The Release Schedule of Ninjio

Disclaimer:

Most of the projects that I will be doing are for a game that I am developing on my own code named Project Ninjio. In short, the game is a story action driven role playing game (common referred to as an action RPG). It features 2 uniquely styled areas, one in which the cities are built to flow along with nature, and the other where the cites are hyper futuristic. The game is set in a futuristic China, where after a large war, the country is split into the two settings described above. The game is built in the Unity 3D game engine.

The Release Schedule of Ninjio

Introduction

So some of you reading this may think to yourself "Wow Gismo, that Ninjio game seems pretty impressive, I wonder how long it will take for you to get anything done with it". As much as I want Ninjio to be the best game in existence, I would also like to release it in a timely manner. I would like for the game to be released either during my college career or shortly after that. Besides a big final release, I would like to have the ability to show off Ninjio early through the use of game play demonstrations.

Goals

One of the times that I wish to have a game play demo ready for people to play is during Cumberland Valley (my high school) District Arts Festival. This festival is where many of the art classes in CV get the chance to display their work to the rest of the school district as well as the public. I feel that this would give me the chance to set up the game in an E3 sort of manner, a video game show where many developers show off their games prior to releasing them with presentations and demos of their games. I hope that by the District Arts Fest to have a playable demo of the first major boss fight along with some of the story surrounding the fight. This demo should be relatively short but still give people a look into what Ninjio is all about.


Besides getting a playable demo out for the District Arts Fest, I have no solid plans for Ninjio's full release other than I would like to have it out before I get out of college, so I can add it to my resume.

Steps to get to the goal

In order to get to the point that I can make a playable demo for the festival, I have set a certain set of steps that I need to do. The first thing that I have, as shown in my Trello project management file, is to have the characters that I need to make demo happen made. 

The Trello board for Ninijo

For the demo, only 4 out of the 7 total characters will need to be made. I have done some math and figured out that I can have all 7 characters done by the end of this marking period if I finish one character each week. This would mean that I would have to sketch, model, texture, and rig the character all within a week, giving me a day or so for each of these steps. This may seem impossible but I have been doing this for about a week at this point and have found it to be possible if I work on my characters in class and during my free time before and after school.

Boss fights, the best skills test for video games

The second step to my master plan is to get the environment that the boss fight takes place in modeled. This should not take too long, so I am allotting around 1-2 weeks to get this done during the third marking period. While this is going on, I will also be working on, during my own time, programming the boss fight itself.

The third step is for me to program some of the allies and how they act during the boss fight. This is something that I have been doing some research on and have not found an adequate solution for, but I will outline my goals for the allies whenever I get around to it. The same thing could be said for the enemies, I have not found a good solution to how I want them to act.

Overall, I have a plan to some degree. This is the first time that I have put the plan down into wording, but I hope that this gives everyone reading a plan for how I am going to develop Ninjio going further.

This week's work log:

Monday December 11th: Modeled Yuan Shi

Tuesday December 12th: Did some more modeling work for Yuan Shi

Wednesday December 13th: Textured Yuan Shi

Thursday December 14th: Rigged Yuan Shi

Friday December 15th: Sketched 坏人

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The Design of Jade Gate

Disclaimer:

Most of the projects that I will be doing are for a game that I am developing on my own code named Project Ninjio. In short, the game is a story action driven role playing game (common referred to as an action RPG). It features 2 uniquely styled areas, one in which the cities are built to flow along with nature, and the other where the cites are hyper futuristic. The game is set in a futuristic China, where after a large war, the country is split into the two settings described above. The game is built in the Unity 3D game engine.

The Design of Jade Gate

Introduction

Ninjio's story primarily takes place in two settings. One is a city that has pushed to develop their future alongside nature while the other, the primary setting in Ninjio, chose to develop their future without nature. Although these two contrasts are not a primary part of Ninjio's story, I felt that they had the opportunity to be an interesting, and very extreme, contrast to each other. The city where the main portion of the game takes place is called Jade Gate, or 玉門 in Chinese. I think that Ninjio may finally be at the point where I need to create some portions of Jade Gate for use in testing game play features.

