The Cut Content of Ninjio's First Public Demo

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 Cut Content of Ninjio's First Public Demo

Introduction

Last week I published a blog post outlining the story arch that player's will be experiencing during the demo that I am putting together for District Arts Festival. Although what you see there is a just a snippet of the overall story in the game, what you see in the document, found here, is a modified Scene #-Act # - Sub-line # format that I use within the script for showing where the content was meant to be, so I would encourage you to open the script in another tab so that you can easily travel back and forth between this blog post and the script.
version of a modified version of the original scenes. What I am saying is that there is a lot of content that I decided to remove for various reason, being demo limitations or something of that sort, from the demo itself! Being one who enjoys learning about cut content in video games, I have decided to give the details on what things I couldn't, for various reasons, include in the demo. Please note that I will be using the

Budget(?) Cuts?

• Act 2 - Part 3 & Act 3- Part 1 - Sub-line 3
• Entirely cut because starting a demo with a boring labyrinth of tunnels would be lame as heck, plus it served no story purpose other than being a cooling off moment from the previous scenes (which the demo will not include).
• Replaced by a much easier to understand elevator ride in which the player can quickly get acclimated to the controls.
• Act 3 - Part 1 - Sub-line 6J - 6Y & Act 4 - Part 1 - Sub-line 3F- 3G
• Removed because it not only would slow down the pace of the demo, but I just don't want to have to model an entire audience and have them talk. 
• I will try to do this in the full version of the game because I like the viva la revolution kind of vibe that it gives off. 

A far view of the stage

Other Cuts

So these are not listed using my odd Bold and Underlined Indicators but they will still be happening.

• The boss fight with Huai Ren was originally broken into 4 main stages (Just Humanity Helpers, Humanity Helpers and charging Huai Ren, and 2 Huai Ren shooting stages). In order to keep the pacing and the length of the demo fast and small, I have decided that only the first two stages of the fight will happen in the demo.
• I plan to include all 4 of them in the full version of the game.
• This should also allow me to get to the last part of the game that I want to include in the game (Act 4 - Part 1).
• The original location of the boss, as partially seen by Act 3 Part 1's section 2, was supposed to be an enclosed stage of some sort. I have changed the location to be outside so that I can experiment with more organic shapes instead of boxes and other things.

Screen Shots

  

Underneath the building is where the action takes place

A view looking at the stage

The view from the stage

The backside of the stage, doubt much action is going to happen here!

Other notes

I like humor. (Act 3- Part 2 - Sub-line 3C and the names of the parts for examples)

This week's work log:

Monday February 19th: No school, light reworking of the internal file hierarchy.
Tuesday February 20th: Finished Kuai Long's running animation.
Wednesday February 21st: Textured both the pedestal and drones for the Humanity Helpers, you can now be helped by our 4 star staff.
Thursday February 22nd: Made character portraits for the trio and Huai Ren for during dialog sections.
Friday February 23rd: Started working on cutscenes for Ninjio, first time using the new Unity Timeline editor… I like it

The Story of Ninjio's First Public Demo

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 Story of Ninjio's First Public Demo

The table of contents for Ninjio's Story
The part where the demo takes place is
shown with the black line... A bit much

Introduction

In all of my blog posts, I include a disclaimer that describes Ninjio and what I hope to achieve with it. One of the things that I highlight with the disclaimer is that the game is story based. Although I keep on saying that the game is story based, I have not shared much about that actual story elements that one will be experiencing within the first demo that I will have, the one that is going to be for the District Arts Festival at my school. 

Story Time!

So instead of just saying what elements of Ninjio's overall story will be included in the demo, I have extracted the dialouge and other things that I have in the overall script that will be included in the demo! Feel free to take a look through the script of the demo and use your imagination to help the scene, and the demo itself, come to life!

Link is here

Special notes on how Gismo's brain works

Within the script, you will see many odd markings that were meant for only me to see. These include italicized sections, bold and underlined section. Hopefully the diagram below helps with explaining how these markings work.

Please keep in mind that the act and part names are just for me to know what is happening overall in that part of the game

If you want, you can press ctrl+alt+h or ctrl+alt+a to bring up the outline of the script to skip to various parts of the script!

This week's work log:

Monday February 12th: Started to texture the boss arena

Tuesday February 13th: Finished texturing most of the boss arena

Wednesday February 14th: Started working on the animations, first up is Huai Ren’s charging animation!

Thursday February 15th: Worked on the next animation, Huai Ren’s exhausted and reving up poses.

Friday February 16th: Started working on Kuai Long’s animations, first up is the idle and walk cycle

The Art of the Future

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 the Future

Introduction

I have already covered the main source of inspiration for the main setting, Jade Gate, in Ninjio in a previous post, however since I am now designing elements of the city, I thought it would be interesting to investigate how everyday items, like benches and cars, would look like in Jade Gate's highly futuristic setting. In this blog post, I will show you various concepts that other artists have done and explain why I feel that they will fit within Jade Gate's setting.

