Hi everyone!
With less than a week before the alpha test (sign up open at Heroesravage.com) we would like to share with you the first mobs we have revealed that will be in the game.
Here is a look at one of the mobs of the game The Octoboom and some of the design decisions behind it.
Design
From the moment the team saw The Legion Commander’s(team's artist) concept art for the Octoboom we agreed that this had to be a mob that gives off a troll vibe.
The Octoboom attacks his enemies by spiting bombs so his body had to be able to expand and shrink as he blasts everyone away. With that in mind we decided to make his body be made of some sort of jelly material which would cover both the need for the flexibility and also help with his foolish style.
As mentioned above the Octoboom attacks using his infinity amount of bombs that he stores in the void of his stomach, while those bombs are deadly and can easily kill anyone who’s in range they cannot harm the Octoboom as his body is immune to explosive damage.
Although it may sound that the Octoboom may be too powerful he has weaknesses as well. Although he can create unlimited amounts of bombs there is delay between each bomb that he creates.
Another thing to keep in mind is that all the bombs in the game damage the other mobs, so if you can get the timing right you may be able to get Octoboom to help you!
Octoboom takes damage from every weapon in the game except bombs.
Audio Design
When sound designing a monster sometimes one can take inspiration from real life animals, but other times, such as this one, the monster is so… gelatinous, that you have to think outside the box and experiment until you find something that feels right.
From the sprite motion we knew that it’s body was made from some sort gelatin, and as the Octoboom walks one should identify that the sound is coming from him before you even see him, in other words the gelatin should be the main actor.
This is when you get creative and experiment with all kinds of sounds, from the outside looking in, you could argue that a lunatic was running around with a microphone on a stick making all kinds of unworldly sounds, lucky I found something that felt right before getting put on the arkham asylum.
The answer? A bottle of shaving cream, combined with puddles of mud being slapped, and some secondary sound of small footsteps would mix to give the right feeling for the Octoboom.
The Mummy!
Design
The Mummy had a very straight forward design, lots of bandages to cover up its rotten body and deadly eyes from something that was once alive and now is moved by dark magic. It also moves like a zombie because when you think about it a Mummy is kinda like a zombie with lots of bandages covering whats left of its body.
The bandages on its body are embedded with magic and it uses this bandages to unleash a medium range attack. So just because its arms look like they can’t reach you don’t let your guard down!
Even though the Mummy can attack from a medium range its attacks are only aimed towards one direction. So if you ever find yourself in front of a Mummy maybe you should considering rolling to his side after he unleashes an attack.
The Mummy can be damaged by all the weapons in the game.
Audio Design
Ahh, the Mummy sound design, contrary to the last dev blog where we discussed the Octoboom difficulty in imagining what a monster would sound like, this one is easy to imagine some kind of bandage/cloths rustling sound effects… well not quite that easy.
The first rule of sound design is that a sound that you will hear a millions of times in game cannot become annoying, it must blend with the environment and again it must feel right. Here we quickly found out that simple cloth sounds would not cover it, they didn’t feel right, so we had to dig deep.
The Mummy “habitat, is in the northern part of the map, where there are ruins of an ancient temple that has withered and crumbled with time, so grass has grown and sand sediments have covered most of the floor plates of the temple. If a Mummy is going to walk around that environment its gonna get a lot of stuff inside its bandages, what I came up with as a mixture of highly modified sand sounds and gravel sounds with… wait for it…
A handsaw cutting wood!
Call me crazy all you want, but after I modified the sound, slow it down and cleaned the high pitch impurities, it made exactly the sound that decrepit old bandage would make on a decomposing body.
Now lets meet Rocky!
Design
As the name suggests Rocky is tough. With a body made up from an extremely hard rock that makes him the most resistant monster in Heroes Ravage.
His body makes would make it difficult for him to attack swiftly but Rocky found a way around this issue. Through intensive training Rocky managed to learn the ultimate spinning skill that allows him to roll at high speeds towards his enemies.
Although his attack can deal lots of damage it works as double edge sword. While Rocky is spinning he has less control of his balance and if you can manage to throw something in front of him that may just cause him to fall over exposing his weak spot, the belly.
Rocky usually only takes damage from Hammers or Bombs, but while he is flipped over you can damage him with any weapon as his belly is softer than the rest of his body.
Audio Design
When looking at the Rocky, the first that poped to mind was that it look liked some kind of dinosaur, something kind of like the “Talarurus”. Taking that into consideration we wanted the weight of the Rocky to be something that you could hear, not only that but in the more complex movements you should hear the rock slabs in his back rustling and hitting each other.
One other example of resemblance was the Turtle, in the way it moves and when it’s flipped over. You should expect to hear grunts of effort as it tries to get back on it’s feet.
We will not fully spoil how he sounds flipped over, but you can take a clue from the way he sounds walking, its a mixture of two stomps in gravel / sand, modified so that each step would have enough depth to make it sound just right, also you will be able to hear his voice, it might sound like a WOW! but Its more like a WHA!
And Finally, the Slime!
Slimes are one of the most iconic monster in RPGs so it just felt right that we should have them in Heroes Ravage.
Design
Slimes tend to be one of the weakest and simple mobs in games, with their small “slimey” bodies some may even think they are harmless … but they would be wrong.
While it is true that Slimes may not be as strong as some other monsters they can be deadly if underestimated.
Slimes are like acid blobs and can damage you upon contact.
In heroes ravage there are two types of slimes. The normal ones that will damage you in go get too close and then there are the poison Slimes.
Poison slimes were once normal slimes that were exposed to various poisonous plants and absorbed them into their bodies. This allows them to have an outburst of the poisonous material stored inside of them when they feel threatened.
It’s never a good idea to get too close to a slime but specially so if that slime looks "greener" than the other ones.
Audio Design
In the last Dev Blogs we talked about the right feeling of a animation, and showcased the audio for the movement of the monsters. This time let’s try something more interesting! >;]
Picture yourself as a sound designer, and now you are given the attack animation of the Poison Slime above, it’s your job to give it awesome sound effects.
First let’s analyze the slime, the way it extends and compresses in succession it almost feels like those stress balls that you squeeze and when you let it go they return to their natural form, but in this case it should fell more like rubber or some kind of balloon rubbing other balloons…ok,ok, the craziness in me is taking over again… But that is what the first impression of this jumpy ball of mucus gives me.
So that takes care of the first phase of the attack, did you reach the same impression as me? If not don’t worry keep that impression that you have in mind.
The second phase of the attack is the release of the power stored in his previous compression and decompression phase, it should feel like a explosion of power from all that powering up, and also have hints of poison and magical essence, have you got an idea in mind? Yes? Good, good, my padawan.
What I call the third phase is the dissipation of all that magic power, its all that poison and mucus evaporating finishing the attack sequence, it should feel and sound satisfying as the power fades away and the next round can begin again.
All of the Pixel Dinos team appreciates any feedback!
