#visual theme

[autumnluzarts]

noticing a visual theme here 👀...

[askagamedev]

What would be your process for designing the generic ice puzzle section of an adventure game?

Before I begin on this, I would encourage you all to do some background reading - two articles I wrote some time ago. My answer to your question will build on the principles they establish. I'll link them here:

[Tips for puzzle design] for the principles of what a puzzle is.

[What's the deal with sewer levels?] for leveraging environmental context.

Now that we’ve re-familiarized ourselves with these principles, we can combine the two. How do we associate the iciness of the environment with each of the four steps of the player’s approach to the puzzle? How can we represent the cold and chill of the environment in a mechanical sense to the player so that the gameplay experience feels cold or icy? Here is my general thought process when approaching this task:

The player sees and recognizes the puzzle goal 

What does the icy/cold aspect of the environment have to do with the puzzle? Could the way forward is blocked by large amounts of ice that must be melted? Could the machinery to open the path be frozen solid and need thawing? Maybe the person they need to rescue is buried in snow or fallen through the ice into water and the player must rescue their friend before they freeze? Maybe the goal is to reach an island in the middle of a dangerously cold (but not completely frozen) lake. I would establish what kind of obstacle would make the most narrative sense for the puzzle within the greater context of the game as well as emphasize the coldness of the environment.

The player discovers the clues/objects needed to solve the goal 

Now that I know what kind of goal we want the player to have when they reach the puzzle, let’s consider the sort of things they will need to solve that puzzle. What kind of objects or clues could players expect from the environment? If it is an exterior environment, perhaps there are trees and fallen branches. Maybe there are large ice blocks that can be pushed and will slide across areas with smooth floors. Maybe the player can trigger large amounts of snow to fall on something, such as by shaking a big tree. What if they have difficulty moving on ice because they slide around instead of walking normally? Can the puzzle be as simple as finding the right path to take across a slippery icy surface where the player has limited controls? 

Maybe the player has an ability or object by this point in their inventory that they can use in a special way - something that can melt ice or snow in small amounts or a way to propel themselves across the ice, like a fire arrow or a torch. We can leverage that as a tool for the player to use to solve the puzzle. Can the player freeze water solid to reach a goal area? 

The player associates the relationship of the clues with the puzzle and each other and works out potential solutions 

This is where I figure out what the puzzle actually is after establishing what the various pieces available are. Maybe I decide that the goal here is to gather enough kindling to start a fire to defrost the frozen gears so that the switch can open the door. Maybe I decide that the player needs to use the giant fan in order to propel themselves across this frozen lake without falling through the thin ice. 

We absolutely need to take the step of teaching the player how this works. We can do this by introducing the puzzle mechanic with a basic puzzle that is very easy to solve, then increase the difficulty and consideration required in subsequent puzzles. We should also provide the players a means to reset the puzzle so they can experiment with it and not get stuck in an unsolvable situation. Even better, we can potentially reuse this sort of puzzle content later in the game and incorporate even more gameplay elements into it for players to reason through as they acquire more abilities or equipment, as well as more difficult puzzles off of the critical path to provide bonus rewards.

The player solves the puzzle with the proper solution 

Once we’ve provided the player the pieces of the puzzle and the context with which to use them and trained them so they know how to use it, they should be able to solve the puzzle and move on to the next challenge.

As you may have gathered, the core of my approach to a design challenge is taking the given theme and incorporating it in various ways into the mechanical aspect as much as I can. I can then leverage the player’s understanding in order to help push certain game or puzzle mechanics that make sense within the context. Keeping with the theme as I approach the design often makes things much more intuitive to the player who’s experiencing it for the first time. From there, it’s just a question of giving the player plenty of opportunity to experiment and play with the mechanics in a low-stress environment in order to teach them how it works, before adding more pressure and increasing the difficulty.

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[wildriot]

Steter Week Day 5

It’s midday Saturday when Scott calls and begs Stiles for a favor.  Stiles, two days into his pre-heat, is fully prepared to deny him, but those puppy eyes are lethal, even through a phone, and he ends up agreeing to swap patrol shifts with Scott.  So he changes his clothes and heads out and is pleased when Peter joins him five minutes is.

It’s stupid, really, and irrational, but of all the alphas and betas in the pack, Peter is the one that gets his proverbial hackles up the least.  Maybe because, unlike the rest, Peter doesn’t use his dynamic as an excuse to act like an asshole – instead relying on his own personal charm to earn the title.

Stiles thinks at some point, a tally of all the shifts he’s spent with Peter running through his mind, that this might not be so bad.

Forty minutes later, they’re running for their lives.

“Fucking hunters,” Stiles growls, slogging his way through the mud.  “Always ruining everything.”

He’s out of breath, legs and lungs protesting the flat out sprint of the last who even knows how long.  The adrenaline’s starting to fade, the tepid beginning’s of exhausting slowly rearing it’s head and, to be perfectly honest, he really doesn’t think he can go much further.