A Gallery of Inspiration

Seating


These designs for seating and benches all share one thing in common, they all ebb and flow in a very calculated and technical manner. They would all fit with Jade Gate's highly technical being and nature while still being practical for people to actually sit on them. The last one, with the geometric design, I particularly like due to how the triangles, although flat and not curved, make up a larger wave-like pattern.

Single Person Transportation
So between these two designs, I like the one to the right(the 2 wheels) design the best because it emphasizes the speed and effective designs that Huai Ren, the leader of Jade Gate, would like for himself and his citizens.

Mass Transit

Not going to lie here, I was almost tempted to add Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept into this, but I thought back to the original plans for Walt Disney's EPCOT city and realized that the transit system for the city was just like the People Mover found in both Walt Disney Land and World. As such, the design choice was simple, a single family transit system that is both fast, and look pretty dang cool. This would also tie into what Huai Ren would want for his city, a clean and effective mass transit option for his people.

Conclusion

So instead of going through every object that a city of today would have and telling you what I want it look like inside of Jade Gate's city of tomorrow, I will give you a mantra that I will go by when designing these objects: Simple, clean, effect, and mabeye a bit showy.

This week's work log:

Monday February 5th: Modeled the stage of the boss fight arena

Tuesday February 6th: Modeled one of the pieces of the boss fight arena

Wednesday February 7th: Snow Day, did some work at home though

Thursday February 8th: Remodeled the base of the boss fight arena

Friday February 9th: Finalized all the models for the boss fight arena

The Bethesda Effect

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 Bethesda Effect

Introduction

The title of this post may be confusing for anyone who is not a gamer, but I will try my best to make this as readable for everyone as possible. Something that I have found while working on Ninjio is the fact that the scope of the game, or the amount of things that I want to include in it, is growing constantly. This growing scope, I believe, is because of the various games that I, myself, play. The more games that I play, the more I look at my own project in Ninjio and want to see more and more features added to it, even the demo I am producing for District Arts Fest is growing in size due to this effect. I have named this constantly growing scope the Bethesda effect, named after a game studio named Bethesda known for their large and expansive games.

Bethesda the company and their works

The Elder Scrolls: Skryim in game screenshot
Yes, you can climb that mountain!

Bethesda games studio is best known for their Elder Scrolls series, including The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Both of these games are known for their large and expansive fantasy realms which are highly immersive. They all contain lots of quests and story elements for the player to follow. The main issue with some of their more recent games like Fallout 4 is the fact that, although there are a lot of them, the density of the fun and enjoyable experiences is rather low thanks to the huge world sizes.

Assassin's Blade: Unity by Ubisoft, a game with lots to do, just all in
one main area

The Bethesda Effect

This new term that I have come up with appears in many video games where the worlds are open and expansive for the player to explore and play in. It is a result of the industry wanting to appeal to what players like to play, which as of late, again thanks to the popularity of Bethesda's open world games, is open worlds with lots of content and experiences. The issue with these sorts of worlds is that in order for them to be full of experiences, the designers need lots of man power to make the experiences fun and enjoyable. I mean, who doesn't hate it when you have to fight the same boss twice or find the same "awesome" weapon or item for the third time in a row. In order to make sure that these sort of situations do not happen, the development team needs time and a lot of employees, something that little independent studios cannot support.

The Bethesda Effect and Project Ninjio

I won't lie, during the original planning phases of Ninjio, I was playing some Fallout 4 and the occasional Elder Scrolls, therefore the influence of the two game's massive worlds definitively shaped how I wanted Ninjio to play. The city of Jade Gate, the main place where the game takes place, was originally supposed to be a large and expansive city with lots of hidden nooks and crannies for the player to find and enjoy.After thinking about this blog post and the huge world that I had planned for Ninjio, I decided to not make the city as large as I wanted to, instead opting for a smaller city with more experiences in a less amount of space. 

Thankfully, the way that I had the story of Ninjio planned already allowed me to scale back the city and world as a whole to be tightly knitted around the story itself. In a sense, I made the story flow in, yet another term ripped from a major game developer (Naught Dog), beats, or major events that the player will experience during the course of the story and game.

The original art board for the city of Jade Gate, note the large pictures in the
top half, that was the scale that I originally wanted in Ninjio. 

For example, during the demo for the District Arts Fest I have identified 4 beats. The first one is introducing the characters to the player during a somewhat funny elevator ride. The second one is the boss fight itself, which has numerous smaller beats within it to make it even more epic. The third one is a character defining line f
rom one of the main characters. The last beat is a huge outdoors fight with an explosive ending.

By using this method, I should be able to avoid the Bethesda Effect to ensure that the spaces that I design are as densely pack as I can. Being a one man team, keeping scope to a low level will definitely help when reaching development milestones.

This Week's Work Log:

Monday January 29th: Finished Humanity Helper Drone and started reworking the original script to fit the demo

Tuesday January 30th: Finished rework of original script!

Wednesday January 31st: Started work on the boss fight arena

Thursday February 1st: Modeled some columns for the boss fight arena

Friday February 2nd: Modeled the building that goes on top of the boss fight arena