Project Reflection - Boss Arena

This was a challenging project as it took me a long time to get to my final design. There were several iterations along the way which helped me develop it to this point, particularly the unreal lighting set up as this directly influenced the final piece.

I think my rendering for this design has been satisfactory although not exceptional due to the time constraints. I think I was wise to use material callouts to help make the required details clear where they may have been less obvious.

I think the layout of the level is effective but the nature of the boss fight is not necessarily immediately obvious so I have included a short write up below this to detail that as it would likely influence decisions made by the 3D artists. 

What really sells this level is the lighting. As soon as I added the lighting I could almost feel the tension of a real boss fight. The intense contrast between the cool blue and the warm orange lights creates a nice contrast and juxtaposition. This is something I wanted to include right from the beginning of the project after being inspired by the lighting of John Wick so I am glad I saw that through even if a lot of the other aspects of my early ideas weren't kept. I think choosing to light the kitchen in the same cool blue as the fish tanks is not only a nice way to balance out the scene it also helps to link the narrative in with the environment by showing that parallel.

Overall I think this project has been a success because I really want to play this level. It's a real shame it only exists in my head... for now at least. 

Gameplay/Narrative Overview - The Boss Projects

This is a level in a 3rd person Hack-n-Slash style game where you play as a salaryman-style monster hunter who is fed up of his job despite it's absurdity. The level sees the player character enter their favourite sushi restaurant for a nice sit down meal before being confronted by chaos unfolding in the kitchen. He initially refuses to intervene as everyone flees, just trying to enjoy his sushi before the fishman gets angry at his lack of reaction and decides to make the player into sushi. Using magic (forced perspective, rescaling and camera shifts) the player is shrunk down to the size of a sushi roll and placed onto the kitchen surface ready to be chopped. 

They dodge these knife attacks and when a powerful swing gets the knife lodged in the surface the player can run up the fishmans arm and jab him in the eye. This causes the fishman to rear back and throw the player down onto the conveyer belt. This begins a section of dodging attacks and dodging plates of sushi all while trying to take shots at the boss. Once near the fish tank they can trick the monster into smashing it with a well timed dodge, releasing a flood of running water which removes magical effects (well known folklore, something that would also be clearly established earlier in game, and hinted by ambient dialogue during the sushi-fight if the player seems to be taking too long to get moving). Once back to normal size the (very soggy) player can finish off the now exhausted fishman in a satisfying boss fight conclusion.

Project Reflection - Boss Character

Overall I like this design, I think it is effective at being both funny and intimidating. However, I think the rendering is really quite lacking. This is mainly down to time constraints and if I'd had more time I would definitely have pushed the materials further. I think this is partially made up for by the material callouts as this would show the 3D artist exactly what was required and then it would be up to them to interpret those materials in the style of the game.

The colours of this design are effective although I didn't do many iterations. I knew I wanted the 7/2/1 split of blue/red/yellow from the initial sketch so it was just refining the balance of the harmonies/undertones that took some iteration to get right. Overall despite the heavy contrast I think the colours have turned out quite harmonious and the large use of neutral space with the greys works to break them up quite successfully.

The thing I am most pleased with in this project is the shape/form of the character. I think the revisions I made after studying 3D forms were really effective and I can now really easily translate this guy into a 3D form in my head. I think I got the balance of the pose right and the way he sits in his hips and looks up slightly makes him look suitably goofy. I'm not used to working with stylised shape language so this was a really fun challenge and I'm glad it paid off.

Week 29 - Lighting the Arena

Week 28 - Key/ Hero Props

Sidenote: the technical challenges of tiny players and giant sushi

It occurred to me when designing the sushi that in order for the player to be able to platform on it, he is going to have to be REALLY small, perhaps too small to successfully traverse the level and fight the boss, so I think that as the player shrinks the sushi may potentially have to increase in size to compensate a little bit. However as long as initially the sushi is normal sized in relation to the world and the original size of the player, and then the sushi becomes scaled like in the design above relative to the shrunken player then the fight will still work. I don't think the player would notice any shifts in scale relative to the scale of the room at that point, especially if the shift in size is matched with a cool cutscene technique like a faked dolly-zoom or forced perspective. However, while this is important to think about it is not my problem right now as I am not actually making it I am just designing it!

Week 27 - Rendering the Arena (again, but much better!)

Is it cheating to just upload a speedpaint of me rendering the arena rather than talk about it in detail here? Maybe, but it also saves and awful lot of writing and reading, so I will show this video and highlight a couple of important areas below.

Week 26 - Blocking out the Arena (again, but now isometric!)

Week 25 - Starting Again!

Ok, starting again this late into a project is not ideal but I've done it before and I'd do it again if it meant creating a superior result. This time I'm going to focus on the gameplay purpose of the arena and work on conveying the design effectively so I am going to use an isometric view as this will show the layout very clearly. 

