Industry Art Tests

Industry Art Tests: Chucklefish, Starbound.

Our next art tests where given to us by varying companies. The test that grabbed me almost straight away was to design a new boss for the game starbound.

I was very excited to start this project as I had kickstarted Starbound right at the start of the games production and have continued to follow this game enthusiastically ever since. The opportunity to create something for this initiative game that would get viewed by members of the chucklefish team I saw as a great opportunity and was eager to give it my all. 

Starbound?

As far as research goes I already had very good knowledge of the game as seen most posts about the game and its updates during the early development stage and had also played it a fair bit with most of the races.

Starbound is a sandbox, procedurally generated game set in a vast universe of varying planets each with there own unique biomes. As well as unique biomes there are also a tonne of varying enemies, melee weapons, guns and decorations.

The main aim of the game is to work your way from nothing on a broken ship stranded in the universe to a bounty earning spacelord, pillaging each planet of its resources and loot to craft new, more powerful items. Then help people with their varying problems including tough boss fights which allow you to progress up another tier. Think crafting survival meets megaman arcade battles and upgrades.

I was surprised to see that they released a huge update within the first 2 weeks of this task which incorporated a new race and ship customisation I had eagerly awaited for over a year. These features where a small few in the update 'upbeat giraffe' but the most interesting updates involved giving the game more structure. With new missions, bosses and zones as well as side quests and a quest giving Hub it allowed me to think of more interesting boss fights. I spent half of my weekend playing through the new update and gathering primary research. 

Bosses.

This project being to create bosses It was important to get some solid research of the way boss fights worked in Starbound. Previous bosses had used items to summon the boss but with the winter update brought boss fights which where based around un-breakable boss rooms.

Tiy said he wanted starbounds bosses to be situated around an important boss room, like megaman. After playing against the bosses and through most of the missions I did get a feel for how the boss rooms would work, I'd also done some research into megaman for previous projects so could relate to what Tiy said he wanted his bosses to feel like. 

With this all in mind I started thinking about an interesting area in the game I felt could use a boss and would generate interesting boss ideas. A location that really stood out to me the first time I saw one in game was an avian tomb. 

Avian Tombs.

I think Avian tombs are decorated beautifully and the huge dark bird faces as entrances really created a fear inducing area I felt would be a hard dungeon full of good loot. 

However much to my disappointment after fighting my way past tough avian guardians and pits with insta-kill spinning blades all I'd managed to loot was the odd bone, old book and maybe a pixel (in game currency) or 2. I also felt the tomb ended very abruptly.

Something so grand in design I felt was asking for a boss and from my experience of the game I knew that was something I would like to see. 

With this idea in my head and research of the tombs done first hand I started looking into the avian culture more deeply and the avian specific gears appearance. 

The Avian Race. 

The avians are an ancient race who use almost advanced technology which almost combines ancient sacrificial rituals with technology. The Avians are based off the a mixture of aztec culture with slight Egyptian influences. 

They almost worship their dead and build these magnificent tombs where they can honour there ancestors. In these tombs they lay to rest a few ancestors but something so magnificent I feel should honour a king-like being, a Pharaoh, a demi-god.

Using this information and idea I went and collected some imagery from these cultures to help influence my boss. At this stage all I knew was I wanted the boss to be bird themed as everything avian based is. 

Mechs.

An idea I was having was of a golden statue coming to life. Some sort've ancient demi-god looking mech powered by this ancient technology. 

Mechs are already a part of starbound and something that will be a larger part as the game progresses towards its full release. Below are 2 mechs posted on the starbound page.

During my mech research I found a community made mod which added new types of mechs which I felt fitted the game world rather well and where animated amazingly. 

My Boss Development. 

Having never done pixel art before before I rushed into it and messed it up I researched how to get photoshop set up to do pixel art in effectively. I found a good video by someone who helped me greatly during my unity game design project. 

