#from legend

[crazygirl0152]

Here is my watercolor masterpiece of sun ☀️ flower 🌼 from long old legend.

[simonabitan]

To end up with From Legend, here is a little presentation of the game. It was style in development, so many things are missing, some other weren't definitive, but you can see the game in movement.

I hope someday I will have the opportunity to work on the license anew, or another one similar – like Hideki Kamiya with The Wonderful 101 – because I have a lot of ideas to develop!

By the way, you should take a look at Louis Lim's arts, the Art Director with whom I worked at Egg Ball. All the visuals you can see above and from other posts come from his direction!

From Legend at Gameblog.

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Inspirations from Everywhere

It is generally stated that every good game can inspire other games. The very cool thing is that as games are composed by different branches – gameplay, story, art, sound, programming, etc. – a lot of sources can model the game experience.

Designing From Legend was interesting, because it asked for several different and interesting sources.

Emotional Experience

Here are some references for the world created and the story:

Pu Songling's tales are the first source of inspiration we could count on. His book Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (1740) tells several little stories about how seductive fox-women learn to smart boys to question themselves about their knowledge.

The King of Masks (1996) is a movie directed by Wu Tianming. It tells a story about a Sichuan Change Art master who has to accept that the child he has adopted is a girl. The sex discrimination subject tackled through Chinese tradition was a good reference to find Fulin's story. Another reference for us with a different style was the famous Disney’s Mulan!

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) is a Hong Kong movie directed by Ching Stiu-Tung. It's also quite inspired by Pu Songling's Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio and was a good reference for its direction: cool fights with fireballs, amazing dodges and a lot of asian culture in one shot!

Interactive Experience

Oboro Muramasa is a nervous zone-type Action-RPG created by Vanillaware. It was our main reference in terms of action, arts and effects. It was also a good reference because of the input limitations from the Wii Controller that we had with tactile devices – OK, it's completely different, but there was control limitations on both devices, so we thought it was an interesting case.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (2010) is an Action-RPG created by Square Enix and first released on PSP systems. It was a good reference for us because it has a 'command gauge' that can be filled by hitting the enemies, changing player's attacks when full. As God Hand (2005) created by Clover Studio, it proves it is possible to create diversity with only one action button!

The Binding of Isaac (2010) created by Team Meat was a cool reference in terms of game structure, because it can generate diversity each game played. Unfortunately, we realized that it was incompatible with the Achievement system – at least if we would have designed something as deep as Team Meat's game. In fact, the Achievement system asks for achievable objectives, which is hard to balance with randomness. Finally, we kept a random effect for the environments and other bonus, but not to compose every fight. Maybe it was possible, but we hadn't the time to integrate it well enough to get the game experience we wanted.

Games from Platinum Games – Bayonetta and most of all Vanquish – were good references because the studio is getting used to create bosses the player encounters several times. With time and experience, they found a balance to make every fight unique despite reusing the same skin: a complex boss is designed, then limited in his behavior so each confrontation is a good opportunity to unlock some patterns to make it more complex – it's better than duplicate the boss to create something harder!

One thing we absolutely wanted was to often use the attack button, because it let us remind the most important command regularly. One of the numerous ideas was to fight during the reward sequence: depending on the fight result, more or less little lamps appear on screen. Each one contains money and can be broken easily with some basic attacks. If the score is perfect, a bigger lamp appear at the center of the screen, giving a chance to drop a magic gate that throws the player in a bonus stage. The main reference was double: Chinese Lamps + Pinata! Even if we hadn't the time to polish it enough to integrate it into the demo, I think such a system could be fun because it lets the player being active, even during the last part of the gameplay loop: the reward sequence.

The last reference I want to talk about is Disney's Beauty and the Beast. At first sight, there isn't common point, but as I liked the idea of living objects from Disney's movie, I suggested the possibility to have living chests in the bonus rooms I described right above. Bonus rooms have always a fixed camera and a random generated content: players can encounter enemies, money, a chest or nothing. This chest has also a random behavior: if the player gives a hit, the chest can stay still, running from the left to right or start to fly. With a few skills, the player can break it to get a cool reward. Unfortunately, like written in the paragraph above, this part was not polish enough to be implemented in the demo.

