Friday, August 28, 2015

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventured 2 (Continued)


Hey guys. It's been awhile! I figured I should wrap up my retrospectives on Pac-Man, since I am currently wrapping up our latest project here at Vicious Cycle, and I'll be posting about that one soon, too!

Rather than go into as much detail about the specific levels as in the last post, I will just link to the videos of them being played through, and let them speak for themselves! What I -will- talk a bit about is the final boss fight, which was my first boss fight I got to design here. It was a great learning experience, so it should be fun to reflect on that a bit.

Again! A big thanks to Tealgamemaster on YouTube for letting me use his lets-play videos to show off my levels!

Chapter 2: Paclantis


Chapter 3: Space

Chapter 4: Prehistoric

Chapter 5: Netherworld

Pac Pong Beat Down


Pac Pong Beat Down was the first boss fight I got to design here at VCS. I had some spare time, and our boss designer at the time was a little overwhelmed re-working some earlier bosses, so I stepped in and came up with a document, pitching it to the higher ups and volunteering to take ownership of it. With their approval I moved forward!

The first iteration was close to the final product, but there was some on-paper iteration. The original design was planning to use those balls that have spinning fire around them as the ping pong balls, but with the net and the ghost adds, we decided that the floor would be too busy.

I worked really closely with Visual FX and Gameplay Programming during this boss's construction, and I think during that time we fed off of each other and had a great working relationship. A lot of mutual trust went into it, we managed to take the boss from paper to completion in around 3 weeks or so. Check out the video, or even better rent the game and try it out for yourself! I'm hoping to get more and more involved with boss and AI design as I go.

Until next time!