Design Blog

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Internet Outage and Penny Arcade

I'm going to be cut off from my blog for a little while due to an internet outage while I move, so I won't be able to update for a little while. (Not that I could really update much before because of all the moving preparation, but rest assured that I've got a few things coming for next month.)

In the meantime, Penny Arcade is doing a short segment about BlazBlue which I'm enjoying immensely. I hope you will find it as amusing as I do.

Labels: blazblue, job

posted by Saikyo at 1:11 PM

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Anime Expo 2009

From July 2-5 I was in Los Angeles to check out Anime Expo 2009. It was a really fun trip and I had a ton of fun. AX is considered to be the biggest anime convention on the west coast and there were an estimated 44000 people in attendance this year. I saw some great bands, played some games, saw some movies, checked out some previews for things to come from the anime industry and even attended some informative and entertaining workshops.

But the best part was that I got to meet Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori. Ishiwatari is the designer for Guilty Gear as well as the composer for BlazBlue, while Mori was the lead designer and artist for BlazBlue.

I also got the chance to ask the two of them some questions about game design during the two panels that they had. Because the question/answer period was quick their responses weren't that detailed, but they offered some interesting ideas about the games they worked on.

When I asked about what they felt was important in designing games, Ishiwatari said that he felt it was important for games to have either cooperative or competitive elements to them, since these were the things that would keep players playing the game for longer. After the queestion, Mori then asked me if I was trying to get into the game industry. I think he was a little surprised when I told him that I'd already been working in it. I hope I can design something in the future that will impress them.

Later at the second panel I asked them what the biggest design challenges they had when designing BlazBlue and Guilty Gear. Ishiwatari said that for Guilty Gear the biggest challenge was adapting the game for arcades, since the original game was designed for consoles. He said he did a lot of research into the kinds of things that would get players to keep putting quarters into the machine. Mori said that for BlazBlue the most difficult thing was getting good networking for the game. For fighting games like BlazBlue this kind of thing is fairly difficult, though I've heard that in general BlazBlue's online play is fairly solid.

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All in all, it was a great trip and it was pretty neat to meet the creators of the games I've been enjoying for so long. I hope I can make it to Anime Expo next year as well.

I'll end this post with a quote from Ishiwatari from an earlier interview:

"I look forward to seeing new designers come into the industry with a burning passion to create."

Reading this I'm motivated to keep working hard in order to live up to his expectations.

Labels: anime expo, blazblue, design philosophy, game industry, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 9:33 PM

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Blazblue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 5

BlazBlue releases on the 30th of this month in the US so today I'll be finishing up my multipart design analysis of the game.

First I'll be rounding out the cast analysis.

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Carl Clover - Auto Maton

Carl's ability is rather unique in terms of the fighting game genre, though there was a character in Guilty Gear who had a similar ability. The gist of Carl's drive is that it allows him to control Nirvana, a robot that shares the battlefield with the other characters. This allows a Carl player to control essentially two characters at the same time. There is a meter associated with this however, which recharges when Nirvana is inactive and depletes when Nirvana is active or taking damage. Depleting it completely prevents Nirvana from being used for a long period of time while she recharges. While Carl's Guilty Gear counter part, Eddie, had a similar ability, Carl's is unique in how Nirvana occupies space and absorbs hits.

When inactive, Nirvana is like a piece of the background. she doesn't move and both players can walk right through her. When active however, players can no longer pass through her and Carl can even push her around by running behind her. Additionally, in this state she can absorb projectile attacks. Interestingly enough however she will not absorb non-projectile attacks for Carl, these attacks will hit both Carl and Nirvana.

The balancing issues here are rather interesting, as the dynamic of a fighting game is partly defined by the number of opponents that fight at once. Going against this trend opens up all kinds of opportunities for game breaking setups that need to be addressed when designing the character. The ability to attack both high and low simultaneously as well as the ability to attack a player from both sides at once are both dangerous results that can result in unblockable combos. For the most part Blazblue addresses these concerns by increasing the reliance on Nirvana by the player. On his own, Carl is an incredibly weak character having some of the lowest damage and health of the entire cast. Most damaging moves or combos rely on the player to use Nirvana for the damaging hits. This does however have the result of making Carl very difficult to learn to play while at the same time incredibly effective at high levels.

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Hakumen - Zanshin

Hakumen isn't necessarily an interesting character because of his drive attack, which is basically a set of counter moves, but more because of how that factors into his overall character design. When activating Hakumen's drive, the player can activate a series of counter stance which have differing activation times and effects, but only if the enemy attacks Hakumen during this state.

The real interesting part about Hakumen is how his super meter and special moves work. Hakumen does not have a normal super meter, instead he has a small meter and eight special "orbs". The small meter fills up automatically over time, and faster when taking damage or attacking and when it fills up the player gains one orb. Additionally certain counters using Zanshin will also give you a free orb. All of Hakumen's special moves and supers require varying numbers of orbs, from 1 all the way up to 8.

