Behind The Scenes: Marketplace

It's always been amazing to me how different an in-game environment looks behind the scenes than it does in tightly controlled game play. As scene builders (and I have happily constructed more environments in my life as a game developer than I can count) we have technical restrictions and we have to make the most out of what we've got. So the most sensible approach is to scrutinize the relative beauty of the scene from the viewpoint of the player, since ultimately that's all that matters. And this works! But as you soon as you pull the camera back, you get a totally different story and that's what I want to show you with the Marketplace environment. Remember - this environment is a proof of concept and is definitely going to change as the project continues. But these ideas ring true regardless.

You can see that there is nothing outside of the large walls to the left and right because there simply doesn't need to be. There are also no details in the ground space in front of the pyramids because that area will go completely unnoticed during actual gameplay.

The lack of any life on these platforms becomes really apparent when they become the center of attention. I realize you will most likely notice this as you play since they're not terrifically far away from the play area, so these parts will get some much needed love before this gets into anyone's hands.

That last shot is just to show you a very remote angle you'll never see in the game, because it's angles like this that really show off the inevitable errors in the world! There is no detail on the underside of that bridge object (because again, there simply doesn't need to be) and the water is just a gray plane. The ripples you see in the game are actually particle emitters that are attached to the flowers and canoes at a complete different point in the construction process. Furthermore, most of the structural objects have texture seams and they're very apparent down here. I'm showing you these things because they don't really concern me. Like I said before, I have a responsibility to make sure that what you actually have to stare at is at maximum sexiness and I have no intention of letting you down.

Impact Effects

It is incredibly important to the combat sensation in an action game that it feels really amazing when you hit something else with your weapon. Aztez is no exception. Typically, a specific combination of visual cues is used to communicate successful impact and I have created a piece of Unity content that showcases the different effects Aztez will use. You can press z to perform an attack to see it in action, but you can also push keys 1 through 0 to view the individual effects.

Here is a breakdown of the individual effects:

1. Attack animation. Has a few frames of anticipation before throwing all of the upper body weight into a hefty attack. I find with attacks like this that the harder you swing the character's weight around the more brutal the attack will look.

2. Hit animation. The part of the character's body that gets hit must be quickly and painfully jacked around in order to feel good. There is some silly exaggeration in the way the poor character's head gets whipped around that helps drive the pain home.

3. Sword Swing. The widely utilized and easy method of communicating fast weapon movement. A large, animated shape indicates the movement of the weapon. In recent years this effect has been done with polygon "ribbons", but in Aztez I am using the traditional method of hand drawn frames.  Typically this shape is based on the general shape and size of the weapon in use, but sometimes it's done with a thinner trail that emerges from the tip of the weapon. When this effect is done well using proper animation principles, it will singlehandedly provide most of the charm of attacks.

4. Sword Dust. This effect is much more subtle, but it emphasizes the motion of the attack. It mostly resembles a layer of dust being thrown off the blade, hence the name. You can see this being put to great use in Diablo 3, which has AMAZING effects all around and has been a source of great inspiration. If you want to scrutinize some of them for yourself, go to their movie section and download the gameplay trailer. You can use Quicktime or VLC to scrub through frame by frame and see for yourself what kind of techniques they employ (you special effect aficionados should be doing this all the time anyway).

5. Successful Impact Effect. An abstract effect used to communicate that something has successfully struck something else. Very popular in beat-em-ups and fighting games alike, weapon-based or otherwise. This effect occurs at the point in space that the weapon connects with the target.

6. Sword Slash. Used to indicate that a blade of some kind has made contact with a body. This effect does not typically occur at the point in space that the weapon connects with like the Impact Effect does, but instead occurs in the general area. The most important aspect of this effect is the "direction" in which it occurs; it should be aligned to the angle at which the weapon struck the target. In this demo it's only occurring horizontally since the attack motion is so horizontal, but in the actual game it will occur much more dynamically because of the natural attack variety in combos.

7. Blood Explosion. There are actually three different things going on this effect: a large splatter that emerges from the impact point, tiny blobs, and tiny motion-stretched blobs. The way a thick liquid like this spews out of a point is very distinct; there should be enough stickyness and viscosity to be clumpy but the motion must break it apart realistically. Using this stack of three different effects is the best way to emulate that.

8. Blood Splatters. This effect is very simple; I'm simply creating a few flat sprites in slightly randomized locations. There are two different pieces of art for the sake of variety, and one of them slowly gets bigger over the course of it's slow lifetime to look like the blood is spreading out.

9. Ground Dust. Not terrifically realistic, but adds to the sense of impact and motion. I'm simply using this effect to imply that the attack was so brutal and hard that it blasted some dust off the ground the way a helicopter would.

10. Camera Shake. Pretty self-explanatory. A good camera shake contributes hugely to the feeling of power if done right. It might be a little strong in this particular case, but bear with me as I push these effects as far as I can.

Of course these will improve over time and may change entirely. I'm aware of the fact that some of this might not hold up when there are lots of enemies on the screen getting the shit beat out of them and I might have to rework some of the effects so they stand out or don't distract the player. But the proof of concept you see here was successful in that we know we can make something feel brutal and awesome.

Character Construction

In this image we have 4 characters you will see in the game. There are many more than this, and I'll show them to you as time goes on. But you can see that these 4 character concepts share the same physical proportions and it's only their equipment that sets them apart from each other. This applies to the rest of the cast as well.

This was an entirely conscious desicion that serves multiple purposes. From a creative standpoint, I knew up front that I didn't want to spend any time writing a story or developing characters; Ultimately I know that people play beat-em-ups because they want to experience exciting combat...not to be a part of some nonsensical melodrama. None of the characters in Aztez will have a distinct face (though they will have facial expressions we will use as gameplay cues) and none of them will speak. I feel that in the context of a game like this, those things simply aren't important.

From a technical standpoint, it greatly narrows down the amount of character assets I have to manage. Every character you see in the game will be built on top of one base character model, and will simply have different equipment assets attached to them at key points to set them all apart. I will do character animations on one individual rig that any character can use since they're all essentially the same dude with different gear.

Knowing that the gear is the characterizing factor here made it easy to settle on a system like this and gave me that much more reason to push the form in this game. The ultimate challenge with these characters is making sure I can distinguish them all from each other when they all have the same body. The solution in this case is with distinct helmets attached to the head, distinct loincloths attached to the crotch, distinct jewelry attached to the arms, etc. So in the rig there are dummy objects at specific points that I can snap an object to in Unity and once the right combination of gear is attached I can smash it all into a prefab object.

Take a look at this character proof of concept I made in Unity. I made it to be absolutely sure with myself that these principles held up in practice. Concept art is NOT in-game art, after all, and you can never be sure until you're seeing the characters the way the player will see them.

To reinforce the idea of "ensuring I see what the player will see" I slapped an idle animation on them and faced them both left and right to be safe. It was quick and dirty but it gave me the proof I needed; these characters look like sex. Time to move forward.