Now I had this knowledge under my belt and everything set to nearest neighbour I was good to go. Here you can see my initial idea for my Avian tomb boss. 

From this I made some colour studies using various colour pallets themed to the avian tombs.

Now I had a basic idea of the bosses look and shape I could explore with some iterations.
I started with iterations for the boss spear as I felt it didn't look so great and I could do something more interesting and with a stronger theme. 

Continuing on the iterations I then decided to do some iterations for the centre eye. The centre eye would be an important part of this boss fight and currently it is a tiny element so finding a new design for the eye was important to me.

Next I iterated on the way the gun would work. I was happy with the egg-shaped and elegant design of the arm gun inspired from a avian pistol. However I wanted different ways that it could shoot. I came up with 3 fairly unique designs which I was happy with.

Now came the hard part of choosing my favourite pieces. I placed each iteration in the places they should be on separate layers and turned them on and off until I found a combination that I felt worked for me. I also asked the opinion of others and this was what i settled on.

You'll see later that I went for the metal core kind've eye as it broke up the cold of the torso and was large and important looking enough to work as a week spot.

Boss Room.

Knowing that boss rooms where an important part of this game and that the future of bosses was to themed around using this boss room I done a box out of how the room would look. The boss room would be protected and un-breakable like the mission areas so not to ruin the boss fight.

My idea is to lure the boss over to a statue, push the button on the statue (E on statue) and then the statue shoots at the boss at which point the boss is temporarily stunned, floored and the eye is open allowing the player to damage the boss. 

The boss will get more aggressive as its health goes down. It will take approximately 3 statue stuns to kill the boss at the point you get the quest (take less with later game weapons) and roughly after the second statue stun (less than 50%) I wanted the eye to open permanently and shoot at the player at a very constant rate. This means the player can use ranged attacks and jump attacks to hurt the boss without the necessity of stunning it. 

Once the boss is defeated it will drop the gem from its head which acts as a key to open the boss rooms chest. Within the chest will be a random pretty powerful avian weapon and proof of the bosses defeat. The idea is this is an optional quest which will help you kill quite a difficult boss in a main story mission. 

With this in mind I went and made a fake quest to show how it would look in the game. It also gave an idea of the difficulty of this boss and where it lies in the story timeline. 

Oh, also for the arena I made a new type of torch as a unique lighting for that room based off some avian lanterns already in game. 

Arena Development.

Now I had my arena blocked out I wanted to come up with a design for the boss chest and the statues which would stun the boss as these are important parts of the fight. 

I liked the idea of the chest which looked like a gold Pharaohs tomb but when I put it in the scene it was too small as was sized to a large chest not a sarcophagus. It also blended into the legs too much, because of this I used a purple chest instead.

This is my boss room idea. I also edited it in Photoshop to try to look like it was lit in game. (I also added my character in starbound because...just because.)

As I said earlier my favourite design was the golden sarcophagus and after some feedback from my tutor he made me realise it's my design so why should I be tackling with problems involving clashing designs. Being my favourite design I made it slightly larger than the other avian tombs and put it next to my boss legs, as if the boss was guarding it, to prevent the clashing of colours. 

Boss Animations.

Now was the interesting part for me. After a brief discussion with my lecturers about animating pixel art and analysing the games animations with an animation lecturer we decided it would be nice to try animating within photoshop. This way I would have still sprites per frame which could be used for game purposes but an animated gif version of my animations for publishing purposes.

I never realised you could animate on photoshop and after a brief introduction by my tutor and a couple of plays with it I soon picked up how it worked.

I've pieced together all the animations into a show reel. After the first stun the boss gets back up with its eye open. This shows how it would open below the 50% health mark. On death the boss fades into a gem containing the power from this ancient technology, this gem allows the player to open the boss chest.

Boss Animation Show Reel.

Eye following player demo.

An Amendment to the idle animation to make it feel a bit more mechanical and in motion. This animation would be played all the time the boss isn't stunned, during all its attacks it would bob like this.