Conclusion

I think it's important to be able to get references from every media if it can help to create better games. The better way to get profit from that technique is simple: be curious and always search for the information – maybe the coolest side of our hyper-connected world!

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Story of a Fragile Fox-Woman

When starting this beat'em all project, the purpose was to create “a game about Chinese legends”. We thought it was a good point to make a fighting game – we really wanted to – so we started making benchmarks and reading many things about China and Chinese traditions. We even saw an expert from a university in Paris to get more precision about the potential elements we were going to add into the game experience.

As the storytelling had an important part in the emotional experience we wanted to offer, we decided to design it at the same time as the structure and the gameplay. Unfortunately, our ambition was too big, so we changed it two times before getting something possible to achieve. I had already written a bit about the game structure and the gameplay in previous posts, so I'm going to talk about the story now!

Above: early concept of the 3 main characters of the game.

The story

Here is a summary of the story:

A legend from an Eastern kingdom tells the story of the fox-woman Fulin...

In a far away land is a sacred sanctuary which hides the mystical and powerful art of masks. This place is watched by Ling, a High Dragon sent by the Celestial Jade Emperor in order to regulate the population on Earth. However, Ling is a proud deity who gets used to show his powers to enslave whoever approaches his lair. He's also a formidable creator and is considered as the god of the art of masks, a.martial art which draws its power from a mix between kung-fu and supernatural masks to wear.

One day, a young fox-woman named Fulin is searching for an audience with the terrible Ling. She is a warrior who has mastered the art of masks, the one created by the Dragon god she considers as an apart member of her family. While arriving at the sacred place, she meets Pi An, a talkative guardian dog who informs her he knows where his master is waiting for. Faithfully accompanied by her doggy guardian, Fulin must go through the twelves districts of the sanctuary to reach the god of her art, obliged to defeat all the enemies standing on her way. In fact, the High Dragon has transformed and enslaved a lot of thieves, warriors and kings into dangerous guardians through decades.

Once arrived in front of the lair of the High Dragon, Fulin says Pi An she's on saving him. The big dog doesn't understand the sens of her words, but in reality, he's just a puppet like all the other pawns of the sanctuary. In fact, Pi An is Fulin's fiancé, enslaved by Ling for having tried to steal a precious bracelet as a gift for his wedding with the fox-woman. When Fulin faces her god once again, he tells her that if she fails, Pi An will forget all about Fulin and their common story, as well as their meeting, throwing her back to the entry of the sanctuary.

The fate is in player's end. The end of the story depends on the issue of this fight and the achievements performed.

Above: concept illustrating the face to face between Fulin and Ling.

Storytelling and Evolution

As the game structure lets the player resolve fights before facing the big dragon boss and loop on that scheme – cf. this dedicated post – the storytelling has been designed through that constraint. The fundamental question we had at the very beginning of the development was to know what point of view the player would have: an omniscient one, a point of view relative to a specific character or something different? In other words, we had to define if the player would discover all the events of the game at the same time as the character embodied, or if he/she would be “outside” the world of the game, being awarded of some details characters might not know yet and vice versa. We chose the second option because we wanted to get a global experience that could remind Chinese tales: the narrator knows every detail and give them bit by bit to the reader. Another cool thing with these stories is that every tale can take place in one or several environments and generations, which is quite appropriate for the story we wanted to tell and the emotions we wanted to offer to the player.

Here was our storytelling concept:

At the very beginning, when introducing the characters, the player has compassion for Pi An. He's clumsy, funny and often gives cool gameplay tips to help the player well starting the adventure. As a contrary, Fulin is not very talkative, hiding her true motivation for wanting to beat her god. Even if she's strong at fighting bunch of enemies, it's hard to have compassion for her. At this point, the player would have much more affection for Pi An than for the main character.

