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The Highmoon Express Trailer
Over the past few months I have been posting blogs about my process of making a game, while in Game Design at Vancouver Film School. The game is in a beta state and would love for your feed back!
Play the Highmoon Express Beta!
Go here to play the game - Play
*Please read the Instructions 1st*
This is a beta so please write down in plan English - “What is happening”
and “what you think should happen” and either post in the comments here or email your findings to -
gd13billy@vfs.com or this email account (akcirca@gmail.com
- Stuttering Billy ( Designer, Animator, Art)
Werewolf base color animations
Last week I have been inking the base colors of the werewolf enemies :
“Troll” walk and attack animation
Werewolf pup run and attack animation
“Smoke” werewolf idle, walk and attack animtation
- Billy (Designer, Artist, Animator)
Sudoku Showdown art update
When not working on our final, I have been hard at work on:
Sudoku Showdown is a head to head sudoku game for the PC and PSP that I have been doing the animation and art for.
Title Screen:
Static gameplay screen with dynamic text fields for the programmer to fill in:
Static gameplay screen:
Looping animation of the player “idles” and “attack” animation. The attack animation plays where a player gets a combo.
- Billy (Designer, Animator)
Getting our Ducks in a Row.
The most common questions our mentors have for us stem from an ambiguity with the special attack mechanic. As currently documented the target affected by a character special attack is not specified. This is clearly an oversight that needed to be resolved immediately.
The solution was to implement a priority list for each special attack. A linear series of logic gates to determine the targets.
The first case for every character is follows this equation:
This case determines if the current target will be killed by the characters auto-attack before reaching the target. If not the special attack will target this closest enemy.
Subsequent cases are different for each character and are as follows.
Preacher
Case 2: A Feral Wolf is within range
Case 3: A Swarm is within range
Case 4: Second closest target
Outlaw
Case 2: A Troll is within range
Case 3: A Feral Wolf is within range
Case 4: Second closest target
Doc
Case 2: A Swarm is within range
Case 3: A Ghost Wolf is within range
Case 4: Second closest target
Showgirl
Case 2: A Ghost Wolf is within range
Case 3: A Troll is within range
Case 4: Second closest target
Targets that have inherent defenses against a character’s auto-attack are given priority over others.
This priority list should help insure that;
a) The intention of the special attacks (to shore up character weakness) is represented by the mechanic
b) The special attacks can more easily be used to predicable protect other characters.
David Heron, Designer, High Moon Express
nodes pt. 1
Hello boys and girls. The name’s Joey and I am in the art dept. of our small humble team. So far, I did the color palettes of all of the characters as well as concept art for the werewolves, and most importantly the concept art for the nodes. For today I will just post five of the 23 that we will be having in our game.
Burning Caravan: Skeletons, burnt-down caravan, and devastation was what I had in mind when fleshing this out.
Canyon Pass: I pictured the town that is the setting for our game as being inside a canyon. So I thought a downward passway would work well to illustrate this as well as communicate the path being narrowed down to the challenge the four gunslingers will encounter to catch the last train.
Canyon Pass 2 (Gold Panner): I googled gold panning with Dave from our team and thought it would be interesting to have a gold panning machine since we had an Idea of the residents that were living prior to the game was a mining community. There actually was a gold panning machine that collected dirt and automatically filtered gold. Google it.
Casino: There is an awesome place in Toronto called honest ed’s. Despite its boxy building structure, I always had a liking to store building when I was in Toronto for art school. Honest Ed’s is a cool place to check out btw.
Cavalry Outpost: I had a minimalist approach to this one and just focused on what would be the bare essentials of an outpost that an hold only one person.
(Joey Song: Designer, Artist, Animator)
Rough enemy animations
I started with our concept art
Then using references animations from Capcom fighting games and images of wolfs running in the wild, I can up with this. A loop-able run and attack cycle
Starting with our concept images
Again, using references animations from Capcom fighting games and having my fellow classmates throw punches so I can see how their hands and arms move. I came up with this animation.
- Billy Lind (Designer, Animator)
The Anatomy of a Boss Battle.
The design challenge for this week is finalizing the boss character mechanics.
High Moon Express culminates in the turn eight last stand. The surviving heroes must combine their unique skills to defeat the general of the wolf army.
Our original concept for the final battle was simple: The boss would attack in four phases, each time mimicking the mechanic of a standard enemy. The intent was each hero would ‘answer’ one of the boss phases. If a hero was lost before turn 8 the player would have to overcome the loss through expert play to survive the corresponding phase. The desired effect was to highlight the unique value of each character.
After some preliminary brainstorming we came to see that binding each “Boss Phase” with a particular enemy would not achieve our desired effect. The four enemies in High Moon Express are not designed to underscore a specific character’s strength; rather their purpose is to expose a weakness. Therefore, in order to fulfill our design vision we must approach the boss character from an entirely new direction.
I’ll run through the methodology used to generate the “Showgirl Phase.”
The first step was to establish what made the Showgirl unique.
The Showgirls long and high rate of fire determines that of the four heroes she produces the largest number of auto-attacks. Decrementing the boss’s armour each time he is hit by an attack clearly makes the Showgirl the most valuable hero. This mechanic will be the basis of the “Showgirl Phase.”
The second step was to devise a strategy that would allow a player to succeed having lost the Showgirl earlier in the game. Establishing in what legitimate strategies could result in the Showgirl death was of primary importance.
A reasonable strategy is to move aggressively turn 3-8, split up the heroes, maximizing the expected number of auto-attack upgrades. Alternatively, the special abilities of specific characters may support a player’s play style. Both of these cases privilege individual characters at the expense of others and indicate that auto-attack upgrades and special abilities should be key to overcoming the Showgirl’s death.
During the “Showgirl Phase” the player may mitigate the loss of the Showgirl in two ways:
- Combination of the Doc’s (multiple hit fire attack) and Preacher’s (single target push back) special attack.
- Doc and Outlaw’s auto-attack with upgraded rate of fire and range.
Following this methodology each of the boss phases is tuned to a specific character or one of two viable strategies. Once we apply a fiction to the mechanics we will have our turn eight last stand.
David Heron, Designer, High Moon Express
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