mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

Shadow Complex

Go get it! As many reviews have said online, Shadow Complex, is hands down one of the best XBLA games out there. For $15 bucks, it delivers quite a punch, with classic Metroid style gameplay with Unreal Engine 3 graphics!

Just in case you have no idea what I am talking about, then check out this video.

So far I have clocked in about five hours of gameplay and still have a lot to explore within the world. In terms of pacing the game is well thought out and has a neat method of teaching new mechanics.  For example at the start of the game the player needs to make a high jump, but you can’t. Near by is a backpack, once you get that you can make the jump.  Similarly like Metroid, some doors and vents require different weapons to be used in order for them to open.  Just like the backpack example, if you can’t open a door of a certain type and there are a lot of them in the area, look around and the weapon you need will be nearby to continue on your quest.

I can go on and on talking about this game but it would be full of spoilers! Thus I will end on the fact that you should go get this game if you haven’t already done so. You won’t be disappointed! Once I am done with the game I may do a proper review if I have time.

Cheers,

Team Fortress 2 Map in the Works.

Ever since I got into level design way back in my high school days I have always used Unreal Tech, from the original Unreal Engine all the way up to Unreal Engine 3. Now it’s time for a change. I enjoy playing Team Fortress 2 and figured that I should start making maps for this game. I think that personally, I have a solid understanding of common level design principles, but believe that there is always room to learn new principles. The only hurdle I see with TF2 mapping are the tools, but that is just figuring out how to do common things with different buttons. Every editor has means to build geometry, apply textures, add in details and setup a lighting scheme. It’s just a matter of reading up on some documentation on how do all that with the prior knowledge of level design I already have from modding and work experience.  So long story short, I manged to get the hang of using the Hammer Editor within Source SDK to build my first Team Fortress 2 map!

My first level is going to be an Arena map as the game rules are simple and little additional scripting is required. Once I get the hang of the tools a bit more I will delve in to CTF and perhaps into more complicated modes like Control Points or Payload.  Without further delay here are the work in progress screens for my map ARENA_Warhead.

Not much but definitely gives a sense of how the map will look and feel as work towards a an Alpha build that I will share with the Team Fortress 2 community. For more information and updates feel free to check out the following thread at the site TF2  Maps.

Cheers!

Design of Frustration

Recently I have been playing Wolverine and thus far I am having a blast. The game pretty much has captured the essence of the character, he is a dude with claws and can pretty much beat the living shit out of anyone. The movie was horrendous but I won’t talk about that, however I will say it is interesting how developers at Raven tied in various movie moments to their own time line of events in the game. Which is better than just retelling the movie scene for scene in a game which some movie games do.

Anyways, the game is filled with many badass moments, crazy combo finishers, and various environment executions that make you cringe! In the mix off all that awesomeness there are some low points in the game that can be a little frustrating.  Without giving away any spoilers for the game I will talk about two moments thus far that really pissed me off.

Frustration moment number 1: This one occurs early on in the game, Wolverine is on the run from the folks that gave him his adamantium claws. Pretty straight forward objective, kill anyone in your way to escape, sounds fun. However, at one point in your escape you are ‘drugged’ for a lack of better term and can no longer heal until you meet someone that will remove the drug for you.  So I have lost one of Wolverine’s core abilities to heal, seems kind of odd but I can keep playing until I ran into the gun turrets of death.  I despise these things, given the fact I can’t heal and have been forced to have a low amount of health having laser sight turrets that can track me and kill me in one shot sucks ass!

The first encounter with these things was ok, as I was taught the dodge mechanic (which worked but still frustrating). The second encounter is where I practically lost it. Here is the setup, there is absolutely no permanent cover to hide from the laser sights of death unlike previous encounters. The only way survive is to use a switch to move one piece of cover toward your location. Once it is in place you got get behind it and follow this moving cover piece as it moves on a track alongside the catwalk you are on. Sounds simple, but if you fall behind and the cover piece moves slightly ahead of you, laser sights will spot you and kill you in one or two shots. If you use the dodge mechanic that you were just taught, you end up few steps ahead of the cover piece. The result, death from laser sight turrets once again.

Now if by chance you do follow the cover piece to the end of the line, you are not safe just yet. If you don’t run around the corner fast enough, guess what? One of the turrets can still see you and bang you are dead! After multiple attempts and cursing at the game I finally got past this point and resumed the hack and slash gameplay that I was enjoying before this stupid puzzle gameplay moment.