Week 24 - Materials and Rendering

I added some simple materials and blocked in some basic lighting to my unreal scene and did some detail paint over for the conveyer belt. I like this a lot but it doesn't feel right and I'm not entirely sure why. It feels too linear and static and there isn't enough about it that feels fun or dynamic I think. Regardless of the reason for why I know I can't pursue this particular design any further and while it's definitely been useful I need to start again from scratch but this time with the same idea in mind. I also plan to keep this lighting idea as I think it is a really effective combo. The use of green-blues give that underwater impression and then the pops of red/orange light show the imminent danger of the boss fight. I think this is a really effective combo.

Week 23 - Secondary Block Out

Now I am getting somewhere! I am starting to get this idea more solidified - sushi restaurants often have conveyer belts to deliver the fresh sushi around the restaurant so what if the player was shrunk down to sushi size and sent around on the conveyer belt while having to dodge attacks. I don't know about you but to me that sounds really fun. Oversized boss fights are always entertaining, some of my favourite bosses in games have been crazy scales like the Rannoch Reaper in Mass Effect 3, Apostle of Myrkul in Baldur's Gate 3, and basically all of the fights in Psychonauts 2. There's something about that size difference that adds a sense of drama, and being tiny for a large portion of the fight would be an excellent excuse for why the player initially has to focus on dodging and timing attacks rather than just going at it guns blazing.

Bonus Post #3 - Appreciating the photography of Liam Wong

Week 22 - Initial Block Out

Week 21 - Boss Arena Idea Generation

Week 20 - Rendering the Boss Character

Bonus Post #2 - What makes a cool Boss to Fight?

I watched an interesting GDC talk about the fundamentals of boss battle design by Itay Keren and took some notes on his approach to boss design. I have collected what my main takeaways for the key aspects of boss design from this talk below:

Scale - Are you both the same size or is the boss bigger than you?

Challenge - is this a super easy fight designed to make the player feel powerful or difficult fight meant to give them a sense of accomplishment after?

Narrative - Is there a story reason for this fight that gets the player invested and wanting to win?

Gameplay - Is this fight teaching something or putting those skills to the test?

These are all things I am going to think about as I am finalising the design.

Week 19 - The Anatomy of a Stylised Monstrosity

Initially my design for the boss character was very flat as I was only thinking 2 dimensionally. This is a problem as the character would be 3D in game and my design needs to account for that so I knew I needed to adjust the anatomy to put more emphasis on the way the forms connect together and exist in 3D space. I knew that the hips and shoulders would be the most challenging aspects to visualise because fish do not infect have shoulders or hips for me to directly reference. I could have tried to genetically engineer a fish with limbs specifically for this project but I didn't think I could push the boundaries of evolution without asking for an extension to the project deadline.

Luckily I found a much quicker alternative in the form of studying Chris Ayers' Daily Zoo. These illustrations demonstrate an amazing understanding of stylised creature anatomy and the story behind their creation is really inspiring. I used these creatures as reference and tried to visualise the structure of my own idea in this style.

Week 18 - Developing the Boss Character

Week 17 - Initial thoughts on the Boss Character

I decided to switch my focus on to the Boss character because I have a much stronger vision for this than the arena itself. See my vision below:

The idea of a tired salaryman-style monster hunter who just wants a night off to go eat at his favourite restaurant and then getting interrupted by a giant homunculus fish-man and having no patience to fight really speaks to me for some reason. I imagine this game to be a 3rd person hack-n-slash style game where the player is sent on jobs to fight monsters/spirits and slowly uncovers a wider conspiracy. I imagine this particular boss fight to occur relatively early in the game and be more of a teaching fight than a challenging fight, demonstrating to the player the need for dodging and weaving before getting their gun and being able to defeat the monster super easily. I will have to develop some kind of narrative contrivance for why the player doesn't have their gun but gets it later and perhaps work that into the gameplay.

Week 16 - Research and Planning

One thing I have identified early on is the importance of lighting for my arena. I want to take inspiration from the lighting in the John Wick films as the lighting is both creative and utilised well to highlight the action. I think the warm/cool contrast is especially important to highlight the danger of a boss fight and so this will be my priority when designing a level. 

My first idea for the arena and boss fight is to have the player fighting a fish-god in a sushi restaurant. I have no idea where this came from but it sounds hilarious so I think it would be fun to do. However, I will need to explore some variations before committing to one idea too early.

