End of Marking Period 3 Blog Post

End of Marking Period 3 Blog Post

Geesh, has another marking period gone by already?! All I can say is that the amount of progress that have made on Ninjio is staggering. I have gone from ideas of what I wanted Ninjio's demo to play, look, and feel like to a nearly completed demo for the game. In doing so, I have been able to successfully split up Ninjio's overall demo into several smaller sections. Each of these sections are at points in the demo's overall story and action where I feel that if the player was left with any of these particular sections that they would have a good understanding of Ninjio's story and game play. Without further ado, I present to you the three sections of Ninjio's demo. I will intentionally keep the story and action as vague as I can, as I feel that I would be hard to "briefly" explain all the action going on at a given time. 

Section 1: Huai Ren boss fight

The arena from the player's point of view

An overview of the boss fight arena

This section of the demo was a pretty much guaranteed section that I wanted within Ninjio's demo. This section is where the player is introduced to the attitudes of three of Ninjio's main characters and the main villain throughout Ninijo's overall story. This section takes place during a boss fight, actually a mid game boss fight, with Huai Ren. The trio, as I call them, consisting of Yuan Shi, the team leader, Bao Lei, the savagely programmed robot, and the character that the player controls throughout the game, Kuai Long are tasked to invade Huai Ren's headquarters only to find that Huai Ren has a much more evil intent that simply ruling his city, he wants to take over the world. The trio then is charged headfirst into an hectic fight between Huai Ren and his army of robotic minions. This section contains two cut scenes, one before the fight to setup the characters and to showcase Huai Ren's evil intent and one after the fight to bring closure to the boss fight.

The arena from the stage

Section 1's art assets

Below are some of the art assets used during the boss fight, including many scenery items for the boss fight arena itself. These include benches, rocks, and a stage on which Huai Ren appears on briefly.

The hallway from above, note that the sides of the
hallway facing the camera here have been removed

Section 2: The Long Hall

This section is named after the original intent of this section of the demo. Originally this section was just suppose to be a scene in which the player gets to know an interesting part of Bao Lei's character. This section was meant to be an in-game dialogue chat between the trio, but it slowly morphed into a fun section of action that is now a cool down period for the boss fight that comes before the section. Originally this section was just to be a long hallway, hence the nickname, to allow for a section of dialogue to be played, but now it is, in addition to the dialogue section, a hallway with some twists and turns and some enemies for the player to defeat.

Section 2's art assets

Below are some of the art assets scattered throughout the hallway, including obstacles like boxes, boxes, and boxes (because boxes are a level designer's best friend).

Section 3: Michael Bay Ending

So this section is the very last section that players encounter before the demo ends, and boy did I want it to end with a bang (hence the nickname of this section). This section contains the rest of the group, Bing Nu and Ji Xie, meeting back up with the trio. Before the big boss fight, Bing Nu and Ji Xie split from the group to plant explosive charges in the maintenance area of Huai Ren's headquarters. In this section, the trio and the duo (Ji Xie and Bing Nu) as found together again. The duo are found, in a cut scene, to be trailed by several dozen of Huai Ren's robotic minions. The player is then tasked to dispatch all of them before continuing onto the last and final cut scene of the demo. The final cut scene consists of the team realizing that they cannot exit Huai Ren's elaborate headquarters, so Ji Xie suggest that they get off of the place using his new grappling hook. The demo is then ended off with an image of the team gliding away from the exploded building, with fireballs lining the background of the shot.

Section 3's art assets

Below are some of the art assets that were made for the final section of the demo. In order to save time, I reused the rocks and the ground that I made for the boss fight arena in this scene (asset re-usability at it's finest). 

Miscellaneous assets

Character portraits

These are used during dialogue to denote who is talking.

Police Bot Drone

This is the only enemy that I have made for the demo, but I do have ideas for more.

Whats next?

Whats next for Ninjio is for me to finish up the final cut scene, the one where the characters glide off of the building while it is exploding. Other than that, the demo is just about complete. I will need to start working on some things that would help during the demo for players, which includes things like a survey (so I can gauge the reaction that people have of the game), and a quicker way of restarting the game so that the next person in line can start the game with a clean slate. Another thing that I would like to work on for the game is some sort of area before the boss fight for players to get to know the characters and to help the player understand the controls of the game before I shove them headfirst in an, admittedly, challenging boss fight.

VOID

Void is my own little side game that I have been working, I will be making a blog post on here soon about the game itself, but I just want to leave you guys with some awesome footage of the game featuring a highly atmospheric song by one of my favorite music artists.

This week's work log:

Monday March 19th: Model and textured some surrounding buildings for the Fountain Scene.

Tuesday March 20th: Started prep work for the Fountain’s cutscene

Wednesday March 21st: No school, worked a little bit at home on the fountain cutscene.

Thursday March 22nd: Worked on the Fountain’s cutscene

Friday March 23rd: Started work on the Fountain’s final cutscene.