Ahead of him, leading the way and dragging him along, Peter snorts.  “You have awfully low standards.”

Because focusing on Peter is better than thinking about what awaits them if they stop moving, Stiles takes offense.  “Excuse you,” he says, grip tightening on Peter’s hand as something – probably a tree root (they are in the Preserve, after all) – snags his ankle and nearly takes him down.  “I will have you know that my standards are reasonable.  Very reasonable.  So reasonable, in fact, that they spend their time reasoning with everyone else’s stupidly high expectations.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes!”

Peter just hums and Stiles silently flips him off.  In his head, obviously, he’s way too tired to do it for real.  

But Peter must sense his intentions anyway – all that werewolf-ism...ish? – and glances over his shoulder.  His eyes are glowing, too-bright in the darkness, and momentarily leaves Stiles blinking away white spots in his vision, and yet he still catches the tightening of Peter’s mouth, the way he seems to look past Stiles, deeper into the spaces they’ve left behind.

“Can you hear anything?” Stiles asks, trying to ignore the way his heart starts to bleed ice through his veins, sticky and cold.  He doesn’t think Peter can, over the rain and the noises they’re making, and Peter shakes his head.

“No,” he says.  

“But…?”

“But we have no idea what that thing was.  We can’t stop.”

Which is true.  Very true.  Hunters were one thing, but some sort of Lovecraftian hell-spawn was another thing entirely.  Just those few seconds in it’s presence, when it had entered the clearing where Stiles and Peter had been ambushed by a group of hunters, before it turned it’s attention to them and given them the chance to run, had been terrifying.  Stiles couldn’t even describe it.  The monsters they’d faced, human and not so much, had always scared him, but it had been the sort of fear that he could push aside and largely ignore until the problem was dealt with.

This, whatever it’d been?  It’d been fucking primal.

And he never wanted to feel that again.

So he shuts up, digs deep for the extra reserves he totally doesn’t have, and picks up the pace.  He doesn’t drop Peter’s hand.  He tries not to think about how, if Peter hadn’t been so quick to grab him, and Stiles had been left alone to race through the wet gloom of the Preserve, he’d most likely be dead right now.

They run for what could be another ten minutes, could be another hour. Stiles has no way of telling, phone dead and waterlogged in his pocket and he’s struggling.  The wet clothes are weighing him down, feet slipping across the forest floor more than before, and it’s only getting darker.

He’ll be damned if he says anything, though.  He cops enough shit from the pack as it is, being human and omega and thinking that he has what it takes to keep up with werewolves and alphas, because they’re jerks like that and he’s just stubborn enough to deny them the pleasure of being right even if it kills him.

Humans can do incredible things when their lives depend on it.  He saw that youtube video about that women that stopped a car from hitting her kid, yes he did, and he swears to god that if she could do it then so can he--

“Just a little further,” Peter says.

“Thank fucking Christ,” Stiles gasps.

Forget it.  He’s done.  Absolutely done, no energy left, no sir-ee.

Another handful of minutes and then they break through the treeline, staggering out into long grass and open skies.  The rain falls harder here, with no trees to act as a measly cover, which is just perfect, because it means Stiles can go longer than a couple of seconds without blinking the water out of his eyes and wishing his  hair was still short, if only so that it didn’t stick to his face like cold seaweed.  

Then Peter’s tugging him close, almost angling him so that Stiles is tucked into his side, and Stiles looks up, probably to ask him a flat why – they’re both soaked, the gesture is useless – when he sees what else is in the clearing, and instead ends up asking, “What?”

“We should be safe here,” Peter says, and starts forward, like he’s expecting Stiles to be okay camping out in some old house that looks, even in the dark, like it should’ve been torn down years ago for health violations.

Which, fine.  He wouldn’t be wrong – Stiles has always been freakishly adaptable to most things, and running for their lives during a freak storm is definitely a Thing – but, and Stiles is just putting this out there, really?

“With our luck?” He half snorts, half splutters.  “Doubt it.”

“So young,” Peter mutters, shaking his head.  “So cynical.”

“So old,” Stiles parrots, delighting in the way Peter tenses – so predictably – then relaxes.  “Such an asshole.”

Peter barks a laugh that’s drowned out by a sudden deluge.  

By unspoken agreement they both leg it across the remaining bit of what was likely once the front lawn and huddle underneath the overhang.

Stiles hugs his arms around himself while Peter fiddles with the lock. Kicks the toe of his shoe against the ground, bites his lip.

He must zone out, he thinks, because he jumps when the door swings open with a rusty shriek and Peter doesn’t look amused, only concerned, and doesn’t say anything smarmy before ushering Stiles inside.

“It’s safe,” Peter insists again, like he wants Stiles to believe him, and Stiles kind of wonders what his scent must be broadcasting, to get that tone in Peter’s voice.  “I promise.”

So Stiles looks over his shoulder at Peter strangely, a sort of ‘what gives?’ and sets off down the hallway.

