fight him fairly early on in the game (and later fight up a powered up version of the same boss, now called Hydra) so he isn't too difficult. He does give some people a fairly hard time, but isn't quite so notorious as the Spiky Tiger. You can use magic to attack from a distance, but melee works just as well since you haven't yet unlocked his weakness. He has two spells/AoE attacks: Acid Storm, which reduces your defense, and Poison Gas which has the chance to poison your whole party. His melee attack is snapping at you with his heads, and this can stun one of your party members. He is slow and mostly stays to the central part of the room in the early parts of the fight, but after he loses a head starts to speed up and become more aggressive. You may think that the best way to fighting this boss is to play it safe but, well, he can regrow his heads back if you take too long. Keeping an eye on your health while inflicting steady damage is the way to go. Here is a video of someone who makes it look way too easy.

The Jabberwocky is a fairly straightforward fellow. If I were to re-create him in blueprints I would probably make his melee attack proximity based, maybe on a timer at first and then after a certain level of health has been reduced he will attack instantly. A collision capsule around his head could detect if a player is hit, so then its a matter of animating the head to where the target is. The spells can be made leveraging the techniques learned during the previous project for the arena unique selling point. Large timing-based attacks that can affect the whole area. The movement and changing of movement can be used by an array system similar to what was learned in the adventure game. The regrowing head could be a timer that starts after health goes past a certain point, and will then revert the boss to a previous state if not dealt with quickly enough. Now, as for why I chose this boss over some of the more iconic ones...

 

The boss I have planned is a big, slimy, gross, multi-headed worm. The corrupted ruler of the Fallen Log Kingdom, our brave Beetlebug must vanquish this foe to free his homeland from evil!  Here are the planned phases:

1.  3 heads, only rotates in one spot, fires projectiles at player
• Uses player location to determine rotation constantly checked on an event tick. Current rotation determines direction of projectile
• Can be damaged simply with basic melee attack by going in close and smacking it with your weapon, just be watchful to avoid the attacks
• using a random integer to determine what head will fire the chosen head will timeline backwards and change color to "charge up" before lunging forward again (using timeline) and spawning a projectile
2. 2 heads, starts to move around slowly
• Phases change by a branch node that checks for health value. Once health depletes enough one of the heads becomes hidden and removed from the possible options
• But this causes it to be able to move, and a vector array set up is added to the mix
• Heads rotate to face player for projectile attack, body rotates to show direction of movement.
3. 1 head, faster attacks, lunging attack
•  Another check based on health value. Only one head is left, but it will fire faster
• Instead of just slowly moving around with the vector arrays, it will now wiggle to "charge up" before moving quickly in a desperate ramming attack

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: