So when designing enemies and bosses for Mewgenics, we approach them from many different angles. Sometimes they are purely based around a chapter's theme, like obviously a graveyard should have undead, rotting things. So, we design from those aesthetic choices. But other times, we will design from a specific mechanic or thematic element for an area. We have also designed things from a "wouldn't it be cool if" angle. For Zodiac, the original design came from a simple "cat" enemy prototype that had a gun. The basic line of thinking here was, "A cat shooting a real gun is funny," and it's true! Here is the proof!
So we knew a cat with a gun was funny, but since this was going to be a boss/miniboss, I didn’t want to take the easy road and just use the cat model. I wanted it to be a bipedal cat, and I wanted it to look cool.
We needed a mini-boss for the desert, and a gunslinger seemed perfect for that. Designing around the western mysterious stranger trope combined with a psycho serial killer, Zodiac was born!
Once I’m happy with a character's design, Tyler and I mull over the specifics of what it will do so I can start rigging up its pieces. I’ll let Tyler explain the design process because it was a fun one.
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Hey, Tyler here!
Zodiac started off as a prototype miniboss that I whipped up one day called "Gunslinger." The basic idea was, "he shoots at you and you have to take cover." His initial gimmick was whenever one of your teammates ends their turn, that’s when he shoots. So you could go up to him, hit him all you want, and as long as you could get to cover before you end your turn, you'd be safe. The cover in his level is destructible, so the longer the fight goes on, the harder it becomes to take cover. On his turn, he would simply reload (which was flavor only and didn't do anything) then move to a new spot.
While this design was fine and all, two things that bothered me were 1. his reload doing nothing, and 2. having him trigger when you ended your turn really didn't feel much like he was "reacting to you," as was the design intent. But if I gave him limited ammo... he’d never usually run out since most of the time there are just 4 cats. So I had another idea for an alternate design for him where instead of shooting at the end of your turn, he would shoot whenever anything moved, but only have 6 shots loaded at once (and would only reload if he was empty). That way, you could bait out all of his shots early in the round, either by moving yourself or knocking things around, and then have a few free turns to beat on him while he’s out of ammo and can’t respond.
As it turned out, that second design was far more fun and interesting, and really makes him feel like a trigger-happy lunatic, so that’s what we went with.
Anyway, I’m handing the post back to Ed to talk about the art and animation.
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So, with the basic design locked down, I start drawing up Zodiac's "pieces." I try to envision each pose he might do and draw enough alternative pieces of him so that Marty can easily make him come to life.
Here is what I sent to Marty for direction. As you can see here, I also gave Zodiac an extra attack just in case. I tend to ask for 1 extra something for each boss we do, so if the design is feeling a bit flat, we can pull another trick out of our bag.
Here is Zodiac animated—pretty cool, huh? Marty did an amazing job on him; his personality really comes through in all his animations.
We recently got to a point in testing the desert with people that we realized that Zodiac's design and character shines pretty bright in the desert. In fact, he easily overshadows the final boss in that area. So, we are bumping him up! Will that extra animation find a new home in Zodiac's final boss form? Probably. What else might we need to add to make him harder and more "final bossy"? It's still a mystery to us, but the guy needs beefing up, and Hamberry will start on his boss art soon.
Here is a little in-game video of Zodiac in his "mini-boss form" for your viewing pleasure!
And that's how it's done, folks!
Next post, maybe we'll show the process for another enemy? More dev stories? Or maybe another music track? Who knows! See you then.
-Edmund