The house is clearly old-fashioned.  All narrow and tight instead of the open and spacious.  It’s too dark to make out any detail, the little bit of diluted moonlight painted across the floor through the broken windows glinting dully off what Stiles assumes are bits of glass, maybe some metal fixings.

Peter is a steady presence at his back, a hand on his back.  The alpha is tense, strung tight like he’s on high alert and that’s making Stiles stress out even more, which is not fun and he kind of wants to tell Peter to chill out, only… This is Beacon Hills.  It’s the middle of the night.  Some creepy monster thingy is haunting the Preserve, and they’ve just spent the evening running for their lives.

In a town like this, you relax and you’re dead.  

In fact, a part of Stiles is actually, stupidly, rather pleased with the attention Peter’s giving him.  He feels like a priority, something important and it’s been so long since he felt like that…he just knows that’s the omega in him speaking, and firmly tells himself to knock it off.

“What is this place, anyway?” Stiles asks., figuring that, having nearly a decade and a half on him, Peter probably knows.  He doesn’t mean to be quiet, rarely ever is, yet something about this house reminds him of the Juniper Mausoleum he had to pass every time he went to visit his mom’s grave.

Peter is silent for long enough that Stiles labels it as hesitation, and opens his mouth to pester, when Peter finally talks.

“It’s my grandparent’s house.”

Stiles actually has to repeat the words back to himself before it sinks in.

“Wait what?”

Peter huffs a sigh.  “Of all the things – yes Stiles.  My grandparents lived here.  Happy?”

“No. I’m wet and I’m cold – what the hell happened to this place?”

“…”

“Peter?”

“They died.”

Well, Stiles considered, wincing.  Didn’t that just make him feel like a dick.

“Was it…?”  He isn’t sure what he want’s to ask.  Was it the fire? Hunters?  What?

And it’s like Peter reads his mind.  As the man maneuvers them up a flight of waterlogged stairs and into a room that Stiles is happy to see has all it’s window intact, Peter talks.

“It wasn’t the fire,” he begins.  “Though my father, Talia and I were never completely convinced that Hunter’s weren’t involved. They died when I was twelve.  Car accident, head on collision with a truck.”  He pauses, falling silent, and Stiles stands still as Peter drops his hand and moves away, heading towards what Stiles thinks might be an armchair.  “When they died… there are wards up around the clearing, still are.  When they died, this place, the house, the garden, everything, vanished.  Like it had never been here.  We spent years looking.  We could never find it.”

He watches Peter run his hands over the fabric and imagines the man must be trying to finds hints of familiar scents, doubts he’ll find anything after so long.

Stiles is lost for words.  They’re friends now – inasmuch as they wind up beside each other at pack meetings, and have a joint order at an Italian place that Stiles loves but can’t afford regularly and eats whenever he joins Peter for research at his apartment  – and Stiles has seen him with all manner of expressions and yet, this is maybe the most human Peter has ever been.

So he says, “I’m sorry,” and Peter waves his hand.

“It was a long time ago,” Peter says, voice light in a way that Stiles knows means the total opposite.  Peter pauses, then adds, “My mother was with them, in the car.”

“Jesus,” Stiles mutters before he can stop himself.  “You don’t have to, like, talk about it, or anything, not if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t you want to hear my story, Stiles?”

There’s an edge to his words, somethings Stiles can’t place, which makes him tip up his chin, makes him bristle like he’s been insulted. “Only if you want to tell it,” he says.

And maybe it was the right thing to say, because Peter seems to relax, shoulders no longer hunching forward, and he let’s out a quiet sound that might’ve been a laugh under different circumstances. “What’s a little more tragedy between us, right?”

Stiles snorts, and eases into the room, dropping his worry like yesterday’s laundry by the door.  There’s still a part of him that’s tense, keyed into every sound, every creak, but he’s not alone; he’s got Peter and, honestly?  That’s kind of reassuring.

“I wouldn’t call us tragic.”

“Then what would you call us?”

Stiles shrugs, and blinks and wonders at how everything is full of color, suddenly.  “Misplaced, I guess.”  

The colors makes his eyes hurt.  His head starts throbbing and he misses whatever Peter says when his blood starts rushing loudly through his ears and his fingertips go numb.

It reminds him of coming down from a sugar high as a child.

“Peter,” he says, or thinks he says, thinks he hears himself say, but he’s shaking so hard now he might not have said anything at all.  

And then Peter is right there, filling his vision.  He’s so close Stiles can feel his breath against his cheek but he’s blurry around the edges.  Sort of wobbly.

He swallows, focuses on not throwing up, whines, maybe, and lists forward.  “I don’t feel so good.”

“No,” Peter says.  “I imagine you don’t.  You’ve never Dropped before, have you.”

It’s not a question.  Stiles treats it as one, anyway.  “Almost once,” he says, and grabs onto Peter’s jacket because that is the only thing not spinning right now

He thinks of a funeral and the wreak of alcohol and the smell of a furious alpha.