While the player increases the progression gauge, the story evolves just as the enemies encountered and the achievements to perform – new cut-scenes between fights. At a certain point, he/she learns why Fulin wants absolutely to defeat the Dragon: Pi An is Fulin’s fiancé, cursed and enslaved by the High Dragon. She doesn't remember for how many years she’s trying to save him, failing better at every attempt to reach her goal, just like the player. The dialogues between Fulin and Pi An turn more centered on their past, and show more fragile facets of the character embodied by the player, so he/she can now have affection for her.

Once the player beats the Dragon, two endings are possible: an uncompleted one which triggers if the player hasn’t performed all the achievements, and a final one which triggers if all the achievements are done and the Dragon beat once again  – with a slightly different and harder behavior, of course!

Above: early concept illustrating both Fulin’s power and decision.

Conclusion

Even if we hadn't the time to implement the story into the demo, I think it would have deserved a try. Its non-linear structure and how it could be linked to the concept of the game let me trust in it. 

The next post would be the last but one about From Legend.

Stay tuned!

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Achievements & Progression

When thinking about the HD generation – PS3/Xbox 360 – there is one thing that has changed in our way of playing: the possibility to fill ‘micro-goal’ checklists to satisfy a killer/achiever appetite. For Microsoft, you perform achievements and earn points for a gamer score that allows you to compare it with other players. For Sony, you earn trophies with different values – which is actually the same thing as its rival’s system. There are two common point between them:

They are not compulsory. In fact, you can finish a game without performing all the achievements/earning all the trophies.

They offer nothing but auto-satisfaction. No bonus reward for performing all of them, whatever the game.

The main paradigm we chose in From Legend was to make the player feel perseverance, so performing achievements was the perfect idea, because anybody can understand – and accept – them. All the challenge was to get the addiction brought by their mechanics and then mixing it with a system solid enough to keep player’s focus during the entire game.

Here is the system as originally designed.

Achievements as a way to progress

As it has been indicated in a previous post, each time Fulin – player's character – performs an achievement, she moves forward on a 'progress gauge'. When a segment of that gauge is full, she earns a level and multiple rewards:

A big one that increases player's powers – max life increased, equipment bigger, new abilities through masks, etc.

Several small ones that make grow up the world Fulin evolves into – a new enemy, a new environment, a new mini-boss, a new event, a progression of the story, etc.

This system has been chosen to fit the 'looping structure' creating juicy new things as often as possible.

Above: A fake screen showing the progress gauge – not final visual.

Performance and effects on the player

Regarding the mask system – cf. previous post – it was important to introduce both 'physic skill' and 'mental skill' challenges. Regarding the game structure and the macro gameplay loop, it was also important that achievements were a lot more challenging one-shot objectives than a repetitive task such as killing 250 enemies or jumping 1000 times. In fact, as they represent here the main objectives of the game, it’s fundamental that they give challenging moments for the player to live.

To perform achievements, the process for is always the same:

1. Taking a look at the mission. Here the player can see 3 achievements to perform and choose the one he/she wants to do. Once one of them is done, it's checked and will be validated the next chapter.

2. Setting up the better combination of masks.The player equips different masks (cf. system) to maximize the chances of success.

Above: some schemes showing a part of the achievement performing process.

Above: A fake screen illustrating these schemes. Blue and red on the icons are inverted, but it lets you see the organization with some colors.

At this point, all the challenge is pure mental skill. The player takes first the information from the achievement description and takes the information for all the masks he has in order to make a choice between all of them, elaborating a tactics. All the difficulty in terms of design was to make a clear description of each achievement and masks to make feel the player he/she's smart instead of it's perfectly logic.

3. The last step is the physical performance. If choosing the right combination of mask is a mental skill of tactics, the physical performance is a mix of timing and reflex – measurement wasn't sure because of tactile controls.

Above: an ideal fight to perform achievements.

There wasn't a balancing between physic and mental skills. Some of the achievements were more based on mental skills, other on physical skills and some of them were 50/50. We hadn't well organized the list of achievements yet, but the concept was here.

Success or Fail?