Jade Gate's design and influence

I find it interesting how Jade Gate was the first one out of the two settings where I knew exactly how I wanted it to look. I wanted the city to be the "City of the Future" where it's leader wanted as much innovation as possible, however this resulted a city where nature was destroyed and many human ethics were violated as well. This kind of city, where innovation was heavily encouraged, resulted in me thinking back to a few YouTube videos about Walt Disney's EPCOT project that I have watched recently.

Wait, the Epcot in Walt Disney World in Florida?

Walt Disney and his Experimental Prototype for a Community of Tomorrow

Well, no. In short, without going through too many details, Walt Disney before he died had come up with an Experimental Prototype for a Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT for short). This community was built to be able to survive, thrive, and show off what the future of cities can be. At the heart of this project, there was a gigantic city that was planned to be built using the finest technology that the  1970's could offer, including a labyrinth of transportation options like monorails and an integrated roadway design for the city never thought of before then. This concept of EPCOT city faded away with the passage of Walt Disney himself, however the idea of bring the best technology and innovation to a single place was eventually incorporated into the EPCOT theme park built in the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. I would like to make the main city where the story in Ninjio takes place to be heavily influenced by Walt Disney's idea for a "Community of Tomorrow" as I feel that Jade Gate's constant strive to innovate would fit well with the original drawings that the Walt Disney Company did for EPCOT city.

The model on display in Walt Disney World
of EPCOT City

So, what does a city of the future look like?

The road layout of EPCOT City,
note the circular nature of the city

A cross section of the city of tomorrow, look at those transit options!

This is a very difficult question, however when I look at the concept art for EPCOT city, I see many things that I like. One such thing is how the city is highly planned, with higher density buildings like apartments and high rise office towers situated in the center of the city and lower density buildings like single family homes and larger office complexes located on the edge of the city limits. Another thing that I found in the plans for EPCOT city was how much the transportation infrastructure is planned. In the drawings for EPCOT city, there are many modes of transportation ranging from roadways built onto of each other to various light rail systems (monorails, electric trains etc) that weave throughout the city. There are many other things that I find interesting inside of the concept art for EPCOT city, however I will spare all of you from my annoyingly long list. These are just some of the things that I want to incorporate in Jade Gate's layout and design.

This week's work log:

Monday December 4th: Finalized Sketch of Kuai Long

Tuesday December 5th: Did the body for Kuai Long

Wednesday December 6th: Finalized the rig for Kuai Long

Thursday December 7th: Textured Kuai Long

Friday December 8th: Did some eye textures for Kuai Long, restructured the project file structure and naming scheme…. yeah

The sun sets on Walt Disney's EPCOT

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The Art of War I: Weapons and their role

Disclaimer:

Most of the projects that I will be doing are for a game that I am developing on my own code named Project Ninjio. In short, the game is a story action driven role playing game (common referred to as an action RPG). It features 2 uniquely styled areas, one in which the cities are built to flow along with nature, and the other where the cites are hyper futuristic. The game is set in a futuristic China, where after a large war, the country is split into the two settings described above. The game is built in the Unity 3D game engine.

The Art of War I: Weapons and their role

Introduction

Most, if not all, of the main characters in Ninjio will have their own unique weapons that they use in combat. These weapons will be uniquely tailored to the character's personality and skills. For example, one of the character is of a short, almost dwarf like, stature with a knack for fixing things. Therefore that character's weapon may be a small, yet powerful, wrench-like weapon to suite the character's physical size and the character's mechanical know-how. Since Ninjio is set in a futuristic China, I would like to bring as many elements of the Chinese culture into the game as possible. One such element of China's culture that I find fascinating is how they view and use their weapons.