Thinks of cold tiles and ambulance sirens and the fuzziness of medication. Thinks of being too young to understand what was happening.

“Oh god,” he groans, doesn’t fully register Peter grabbing him and holding him when he starts to sink down, legs folding beneath him. “Is that what this?  This can’t be happening.”

“It’s not ideal,” Peter agrees.  The world lurches, sways, making Stiles bury his face in Peter’s jacket, and the next time he resurfaces, it’s to find Peter has taken a seat in the armchair, and arranged Stiles so that he’s curled up his lap, feet free of his shoes, cold toes tucked between Peter’s thigh and the cushions, back pressed against the armrest.

“Just try and relax, sweetheart.”

And something just… slumps, inside him, goes warm and soft.

“That’s easy for you to say.”

Peter hums and Stiles kind of likes how it echoes through his own body, but then Peter is moving, jostling him around, and Stiles latches on, suddenly unbelievably terrified that he’s about to be displaced.

But Peter’s only awkwardly shrugging out of his jacket, which makes a certain amount of sense, being soaked through and all, and deftly flicking open the buttons of his shirt, baring his chest.

Stiles doesn’t even get the chance to appreciate the view before Peter is doing the same to him, shoving off his hoodie, sliding up his t-shirt.  The chill is immediate but Peter must’ve found a blanket somewhere and now covers him with it.

Stiles is certain he knows what Peter’s doing, positive he’s read about it, at least, and yet his brain isn’t making sense.  His throat is hot, bonding glands feeling swollen and puffy and his limbs basically useless.

“C’mere, sweetheart,” Peter says into his ear and Stiles huffs a whine and falls forward into the alpha’s warmth, into his strong grip.

He shoves his nose into alpha’s neck and inhales rapidly.  It’s maple syrup and warm blankets, sun-warmed soil with the bitter undertone of expensive coffee and something Stiles can’t name but craves anyway.

He probably isn’t under for longer than an hour.  Time passes and his mind… drifts, overcome by instinct and the overwhelming need to feel safe.

It feels like falling asleep, almost, stuck in that in-between where nothing feels real.

Wakefulness returns slowly, seeping in at the edges.  He is conscious of Peter’s hands running up his back, of his own hands curled into Peter’s chest.  The hint purr building in his chest tickles his throat and makes him blush, knowing how intimate that sort of reaction is, how intimate their position is; an unmated omega alone with an unmated alpha.  

His dad would lose his mind if he ever heard of this, which he was never going to if Stiles had anything to do with it.

Aside from their position though, Stiles feels… good.  Not better, still a little unsteady, but it isn’t as bad as before.

His fingers don’t feel like little ice-blocks, for one.  And he’s no longer shaking like some preteen that accidentally wondered into the horror showing in a cinema, which is wonderful, truly wonderful.  

Of course, there is the small matter – very small, certainly not a big deal at all – that he just Dropped for Peter.

Psycho Peter, whom the rest of the pack can’t stand and don’t trust.

Crazy Uncle Peter that pokes and needles until he’s got Derek looking ready to start throwing him through walls again, and drives everybody else insane.

Peter, who…

“Back with me, sweetheart?”

Peter who does things like that.  Calls him sweetheart and touches him like he’s something precious, something cared for, instead of a nuisance that’s too loud or too blunt or just too much.

Peter, who’s never mocked him for his dynamic, or put him down for instincts he can’t help.  Who always buys him his favorite coffee and orders in Italian food for him and never minds when Stiles just happens to fall asleep on his couch during a research binge because the house is empty and he’s so goddamn tired of being alone.

Peter, whom Stiles is just realizing he might be a little bit in love with, while sitting in his lap.

Talk about inopportune moments.

“… this is so embarrassing,” he mutters, feeling stiff and awkward.

Movement, then Peter’s fingers are tangling through his hair and tugging gently, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.

Peter is quiet for awhile.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he says at last, quietly, like if he says it any louder, the meaning won’t be the same, will transform from something that makes Stiles’s heart stutter and race into something shallow and flippant.

Stiles swallows.  “You – you.  I, uh.”  He was not equipped to handle this kind of conversation.  “I am not equipped to handle this kind of conversation.”

“And what conversation would that be?”

Multitudes of snark appeared on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back.  Breaths. Tries to get his thoughts in order.

“...you know very well what kind,” he settles on saying.

Peter doesn’t say anything in response to that.  He just sighs, turns his head so his nose is in Stiles’s hair, and somehow pulls Stiles closer.

It’s nice.  It’s so nice.  It’s the kind of nice that should be illegal and after the shitty night he’s had, Stiles is weak for it.

An illicit thrill runs through him when he thinks of what this would be like if Peter was his mate rather than just an alpha that his omega was sweet on… thinks of a soft bed and pillows that smell of both of them… thinks of purring, something he’s never done in front of anybody else before, ever.

“You are very young,” Peter says, sounding pained.