The achievements were a hard part to design – we clearly didn't finish it. The inherent problem with them was we had to set first the difficulty for the fight itself, like for every beat'em all game, and then adding achievements that could fit the primary difficulty. Of course, we tried to design battles based on the achievements we wanted, because they represented the core experience of the game. However, as we couldn't finish this part before the company died, I can’t say it was a success nor a fail, but I think it was maybe a little bit too much ambitious regarding the situation of the company – number of resources, experience in a beat’em all games, tools, etc...

The next post will be about the story of the game, a cool part about demons, fox-women and love!

Stay tuned!

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Fight, Masks and Other Things

In the first post, I treat about perseverance and achievements that help the player to defeat a powerful boss. In this one, I want to define the gameplay more precisely, from the 3C’s – Character’s abilities, Controls and Camera – to the game system, so the next post will be clearer. Here we go!

3C’s: Character, Controls and Camera

As mentioned in the previous post, the player embodies a millenary fox-woman named Fulin in a 2D beat’em all game. She can move on the left and right, perform a 4 hit combo using her fans and rise in the air with bunches of enemies by executing an uppercut. In addition, she can dodge dangerous attacks by pressing a directional button two times.

Above: a fake screen to illustrate the controls on iPhone 4.

Above: S= 'Simple Attack' ; H= 'Heavy Attack' and Proj.= a hit that send the enemy away. The player can perform a 1, 2, 3 or 4 hit combo by pressing the 'Simple Attack' button the necessary number of times. 

Concerning the camera, we had to focus on one important detail: to create vertical or horizontal battles. As the player has to use his left and right thumb, we decided that the horizontal scrolling would be better. Aftermath: the arenas are wide but not very high. The camera keeps Fulin at the center of the screen on the floor and in the air so the player can feel he’s surrounded by waves of enemies coming from the left and right of the game area.

Above: the camera during a fight (character on the floor). The virtual buttons are under the floor to avoid visibility problems.

Above: the camera during a fight (character in the air). It blocks at 50% so the player can always see the enemies on floor.

Game System: a story about masks

I have to admit the 3C’s aren’t revolutionaries. It’s normal, we wanted them robust before totally new, because we figured out that on mobile support – especially on tactile devices like iOS, Android and Windows 8 – a large part of beat’em all doesn’t give a good first impression because of bad controls, camera or abilities. To limit these problems was our first priority. The second one was to find a system that could make the player feel challenge and perseverance, and that’s why the main character wears multiple masks. In fact, like masters of masks from China, Fulin can rapidly change the mask on her face. The difference is that masks have powers and are useful during battles in this game.

Their functionning is quite simple:

Every mask gives one new ability.

When the player changes the mask Fulin is wearing, he changes his bonus ability.

Abilities are essential to perform achievements – we didn’t lose our target!

Nevertheless, we figured out a first problem: how can we change the mask without adding a new button on the user interface? In fact, we didn’t want more than 4 action button – move ones included – while we absolutely wanted them with a large effect zone and integrated into the floor, so the player couldn’t hide enemies with his thumb during fights. To resolve the problem, we created a central ‘mask gauge’ filling everytime the player hits the enemies on the screen. When it’s full, the main character changes the mask she wears. Of course, with that system the player has to define the masks to wear before fighting. As we thought it could add more strategy to achievements, we adopted that solution.

Above: scheme showing how to equip masks before fights.

Above: scheme showing how the 'mask gauge' works. 

However, another new problem emerged. In fact, we had to include a lot of masks in the game to get enough content, so creating  only masks that could change player’s abilities was too big. To find a viable solution, we decided to add types to the masks, based on the yin-yang paradigm. Here is a little booklet:

Yin type: its power is active once it's worn and continues until the fight ends. Every mask of this type add a support ability that can be stacked. For instance, if the player put as first mask 'Panda' which gives the passive ability 'impossible to be thrown away or interrupted by an enemy attack' and put as a second mask 'Gorilla' which gives the ability: '1 life heart added to the life gauge', the player will keep the 'Panda' ability while wearing 'Gorilla'. This rule goes even  for the masks worn after.

Yang type: its power is active when it's worn only. It modifies directly character's abilities. For instance: the mask 'Tiger' gives the active ability 'punches are heavier and stronger', which means that the main combo is replaced by another one slower but doing more damages. If the player put another mask during a fight, he will lose the ability so will retrieve the classic main combo.