Chinese culture and how weapons are used and viewed

A good example of a Western game that favors the whole
"I'm a big guy with a gun, now eat it" sort of mentality

There is a dramatic difference between Asian cultures and western (USA and European countries etc) culture in terms of weapons and their role in war. In most Asian cultures, a weapon like the sword or even a gun is considered an extension to the body during war, where the sword or the gun is an extension of the artistic art form that war is. This means that in Asia, you would see less of the movie-esk "Imma gonna run at you with my sword raised above my head and shout like a madman" scene and more of the "Imma ninja, I am going to sneak around and stealthy kill you when you least expect it" sort of moments. Since this is something that is buried deep into Asian culture, video games that are made in Japan, where most major video game companies are headquartered, and any other Asian country tend to follow this mantra of using weapons to extend the body's capabilities. I hope to emulate this part of Asian culture in Ninjio but how?

But how?

I ask this because as an interactive experience, video games and the designers behind them have very little control over how the game is being played. The few things that designers can implement to increase their control can either be obtrusive, like a big invisible wall that the player cannot get through, or they can be subtle, like having only a certain number of bullets before you have to seek more ammunition (thus making the player have to pull out of a fight). Of the two ways of gaining control over the player's game play, I would like to make the 2nd option, making the boundaries very natural, be more prominent than the other option. 

Now rounding back to the original question, I would like Ninjio's combat to be as awesome and epic as I can while still sticking to the Chinese culture of using weapons as an extension of the body. In my opinion, I can do four things to insure that this can happen. 

One is that I can offer the player lots of movement mechanics to ensure that sneaking up behind an enemy is as fun as possible. I have already programmed the movement into the Ninjio, and boy is it smooth. I have it programmed so that there is no delay between you input an action and when it is carried out by the game. This greatly helps players move around the scene, get to where they want to go faster, and it overall makes playing the game feel very responsive and smooth. 

Another mechanic that I have implemented already in the game is a teleportation ability that the player can use after a short cool down. This allows players to pick a place to go to and use a teleport bolt that brings them to that place instantaneously. I may need to think about having this ability unlock around halfway through the game because it is seriously fun to use and may be a bit overpowered compared to the normal movement that the player has.

One thing that I can keep in mind while creating the levels for Ninjio is to make them as open-ended as possible. This means that enemies will be placed in a manner that allows the players to come up with different ways of getting around them or even killing them. One example of this may be a situation where there is a guard in the very center of a circular plaza surrounded by a high wall on one side and a fountain in the middle. They player, in this case, could get up on that high wall to achieve some high ground or they could just go to the center of the plaza and start fighting. In the second option, the player could then use the fountain or the walls as cover from the opposing fire coming from the guard.

A durability chart for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Another mechanic that I could implement would be similar to something found in Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in which weapons break after some use. This could force players to not use their main weapon all the time and maybe force them to sneak around enemies like the ninja that they are. One of my concerns with something like this is that I would then have to program some sort of inventory system so that players can swap out weapons when they break, which is surprisingly difficult to get right. Another concern that I have with this system is that when I play Breath of the Wild I tend to have lots of "Oh crap" situations where my good weapon breaks halfway through a boss fight, but maybe that's just me being a bad player. Overall, I don't think that this mechanic would fit Ninjio's action packed game play.

These are just some of my ideas on how to enforce a lesser use of weapons inside of Ninjio, but I am sure that as the game progresses I can come up with some more ideas. Out of all four ideas, the only one that I am going to scrap in its entirely is the the weapon breaking system that I described and reputed above.

This week's work log:

Monday November 27th: No school, enjoy crashing those Amazon servers!

Tuesday November 28th: Worked on the eyes for Bing Nu

Wednesday November 29th: Worked a bit on the model for -... .- ... - .. --- -.

Thursday November 30th: Textured  ... -. ...-.. --- -.

Friday December 1st: Did final touches on .- --- .. - ... -. ...-

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