Stiles worries his bottom lip.  “I’m eighteen in two weeks,” he whispers, voice hitching.  He clears his throat, adds, “Besides. After everything that’s happened, am I really still that young? Are any of us?”

“The pack will never accept it.  Derek won’t accept it.”

“So? It’s none of their business.  I can do what I want.  Just because they don’t personally agree with what I do, doesn’t mean their opinion suddenly matters.”

“And Scott?”

“Scott,” Stiles starts, so sure of what he was going to say only to falter, because… because what if Scott didn’t understand?  Derek and the pack were one thing.  Stiles felt semi-responsible for them, mostly because he’d helped save all of their lives at some point, and that meant something, you know?  But Scott was his brother, they’d grown up together, and Scott still looked at Peter like he was never going to be anything but a spree-killing monster.

He made a helpless sound, frustrated and confused.

Peter soothed him, humming unintelligibly into his hair.  

“Let’s not talk about this now.  You’re e--”

“If you say I’m emotional, I swear to god I will hurt you.”

“-exhausted. Don’t lie to yourself, you’re running on fumes right now, and I am not a good enough man to let you regret anything else you might say tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

“Just because you’re being reasonable.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.  Now, why don’t you try and get some sleep?  The wards won’t let anything through.”

“...why’d it let us through, then?”

“They were once keyed to Hales.  You were with me.”

“So… what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been with you?”

“Likely something suitably horrible.”

“Wow, great.”

****

They don’t ever really talk about it.  The next day, when the storm’s passed and everything is yellow-wet and sweet, Peter steers them through the Preserve, back to town.  They come out two streets over from Stiles’s house.

After… nothing really changes.  They spend time together, do things together.  Nobody notices.  Or, if they do, they don’t say anything.  The Sheriff isn’t home enough to notice how often his son is out, and when he is home, Stiles is careful to not make it so blatantly obvious that he’s spending at least three nights a week in a bed that isn’t his. It’s not like he’s trying to hide anything, exactly.  Just, he knows his dad, okay?  Knows exactly how much he would freak out if he knew what was going on and… well, sue him but he likes what he has now, and he doesn’t want to ruin it.

Outside of that, being with Peter and researching and hanging out with the pack, Stiles graduates, and seriously thinks about what he wants to do with the rest of his life, which leads to him hunting down a mage that’s willing to be his mentor in return for free labor and a research assistant and moving halfway across the country.

Peter is with him every step of the way and officially begins courting him on his twentieth birthday.

By his twenty second, they’re mated and back in Beacon Hills and Stiles is incandescently happy with the way his life is going and Peter is leading him through the Preserve after making him promise to keep his eyes closed.

Stiles does, reluctantly.

It’s spring, the day warm and the woods seemingly come to life with bird song and the quick scamper of small animals across the ground.

Peter’s hand is a familiar weight in his, fingers laced together in a way that should be awkward but isn’t and Stiles is busy cursing how no amount of training will ever make him the kind of graceful that means he isn’t always tripping over himself and--

Peter slows them to a stop, and Stiles has the sense that they’ve come to a clearing, sunlight warm on his face.

The air is filled with the subtle scent of flowers and fresh grass and there’s a sort of hush that’s fallen over the place, like even the birds have gone quiet in anticipation.

Peter steps up behind him, presses against his back, arms going around his waist.  Stiles relaxes against him, not bothering to hide his smile, or the way his scent goes mellow-sweet.

“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” Peter tells him, and Stiles does.

His breath catches.  

“Oh my god,” he says, staring.  He can’t help it.  He’s thought of the house often, wondered what it looked like in the daylight.  In the months after, he’d even thought of asking Peter to take him out again, show him around, but Peter had never mentioned it, not once, and Stiles had figured that it was one of those things that had too many bad memories to outweigh the good but…

“Peter,” he says.  “You…”

“I bought it,” Peter responds.  “Fixed it up.”  Then, while Stiles is still staring and speechless because the house is beautiful and equal parts Peter’s taste in architecture and Stiles’s taste in color, Peter shifts so he can press a kiss to the bondmark on his neck and says, “Consider this my mating gift to you.”

And Stiles breathes in, trying, and probably failing to contain his excitement, and says, “It’s perfect.”

And you know what?  It kind of really is.

[wildriot]

Steter Week Day 3

“In the end we have each other and that’s at least one thing worth living for.”

For years now, the Hale and McCall packs have resided within Beacon Hills in relative harmony, in part because both have equal claim to the territory, but mostly because both packs strictly ignore the other.  

There is animosity, of course, and mistrust, but they manage, drawing lines and allocating spaces.  Each Alpha is resolute in their ruling, and neither notice the times outlying pack members vanish.  Instead, they enjoy the peace that gradually comes, and congratulates themselves on a land well managed.

But things come to a head when a group of feral alphas tear their way through the town.

Their stay is blood-filled, and quickly ended at the hands of a McCall beta and a Hale.  The fox and the wolf exchange smiles, sharp and fleeting before they are found out.  The Alpha’s of their respective packs stand on the edge of the clearing, stinking of rage.