Divine type: Uncommon type that gives a special power but prevents the player from wearing another type. For instance, the mask 'Super Mustache' gives the ability 'every successful uppercut adds +5 coins'. Thanks Mario!

Above: a recapitulative scheme about masks types.

Of course, the representation above isn't exactly what can be seen in the game:

We used blue/red icons to illustrate respectively passive/active attacks.

We have choosen simple drawings to let the player learn abilities efficiently.

Above: some icons representing masks in the game.

The final touch

One last thing to know about the game system: the frenzy attribute. When the player’s 'combo hits' is superior (>) to a certain number, every hit has x% chance to be twice powerful – it deals +100% damages, so we can call that a 'critical hit'!

Above: the 'frenzy system' in one scheme.

That's all for the second part. The next post will be about achievements and how it uses the mask system to generate challenge and fun.

Stay tuned!

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Concept and Intentions

Here is the starting point of a long series of posts about the last project I worked on: From Legend, a 2D beat’em all game taking action in Ancient China. In this first post, I want to talk about the concept of the game that has already been revealed in a previous post – giving more details, of course.

Above: a concept art of the main character Fulin, by Louis Lim.

Our intention was:

To create a mobile beat’em all – iOS, Android, Windows 8 but also PS Vita and more – playable everywhere and by both casual and core gamers.

To get a frenetic gameplay easy to play but difficult to master.

To get a game experience that mixes game mechanics and scenario together in order to create strong emotions.

The player embodies Fulin, a thousand-year-old fox-woman who has mastered the art of masks. It’s a martial art which consists in changing the style of fight as the fighter changes his face. The goal: to cross a dangerous sanctuary to reach Ling, Fulin’s dragon-god, in order to get back what he has stolen to her.

The choice of China wasn’t a random selection. In fact, we wanted a game experience that could allow the player to experiment hardcore perseverance. Yes, perseverance was the most fundamental word of the project, so all the aspects of the game – structure, core gameplay, story and arts – had to fit its meaning perfectly. To unify these aspects, we used a concept known and overwhelming accepted by the players: achievements. In fact, to succeed in performing achievements, the player usually has to repeat normal actions in a game for a long time – to kill 1,000 enemies – or to perform a very hard action during the game – to discover a well hidden secret for instance. Since Microsoft introduced this concept with the Xbox 360, all the industry has adopted it – Nintendo is still an exception! Whatever the case, it takes time so the most perseverant people can unlock all of them in a game. However, they’re not an obligation. Players who don’t want to unlock them can avoid their challenge. The main idea with From Legend is to make them part of the macro experience by linking them to player’s progression.

I exposed the game structure in a previous article about the subject, but let me expose it once again more precisely, because it fits well the concept:

Above: the macro game structure which is a part of the concept.

The structure is simple: during 5 to 10 minutes, the player fights enemies in different arenas, just like in a classic BtA game. When he succeeds in finishing all these confrontations, he can fight the dragon-god Ling – the final boss. The problem is that he’s a lot more powerful than the player who generally loses. When the defeat happens, the player restarts at the beginning of the sanctuary. Fortunately, it’s the opportunity to perform… achievements!

Above: 'to start a game' is the first achievement for easy learning.

In fact, by performing achievements the player can make Fulin stronger. The achievements have different natures and can be performed every time there is a fight. When an achievement is done, a progression gauge increases, then when a segment of this gauge is full, Fulin levels-up and becomes more powerful (max life increased, equipment inventory bigger, new abilities…). Thus, the player has more chances to beat the dragon-god Ling so he can feel he’s getting better with perseverance. If at the beginning a few of perseverance is required to perform achievements, the more the player progresses on the gauge, the more perseverance is necessary.

What kind of achievements are necessary to perform? How the player can perform them? Isn’t the concept too much repetitive? I’ll develop these points in other dedicated posts. The next one will be about the core gameplay – not directly the achievements because it’s important to understand the gameplay to understand how achievements exploit it at its best.

Stay tuned!