Designing A Difficult Enemy In Aetherial
I Will Blog A Bit About What We Call The Sky-Ray
What was the idea?
The idea behind the Sky-Ray was an interpretation of what we thought was a hard enemy in the concept document.
And we wanted to create something that would be a bit more difficult than our two enemies that i have mentioned in my previous blog posts.
We wanted to have a menacing enemy that would really convey a big threat, and what we discussed about in the start were Sharks and Manta Rays. What I personally felt was that the Manta ray would convey a certain way of flying which was needed to keep the aethetic of the game concept of Aetherial.
We thought of different ways to make the manta-ray look evil or menacing, and we tasked one of the graphic artists in our group to create some concepts. (the picture above shows the concepts)
My task then was to make a choice of these that felt closest to the feel of the original game concept and the evil/menacing look that we required.
My task then was to make a choice of these that felt closest to the feel of the original game concept and the evil/menacing look that we required.
The choice I made was the Top-Left, and I made this choice because it felt menacing but not to overdo it with unrealistic teeth and the overuse of crystals ( which powers their flight )
How will it act in-game?
The user-stories which I provided for this game were:
- As a Sky-Ray
I will move quickly
Because I want to avoid the player
- As a Sky-Ray
I will shoot projectiles from a distance
Because I want to hit the player from a distance
- As a Sky-Ray
I will have a high amount of health
Because I am tough
With this the programmer was able to understand what was needed to create such an enemy . And we implemented this enemy after the alpha because we still had not tested an enemy that was able to shoot any projectiles, so it was perfect to test before the beta.
Even though we had thought that the Sky-Ray would have a lot of health it was proven ingame that it would be far too difficult for the players to make it have more health.
So we decided that it would be fast and shoot fast to still keep the difficulty of this enemy.
So we decided that it would be fast and shoot fast to still keep the difficulty of this enemy.
Hello Axel!
ReplyDeleteIn short, I think this was a good blog post!
To begin with I feel you described your journey of thought when creating this enemy, as well as communicating it to the rest of team, very well. I easily understood your english grammar and found no significant problems. It's nice to see the pictures of the creature described as well. The User Stories were good too.
I have to say that game and enemy balancing is a very interesting topic and a quite difficult one as well. As a fellow designer I like to read about the balance of health vs. strength, damage vs. speed and so on. I think you've done well in figuring this out when designing a difficult enemy and you described it well.
All in all, a good blog post in which I could easily read and understand what you've written and what your process of thought was during this design.
// Karl Lindkvist