Frustration moment number 2: The traversal in Wolverine is pretty straight forward aside from a few places where you need to grab a ledge and jump to some other location or use a rope to climb to higher ground. Some of the cooler traversal moments are when Wolverine uses his claws to climb up some vines on a wall or up frozen sheets of ice. However, one thing Wolverine sucks at in game is jumping, to be precise double jumping.  Not sure if is me or if the jump mechanic and or timing of it sucks, causing me to fail traversal puzzles over and over.

My first traversal failure was not bad, but is was frustrating due to the fact that I could not make Wolverine jump across a stupid gap. If I fell, no problem I could climb back up and try again. Eventually I got it, manged to time the double jump and run just right to make it across the gap.

Now later on in the same level there is another double jump traversal puzzle. This one really pissed me off to the point I was cursing the level designer who built the environment. (If by some crazy chance any of the Raven folks or the actual level designer reads this I apologize for being harsh but was seriously disappointed in the design of this section of the Alkali Lake mission)

So here is deal, at some points in the game the camera changes it’s perspective for cool sequences, in this case I got a ’side scroller view’ as I am running along a path under a bridge. As I am following this path there is an attack chopper shooting at me in the background, very cool stuff, now here is where things go down hill. In this side scroller view I come to a point where I need to jump onto a concrete stump in the middle of a flowing river and from this stump jump to rest of the bridge supports. Sounds simple enough that I need to jump from A to B to C and move on. No that can’t be simple at all, it has to be frustrating! Here is what made it frustrating, first off as I am trying do do this double jump I am being shot at by a helicopter and some random dude on the other side. Second off all Wolverine can’t do the stupid double jump!

Countless times I would run to the edge of the platform to jump to the concrete block, and more often than not as I hit the jump button, Wolverine ran straight into the river and “dies”….restart checkpoint. I try again, this time I get Wolverine to jump but guess what he falls short and dies in the river! At some point I finally managed to make it to the concrete block, now the challenge was to jump to the next platform. Same shit as before, kept missing the damn jump or ran right into the water, brilliant!  Other times I did manage to get the double jump right and I overshot the damn block and landed in the river, WTF! At this point I am really getting annoyed, but eventually I made it across only to find a few feet further was the same exact shitty jump puzzle and this one was worse. Aside from the same mistakes as the first concrete block puzzle the second one pulls a total dick move on the player. If by some miracle you land on the second concrete block, guess what? The bloody helicopter shoots at it and it sinks into the river! So if you don’t time your jump just right you die right where you stand. And if you do manage to jump in time chances are you will fall into the river anyways cause you’ll miss the next platform!

Seriously WTF was up the design of that level, did no one see how frustrating that was in testing or play sessions? Sure it pissed me off to no end but as I was dying and trying I had a few good ideas of how all of this could have been resolved with less frustration. The best idea would have been to make the damn concrete blocks a little wider so the first attempt at double jump Wolverine would land on the bloody thing and move on.  Having the second block be shot out from under your feet was a dick move, why harm the player when they are already standing in tricky spot to begin with.

Anyways, I needed to rant about that, however other than those two moments Wolverine kicks ass and I recommend you guys play it if you get a chance. I just hope the next few missions don’t have any more shitty traversal puzzles or double jump puzzles. Really takes away from the fun of going berserk with Wolverine.

CBP3 Volume 3 Released

Well, while I was away at E3 I noticed the third installment of the Community Bonus Pack was released!

Stop on by the CBP 3 website for level images and download links!

Level Portfolio Trailer

Somewhat inspired by the CBP 3 v3 trailer and being suggested by some friends I made a trailer of all of my Unreal Engine 3 maps. I think it turned out all right, however due to youtube showing an already compressed video it turned out a bit darker than normal. Anyways check it out, feel free to leave any comments. Recommend watching in High Quality, looks a little better:

If you would like to see the original video you can download it from here:

http://mozidesign.com/files/Mozi_Level_Portfolio.avi

DIVX codec is required for the avi file.

Other than that I am off to E3 in a few hours, quite excited to go and check out all the new games such as: Batman:Arkham Asylum, Brutal Legend, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, and anything and everything else on the expo floor.

I’ll do my best to do daily posts from E3 if I can get to computer as I don’t own a laptop. Otherwise I’ll post all of my notes when I return.