Commanded by their alphas, the fox and the wolf return to their packs, but they hold each other’s gaze as long as they can.  Truths are written in their eyes, alongside vows they have promised.

Talia Hale, furious that her very own Left Hand could conspire behind her back in such a manner, could become affectionate towards a shifter from a rival pack, considers how he refuses to turn over his new alpha park; considers how, when they’d been found, Peter had been beside the shifter, close enough to touch.  She snaps, snarling, and draws blood before she cuts her brother from the pack and exiles him from the territory.  

Family he has grown up beside are all silence and down-turned eyes.  He scoffs, and turns his back.  He knows, the moment he walks out the front door, that this will be the last time he sees them.

He cannot find it within himself to be anything more than mildly saddened.  Bitterness is a far stronger emotion.

Across town, a horrified Scott McCall looks at the boy he had always thought of as brother and sees nothing familiar.  He does not know this blood-stained pack member standing before him.  His instincts clamor in the back of his mind and he... he condemns him, calls him killer,  calls him murderer.  Yanks away the pack bonds that connect them, orders him to leave.

Stiles does so, feeling nothing but a bone-deep resignation.  But, more than that, and far brighter too, he is relieved, and... he should not be, he thinks; shouldn’t be but the pack bonds that once burned bright turned to grey a long time ago, and his heart is bonded to another, now.

Returning home to an empty house – having learned to not expect anything else, because his father has always had a hard time accepting Stiles’s…peculiarities for all that his beloved wife was just as peculiar, too – he starts upstairs.

A grin grows across his face at hearing a heartbeat awaiting him.  It is familiar.  A rhythm he memorized during quiet, sleepy moments, with his ear pressed to skin as fingertips trailed down his spine.

He opens his door to blue eyes and a wolf that smiles slowly, so very slowly, before canting his head to the side in that way of his that Stiles adores…

A smirk, hint of fang, and then blue becomes red red red.

Stiles feels his heart begin to race, eyes flashing a pale lilac in return.

The gold that wraps around his heart pulses bright.

“The red’s nice,” Stiles says, stepping closer, closer until there are claw tipped hands on his hips and he cannot tell the difference between his heart and Peter’s.  “But blue’s always gonna be your color.”

Peter only laughs, takes Stiles’s hand in his, and presses a kiss to the pulse fluttering across his wrist.  Stiles’s breath catches.  He rolls his eyes at Peter’s smug grin and goes to change out of his sullied clothes, stuffing them into a black garbage bag, to be disposed of later.

Stiles has his bags packed in an hour.  He leaves behind a lot, takes only what’s important.  Peter is a steady presence at his side as he picks through his clothes and books and pries open the loose floorboards in the back of his closet to get the albums and photographs he hid away when his mother died.They leave, trekking through the small bit of forest behind his house to where Peter parked his car.  His bags go in the trunk beside Peter’s, and he takes the passenger seat, belting up as Peter climbs in behind the wheel.

They leave, and head north.  They’ll cross borders and spend nights in strange small-town motels until they hit Alaska, where a cabin that Peter quietly bought months ago, when they first talked of leaving, awaits.  They’ll settled down and live freely, without judgment, and Stiles thinks of how he’s left behind no letters – no notes, no words.  Wonders if that makes him a bad son.  Wonders if there would’ve been anybody that cared to read them, if he had.

It doesn’t matter, he decides, and he reaches for Peter’s hand where it rests on the gearshift; laces their finger’s together with a hum, tilting his head at the weight of Peter’s gaze.

He’s got everything he needs.  Nothing else matters.

[wildriot]

Steter Week Day 6

Stiles and Peter are treasure hunters.  That’s it.  That’s the story.

[askagamedev]

Hi, Dev! I've been tasked with designing enemies for a side scrolling Gradius influenced shooter. I think heavily about these concepts but this is my first time ever doing this and the bulk of it is on me (we're a small team making a small game). What's some general stuff I should consider when I draw them? Also, I asked a while ago about getting a license for an IP and you answered it brilliantly. Extremely insightful and I want to thank you for that.

First off, I heavily suggest that you read [this post] about building tension in shoot em ups through enemy patterns. These are the fundamental game design concepts when building a shmup and you need to consider the sort of behavior patterns you will be aiming for when visually designing the bad guys.

Now… on to the visual design principles. There’s a lot that goes into the visual design of enemies in game but the most important element to consider is clarity. At a glance, the player needs to be able to tell what the enemy is probably going to do. This means you need to design visuals that suggest exactly what you want the enemy to do. For this, we’ll take a look at existing games in the genre, like Gradius itself.

Which of these enemies looks like it’s going to fire at you horizontally?

It’s probably enemy A, right? Why is that? Because it has a visible gun that’s pointed to the left and you’re (presumably) playing a side scroller where you move from left to right. Given the placement of the guns, you can immediately tell that these are probably turrets and which direction they are probably going to shoot.