Blog Task 4 - Analysing Industry Work

While brainstorming for this project I tried to think of my favourite boss fights and I came to a very interesting realisation: every boss fight I could think initially of was narratively interesting but in terms of environment it was INCREDIBLY boring. The vast majority of them take place in a large, flat, usually round arena. If you're lucky there might be some chest-high walls or miscellaneous rock formations to hide behind. I was trying to figure out why so many epic fights would be designed like this; I knew the purpose wasn't artistic or narrative so it had to be functional. What is the gameplay reason for boring boss arenas? I think it's because programming good enemy AI is tricky at the best of times and complex environment layouts and special boss powers makes that even trickier. Walk straight up to player and smash with big weapon/shoot with large gun is fairly simple until there's debris and walls and stairs and doors between the boss and the player. Suddenly your terrifying world-destroyer gets stuck on some corner geometry and the player gets free shots until the inevitable death cutscene plays - bit of an anticlimax really. Personally, I think programming better bosses is a superior solution than creating boring arenas but I'm not an combat designer, I'm an artist, so to each their own I guess.

If my hypothesis is true then this would explain why games with turn-based combat like XCOM 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 have on average, better arena design, at least in my opinion. The programmers didn't have to worry about making enemies react to player movements in real time so the environment can be a bit more complex to account for this. They also have to account for multiple playstyles as multiple character classes will be fighting in each combat. I remember in both games having to mentally adjust to the fact I can actually use verticality to my advantage, climbing on roofs and rafters to my heart's content, or at least until the floor collapses out from under me. This idea begets another interesting facet of environment design - destructibility. Will I design my arena as a fixed stage where plant pots are indestructible or will it be a physics engine play-area where every cardboard box can be crumpled in ultra-realistic detail? 

Three bossfights I don't enjoy in games I like:

I have decided to analyse three bossfights which I do not enjoy from three of my favourite games. I think taking an especially critical look at things which I like is going to be the quickest way to pick out what works and what doesn't in terms of level design here.

In the case of the Kai Leng fight, in addition to being a narratively contrived forced-loss, the player is pinned down by a gunship for most of the fight and so can't use the space to it's full advantage. The player is also most likely a ranged character going up against a guy with a sword - this is another thing to consider when designing the environment and character. Is it going to be designed for close quarters or long ranged combat, or both?

The Barrett boss fight in the original cut of DXHR is a prime example of a mismatch between normal gameplay and the big boss fights. The normal levels in Human Revolution are transversible in multiple ways and have interesting vantage points and hiding spots. This fight was a standard arena and although it had marginal cover it was barely useable as in a 1v1 fight you dont have much time to take cover if the enemy is just charging towards you all the time.

Speaking of charging towards you all the time, the Arishock fight in Dragon Age 2 is often made fun of for forcing players to run around in a figure of 8 in order to avoid attacks. Although this is funny, it's not particularly fun in practice as again it's forcing a close-quarters encounter with a potentially ranged character. I think a lot of issues with bossfights stem from a lack of consideration for a players playstyle if the game has choice, or just a lack of creativity in a game where playstyle is less varied.

Three boss arenas I really enjoy:

The Dror Ragzlin fight was where I really started to appreciate the freedom that comes with the combat of Baldur's Gate 3. It happens relatively early in the game and the player has the ability to climb into the rafters, shoot down braziers full of hot coals, and shove enemies off ledges. The thing is, the enemies can also climb up onto ledges and shove you off, so the strategising becomes an incredibly engaging experience. The arena has been designed with this kind of freedom in mind - areas where players can use their skills have been included.

The Marchenko fight in DXMD is in an incredibly engaging arena. It features hackable turrets, lasers and computers if you can get to them, as well as plenty of cover and elevated areas to hide in. This is made possible by the really solid enemy AI and stealth/detection system, which allows the player to cloak themselves and move to a new location and remain undetected in a plausible way until you're inevitably chased down again. The result is an incredibly fun fight where you have to balance offense, defense and maneuvering around the environment in real-time. 

The Shadow Broker arena in Mass Effect 2 at first looks like it has a similar issue to the above fights where it's in a plain round arena with basic cover but the addition of a raised area and the fact that the environment is used as a weapon against the boss turns this into my favourite fight in the series. This shows that stereotypical arenas aren't inherently bad as long as thought has gone into how the space will be used by players. Another feature of the fight is that every few shots the player is forced to run up and use melee to break a shield power the Broker has, so having a circular arena where everything is clearly visible actually works in the players favour this time because climbing over cover and having to spend ages walking up to the boss in order to smack him would be very annoying.

So, what was the point of all this analysis then?

Well, I've come to some very important conclusions about how to design a good boss arena:

1. Prioritise fun and engage players by providing spaces for them to use a variety of their skills and powers

2. Think about verticality and zones for the fight

3. Know whether you need to account for one or multiple playstyles in the environment, i.e melee or ranged

4. The fight needs narrative purpose and payoff

5. The fight should stand out as unique

I've always thought boss fights should be a test of the skills players have learned up to that point in the game, not just a regular guy but with a really big health bar and an overpowered weapon, so I think loosely planning out the kind of game I want this boss arena to exist in is going to be a really big help from a design standpoint.