Shoot em Up Project Finale – A conclusion and a PM
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This course has been a great opportunity for hands-on learning when it comes to what an actual game project might contain. It’s been full of challenges and surprises, but in the end I am quite pleased with my contribution to what eventually became our game; Aetherial by Team Kraken. The game is a 2D side-scrolling shoot em up game in which the player takes control of a futuristic skyship in order to hunt down a huge, flying skywhale. The player can freely move around on the screen, however they are constantly moving forward, shown by a constant parallax of clouds moving in the background. The player has to first rip off the whale’s armored plating on its back to weaken it, until they eventually face it head on in the final boss fight. Although the story of our game is very limited and basically is only told through a brief tutorial at the start of the game, the basic idea is that the world, like your ship, runs on a substance called Aether. The whale is a very rich source of Aether and hunting it down could make you rich. This is no easy task however. To get to this final stage the player first has to get through hordes of other flying creatures trying to help the whale protect itself. The enemies spawned at certain times throughout the level, and could come from any direction. These enemies come in the form of “skyslugs” and “mantanlgers”. The skyslug is a swarming, bat-like creature that attacks the player by ramming them. They spawn in swarms and try to circle around you, taking turns to swoop in and wear you down. They have low health but deal moderate damage, making them quite scary in large numbers. The mantangler (a flying combination of a manta ray and and anglerfish, hence the name) is a ranged enemy. It darts around the screen, always trying to stay a certain distance away from the player, but still close enough to attack them with its electric ball attack. They deal more damage and have more health than the skyslug, however their attack has a charge up animation, giving alert players some time to react. Of course, the player has some tricks up their sleeve too. The main weapon in our version of Aetherial is a laser beam. It cuts through enemies, dealing constant moderate damage, however, using it drains your Aether. Running out of Aether only means you cannot fire your beam until you’ve let it recharge for a bit, or by using your harpoon to destroy Aether crystals that randomly spawn along the way. The harpoon is your secondary weapon. It deals heavy damage and pierces enemies, making it very effective against enemies flying in a line, but has a decently long cool down. It is needed not only for breaking and collecting Aether crystals, but it is also your main weapon against the whale. The whale fight happens in stages. At the end of the two first levels of the game, the whale appears at the bottom of the screen, showing only its back. The player needs to tilt their ship downwards and fire their harpoon at one the the weak spots on its back, indicated by a crystal that’s grown through the armor plating. This tethers the ship to the armor plate and the player then needs to fly away from it to rip it off. The player can now fire away at the exposed skin of the whale, with either laser or harpoon, until the whale has had enough and flies away. The whale health bar is always present, reminding the player of what’s to come. During the second whale encounter it introduces the player to one of its abilities that it will use during the final fight. It emits a sound wave animation and shortly after a group of enemies appear. After each whale encounter the player also receives a power up for the next stage. The power up is a one-use ability that temporarily covers the screen in an Aether storm, making enemies lose track of you and makes your Aether recharge very fast. Skyslugs will now only fly around aimlessly and mantanglers will not fire. During this time the screen is covered by a thick layer of clouds and enemies are only visible as silhouettes. This is a vital tool that can get you out of even the most dire situations. In the final boss fight the whale now appears from the right side of the screen, facing the player. The background clouds that have previously shown the player constantly moving now slowly come to a halt. The player can now only damage the whale when it opens its mouth during two of it’s three attacks. The whale will randomly attack the player by headbutting, calling for allies, or by firing its own Aether beam. The headbutt is telegraphed by the whale slowly flying backwards, and then quickly charging towards the player’s current location. It deals heavy damage and it does not open its mouth for this attack. When calling for allies the whale opens its mouth and emits sound waves, spawning some skyslugs and/or mantanglers, just like at the end of the second level. This attack can be devastating if you cannot deal with the enemies, as they can quickly become overwhelming. The Aether beam attack has the whale opening its mouth while charging up a huge, blue ball in its mouth. When the charge up is over the whale releases a huge beam attack from the ball. This attack deals moderate damage but covers almost half of the screen, giving the player little room for movement. When the player has successfully defeated the whale it emits one last blue puff of smoke from its mouth, then slowly starts to fall off the screen. A victory screen is shown and the game is over. If the player would die somewhere along the way, they get to respawn at the start of their current level. The player has a health bar at the top right of the screen, above their Aether bar. When the player dies their ships is shown exploding several times while rapidly losing altitude. The enemies are not the only danger in the sky, several floating islands randomly appear in the sky that the player will have to avoid running into. The art style of the game is fairly cartoonish, with visible outlines and bright colours. Each level had its own colour scheme for the floating islands and the background clouds. The “finished” version of our game still had a few things that could’ve been ironed-out, but then again that probably goes for every game ever made. As an artist I of course couldn’t really fix the bugs, but there were some visual things that could’ve been improved, like clearer animations for certain things. In particular, I realize in hindsight that since we had fog in our game that made everything a darkish gray, I should’ve relied more on super clear silhouettes rather than small effects with colour when animating enemy deaths or attack charge-ups, for example. The project as a whole went pretty well. We got off to a strong start where we quickly had core gameplay in place, we artists got our style guide set up quickly and we held a lot of design meetings during the first few weeks to make sure everyone got their voice heard and to make sure everyone was on the same page. This wasn’t always the case, however, and there were sometimes misunderstandings or other unclarities towards certain features or other things. There were a lot of setbacks as well, in the form of sickness and other problems on an individual scale. These surprise hindrances were of course nothing we could be prepared for, but we got through them pretty well, all things considered. When everything worked well we had daily stand-ups every day, except for Mondays and Fridays, which we had sprint planning and -review meetings on, respectively. We did a good job of showing up to these in general, and we got better and better at communicating, which we did primarily via Slack. So far it sounds like the bad things might outweight the good things, but in all I’d have to say it’s been a positive experience. I started out very lazy and didn’t work in an agile manner at all, often postponing my work for the week until the very last few days, and then not having enough time to finish it all. I realized after a while, as I noticed people were counting on me more and more, that I had to change, so I did. After this change, where I started working little-by-little, I not only felt way less stressed about doing everything that I had agreed to do, I also felt like a way better, and more importantly a way more reliable asset to the team. Another great feeling that I got from this project was to see my assets used in the game, and then to see people’s reactions to them. An example that pops to mind is during our beta presentation. We showed the boss fight, and as the boss charged its laser attack, an animation I’m quite proud of, I heard some “wow”s and “woah”s from the audience. It’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt. All in all, this course has been a great learning experience, both for me as an artist but also for me as a team member.  |