ABOLITION
ROLE
Project Lead, Gameplay Developer
DESCRIPTION
This is a vertical slice of a concept. You have finally managed to get into the centre of the plague. Here lies the root and the monster that you have to defeat; the Magna Pestilencia.
This is the final boss fight. After the fight the plague will finally start to rot away.
This version focusses only on the boss fight itself and nothing else.
CONCEPT AND GOAL
So far we have created a lot of projects at school. This time I wanted to focus on a vertical slice from a concept in which we would create the final boss battle after having played a massive RPG. In this boss battle we would focus on various mechanics that we found interesting as well as some other aspects of the boss battle, such as environmental awareness for the user.
In the year 1800 the plague claimed its first fatal victim. Humanity decides to focus on technology instead of medical advances.
As the plague continued to evolve and claim more victims, the technology advanced rapidly as well.
Some people literally fight against the plague as plague doctors. No one is entirely sure if they can still be called human though. The more limbs they replace with advanced technology the more good they can do and the better they perform, it also means that they get less emotions over time.
Roughly 200 years later the source of the plague had been found and many plague doctors are send in order to get rid of the root of all evil. None has managed to destroy it yet.
Equipped with the latest Plague Doctor Tech. you are now going to take on a journey where you finally free humanity from the plague.
MECHANICS
This game had a lot of complex mechanics. This is because we wanted to challenge ourselves and we also wanted to make sure that what we created achieved our individual goals as well as our group goal, which we did achieve.
For our concept to work we had a mechanic where everything that the player does would be recorded. Every jump, step, action, etc. When the player dies and respawns he would see the ghost of him doing exactly what he did before. This is a core mechanic of the game. You need to be your own ally by strategically positioning your ghosts, from which you can have up to ten.
The ghosts can damage you and each other as well as the boss. This is intended as it makes sure that you are not going to stack the ghosts. You can see them as actual entities instead of ghosts, but the commonly used term for entities that replicate what you did in games is ghost.
Together with yourself you would be able to get past phase 1 and eventually past the boss itself. An important thing to note is that the ghost will automatically die if it outlives the original player. The entire player + ghost system was made by Caspar.
I focussed on the AI for the boss and everything related to the boss. The boss had attack patterns that were different per phase. The key factor here is that the boss always focusses on the active player. We tried it to attack the same spots every respawn, but this felt dull. Replicating the attacks would make the boss too easy to bypass hence this choice.
The first phase focussed on low attacks with some projectiles just to force the player to move around. The mechanic of this phase was to destroy a lot bumps on the boss after which they all explode.
This would trigger the boss to become nauseous due to which it would create an acid pool in the environment, making the ground level unplayable and a death trap.
In the second phase the boss would force the player to play on the higher ground with high attacks and different projectiles. The attack patterns per phase were created with a decorater pattern for the attack rotations.
The third and final phase would be when the boss become angry at 50% health. The boss uses the entire environment so that it can always hit the player. At this stage the player will be moving a lot while it will also lose a couple of ghosts.
Once the boss reaches 10% health it will perform an instant kill attack in order to save itself. You as the player can use your own ghosts as a shield for this or you will have to hide behind a pillar. There were some ongoing issues with this attack bugs wise, so it was never fully implemented.
After the boss reaches 0 health you will have won.
This entire game was made by us, from sounds created by our Music and Technology specialist Mees, to the animations which we did with a motion capture suit.
We wanted the sounds to be dynamic while also improving in intensity. Each phase of the boss was tied to a new layer of the game music. This means that for example new instruments will be added the further you progress making the overall soundtrack more epic the further you get.
All the assets were made by the team as well.
SCREENSHOTS
Character concept art by Kris de Haas
The boss
UML
Setting up the level
The main character
THE FINAL PRODUCT
In 8 weeks time we managed to realize this magnificent project. There were still some features that we wanted to add, but simply didn't have enough time for. A great example was limited weapons being in the environment which could only be picked up once by either you or your ghosts, which would introduce more tactical gameplay. We decided to focus more on the parkour + shooting aspect of the game due to lack of time.
This project was made by a team of 7:
Ravi Bechoe (Game Developer / Project Lead)
Yasmin van Rooijen (Game Artist)
Levi Vermaning (Game Designer)
Kris de Haas (Game Artist)
Caspar Gelderman (Game Developer)
Xander Stuivenberg (Game Artist)
Mees van Tilburg (Sound Designer)