Now consider this. Which of these enemies looks like it’s going to fire at you horizontally? 

You probably think enemy B here because it’s shaped like an arrow pointing to the left and it has this big chunk of negative space inside it that looks like it could totally be where a beam comes out. C also looks like it could be a contender for shooting horizontally thanks to hits heavy use of horizontal lines, though it lacks a visible gun or turret for bullets to come from. But we’re not done yet. Looking at these three enemies, which do you think would take more shots to kill? 

Intuitively, it feels like B would, again, be the correct answer. Why? Because it’s bigger than the others, and we subconsciously conflate size with strength and durability. Other visual elements can also convey this sense of durability - dull colors, visible armor plating, a bubble/glowing shield around it, etc.

We also need to take this sense of clarity further through their movement and animation. Which of the above three enemies would be best suited to spin and fire shots in a spiral pattern? Probably enemy A, since it already looks like it has circular pinwheel elements to it. But if it just stays in one place, static, it would not be as intuitive as if it spun in place while shooting. Even better, if you can give it a half second of spinning before it starts shooting bullets in a spiral, players would almost immediately understand what is about to happen.

This also applies to boss monsters. Imagine you saw a stage-end boss that looks like this. What looks like its vulnerable spot? How do you think you would attack this boss to deal damage to it?

The blue orb in the center seems like the obvious “weak point”, and shooting from the right to the left through the central area to hit it is probably the first intuition. It’s a specific color that contrasts with the rest of the boss’s body which specifically draws your eye to it. The heavy gunmetal grey outer parts are probably armored and I would not feel bad if shooting those armored sections did not result in damage to the boss. 

This can extend beyond just “generic” enemies. If you have enemy factions, they need to have a similar sort of visual design in order to tie them together. Maybe this faction is all metal enemies that have rivets and armor plates. Maybe that faction is organic fleshy details and eyeballs. Maybe it’s an ooze faction with globby bodies and bubbles. If you want them to be similar, show this through the visuals - color, detailing, etc. And don’t forget, you can also integrate the level art with the enemies like so:

What’s important to recognize here is that you’re establishing a visual language through the design of these enemies. This is an unspoken means of communication to the player - through the visual design you’re telling the player what each bad guy is going to do so that they are prepared. You’re telling the player which bad guys are stronger than others. You’re telling the player how to defeat the bad guys. You’re giving the player lore information about specific enemy factions by establishing common visual elements. It’s important that you are both clear with your design intentions and you are consistent with them. 

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The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

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[askagamedev]

FANTa Friday: Design Phase part 5 - Ambient Storytelling and Throughline

One of the things about exploring an environment is that we can tell a lot about a place just through the placement of objects in that place. If you don’t believe me, just examine a friend’s bedroom (if you can get permission... many won’t). Note the objects that are there - what’s on the desk? What’s on the floor? What’s on the walls? How are they placed? Why are they placed that way? What do each of these objects placed in such a way say about the person who put them there?

A neat person might keep things organized and stored away. A messy person might have things all over the place. That’s something easy that you can infer from looking. But what if you wanted to start looking deeper at what sort of person might be living in this room?

If you see a collection of ticket stubs, maybe you can infer that this person likes seeing live music. If they’re all for a specific band, you can infer that this person likes that band. There might be posters for that band on the wall as well - seeing all of these would definitely reinforce the idea that the inhabitant of the room is a fan of a specific band. This is just one throughline in the environment.

“But dev, why should we care? This sounds like some of that Gone Home crap. What does some band groupie have to do with the sky palace you’re building?”

The placement of specific objects in the environment is conveying information to the player, and we’re doing it without having to force it via lengthy exposition. There’s no NPC that has to explain what happened to the player, there’s no cutscene to sit through, it’s all there for the player to pick up just by looking around, exploring, and taking in the scene. This can be incredibly valuable.

Remember, we’re creating our environment out of nothing. Nothing exists there unless we choose to put it there. Details like these will get noticed by players either consciously or subconsciously. We can scatter the details around haphazardly, but it will feel much better to the player if all of the little details work together cohesively to tell a story just through their existence.

Let’s bring this back to the sky palace. What are those core ideas we wanted to go over again?

Verticality

Openness/visibility

Showing places of interest

Encouraging the player to think in terms of up and down

Also, we need to prepare the players for a boss and maybe let them know what kind of boss it is. So what sort of environmental elements can we insert to help push these ideas as well as prepare the players for a boss? Here’s my thought: Do you remember how we were thinking about there being a menagerie in the Atrium? What if one of those things escaped? What if it wrecked the temple while doing so? But, more importantly... what if it never left? What if that thing is the boss?

Let’s consider how we can use this idea to tie together the rest of it. A strong flying monster, like a dragon, would almost certainly cause damage if it were crashing its way through a palace. If it were strong enough to kill the inhabitants, it could probably tear large chunks out of the walls that let the sun and sky in (openness and visibility, check). Those holes and missing chunks could probably let the player see through them and observe other elements of the dungeon (showing places of interest, check). Those holes would almost certainly be at differing heights, since the boss should be able to fly (verticality, check). All of this combines nicely with the idea of placing the bodies of the boss’s victims judiciously to show its danger. We could probably place a few broken cages at the menagerie to show its origin. 

Let’s do some role playing. Imagine it from the perspective of the player entering the dungeon for the first time. 

You enter the mezzanine to see the different levels separated by stairs, but some of them have been torn asunder. There’s a large hole in the wall below the eyeline to draw your eye up, and you can see the clouds and sky through it, as well as the ground so very far down below you. A stream of water falls from out of view from above, cascading down like a small waterfall down past the balcony. You can see trees and what look like some metal building frames through another large hole in the wall. A staircase up from your current level seems like it is mostly untouched.

Stepping forward, you look up and see the waterfall’s source - it’s coming from a separate floating island even further up above. Now that you’re at the edge of the balcony, you also can see the waterfall spill over a hole torn through the floor and flow down into what looks like a basement or cellar until it disappears from view. It looks like the hole in the floor is just large enough for you to fit into.

I presented this section without any images on purpose (also because I haven’t had a chance to actually draw things out). Still, can you start to see what the environment looks like in your imagination? Knowing what you know about the themes and core ideas for the dungeon, can you see how we’ve woven them into this environmental description? This is the power of ambient storytelling, and about using it to reinforce your core ideas. Define those core ideas and themes first, then use the environment design to help convey those ideas and themes.

This week we continue the Design Phase of the FANTa Project!

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[askagamedev]

FANTa Friday - Concept Phase Review, part 3: Putting it all together

Welcome to another [FANTa Friday]. The votes have been tallied and the winner is a Sky themed dungeon. Today, we’ll gather up the overall concepts we’ll be incorporating into our level design. This also marks the end of the Concept Phase Review. Next week we’ll begin on the Design Phase.

Visually speaking, we should plan for a lot of clouds, bird visuals, and airy architecture. Think of architecture like the Moon Door from the Eyrie in A Song of Ice and Fire - gravity makes going down easy and going up difficult. The natural theme of “ascension” plays very nicely with the concept of a sky-themed dungeon. We start low and work our way up to the boss. We need to accentuate this with architecture that allows the players to see where they should be going. This means open floor plans and clearly visible other parts of the tower. There should be more pillars instead of solid walls, open windows instead of closed, and the very real possibility of falling.

The theme of a sky dungeon also lends itself well to the final boss being some sort of dragon. It’s visually very distinct as well - the dragon circles the final wing of the dungeon that remains just out of reach until the player opens it with the mechanics earned throughout the dungeon. The player will be able to spot it from a distance, which builds anticipation for the coming climactic battle.

We are currently planning four dungeon wings (including the final boss wing), which naturally lends itself to a couple of different potential layouts, like so: 

This layout gives the player the most freedom to explore. Each wing of the dungeon would need some way to traverse to another wing, and the added benefit here is that moving from A to B isn’t necessarily the same as going from C to B, meaning that approaches from different directions can be rewarded, especially if some of these means of traversal are also gated by traversal mechanics.

A second option is a more diamond-shaped structure:

This is a bit more linear, but it also gives players a better baseline for establishing expectations. We gate areas B and C behind the mechanic earned in area A, which can function as a tutorial to the dungeon. This conveys a feeling of “opening up” the remainder of the dungeon to the player, which usually establishes a sense of accomplishment if the task doesn’t feel trivial.

One core design concept we absolutely need to emphasize is the idea of verticality and height. Humans don’t usually think in three dimensions because moving up and down is difficult - we have to use things like elevators, stairs, ladders, or balloons to do it. As such, we aren’t trained to look up and down when we enter a new area, we look around. However, with a sky-themed dungeon, we need to train players to expect it - it’s what makes a sky themed dungeon different than another dungeon with a skybox. We need to craft the visuals to draw the eye upward and downward toward elements of interest in order to entice the player to get to these places. This means crafting obvious points of interest just inside the sight line, but specifically above or below the horizontal.

To recap, here are our major concepts for this dungeon:

Verticality in architecture and elements of visual interest

Emphasize a sense of openness and visibility. No thick walls or tiny windows. 

Show the player places of interest that they will be able to reach later. Show the boss early on, but gate it from the player by the mechanics

Encourage the player to think in terms of Up and Down (Place obvious elements of interest above or below the horizontal, but still within sight)

When you’re coming up with a level design, you need to establish your main concepts first. These will inform the individual and specific decisions you make when creating the details and keep the overall vision consistent. If things get ambiguous, the core concepts provide an important overall direction for the dungeon. This helps keep us from getting into the weeds when we’re focusing on those specific implementation details and remember what the central theme of the level is.

Next week, we’ll begin the design phase, where we start using these concepts to begin designing the individual elements of the dungeon.

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