This turns Hakumen into an interesting defensive and offensive character at the same time. On the one hand, a Hakumen player needs to wait for the orbs to do many of his combos. On the other, he never stops building his offensive options. Due to his overall low speed and high average damage, Hakumen tends to be played as a defensive character however, though this works well in conjunction with his drive attack, which promotes an active defense.

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V-13 - Sword Summoner

Her name is actually pronounced "Nu" like the Greek letter. (Which incidently is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet.) She is the last boss of the normal arcade mode game and has a somewhat strange drive attack. When activated, she summons a sword at a specified location that flies a certain distance forward. The drive button can be chained into itself twice, which shoots two different swords. Multiple versions of drive can also be chained together so a player can press drive twice, the forward and drive twice, then down and drive twice.

The result of this sword summoning ability is that her effective attack range becomes skewed. There is a blind spot for her drive attack right in front of her but generally she can attack players from entire screen lengths away. Combos with the drive attack tend to look very strange as Nu stays a modest distance from the enemy while assaulting him with swords from all directions.

Nu is considered to be one of the top characters in the game because of this ability. Despite the blind spot in her drive ability, it's generally useful because the risk/reward ratio is very good due to the high damage and pressure that the swords can achieve. The gameplay style that results from this mechanic is also fairly different from a standard "poking" character style as well since the swords can combo into each other, allowing high damage combos while staying safe from retaliation.

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And that brings us to the end of my BlazBlue segment. I hope it makes sense now why I'm so interested in this game. A combination of incredibly original gameplay mechanics coupled with colorful characters and a lot of extra features not common to fighting games before it make BlazBlue one of the definitive fighting games for the year.

There is still a question of balance of course, and to this effect it may not be surprising that many hardcore fighting game enthusiast find BlazBlue to be a poorly balanced game. The variety of spectactular new mechanics were likely very challenging just to come up with much less balance. However despite this, I think it's important for designers to push new ground like this in all aspects of their work. I think even if the game isn't considered to be balanced well at the moment, future iterations as well as continuing improving strategies will help push it to a level that casual and hardcore players can both appreciate.

Now if only my pre-order would get here faster...

Labels: blazblue, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 12:11 PM

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Three C's of Design

I've been trying to come up with some interesting ways to express how good design works, and I've been toying with this new idea recently I'm calling "The Three C's of Good Design". The gist of it is that it is the three core skills that someone needs to be successful in design. It's still a new idea that I just thought up a little while ago, so there is definitely room for revision, but I'd like to share what I have so far.

The Three C's of Good Design are:
1. Creativity
2. Confidence
3. Communication

I'll go over each point individually, but before that I want to clarify something. There used to be 4 C's the last one being "Competence" but I thought it was a little redundant, since if you gain the other three you will already have competence. Or rather, having these three skills will make you competent at design.

So onto the individual parts...

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Creativity

This one is probably the most obvious. The job of a designer is to CREATE new experiences in every game and to find ways to make these experiences fun for the majority of the players.

I think it's a little deeper than this however, since simply coming up with the ideas for the experience is only part of the challenge. The creativity of designers has to extend to all aspects of game creation. Besides just coming up with the experience, creativity is needed to solve problems which come up during implementation, it's needed to come up with ways to use the script to support the experience, and it's even when testing levels in order to find new ways to break the very thing you worked so hard to create.

Creativity is definitely a core skill for any designer, but it's important to be creative when it comes to a broad base of design aspects and not just be someone who comes up with ideas, but someone who can see them through to completion.

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Confidence

I think it's important not to take this principle too far, because then it becomes arrogance, which isn't helpful and can be counter-productive in the worst case.

By confidence I mean the assurance to stick with what you think is good design. I think it's fine to look at what the player wants, but also that it's important for designers to understand that even if players say they "want" something, that is not necessarily what the game "needs".

Being confident in your own designs means that you understand what makes them good and recognize when things need to be changed, and also when it's better to stick to your original plans. Changing ideas and levels can happen frequently in the design process, but it's important to maintain a confident stance so that that you know when to stop and finish your work.

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Communication

Probably the least obvious of the three, this one tends to end up being the most important. As a designer, it's important to be confident, but also to realize that the majority of your work will usually depend on the hard work of other people, most often programmers and artists. Very rarely does one person do everything himself unless it's something small like a flash game or short indie project.

The final works of designers require many raw materials that are generally provided by others. While the designer is the one who creates the end result it's incredibly important to recognize and understand the work of those that come before you. Being able to communicate effectively with other designers in a confident manner that gets your creative design ideas across is what allows great games to be made.

Communication with artists and programmers can be difficult sometimes as the differences in disciplines sometimes result in designers seeing things differently than artists and programmers, but being able to communicate and understand the people who are not in the design department is just as important (and possibly moreso) than simply being able to communicate with your fellow designers.

Great ideas and a confident pitch aren't going to get you a finished game unless you can get the idea across to your peers and co-workers.

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And those are the three C's are the things I'm thinking are really important for being a good designer. They are aspects I try to focus on when designing and when working with others. I may think up more in the future, but for now I think these sum things up nicely.

One more thing before I sign off for today. BlazBlue is slated for release 6/30/2009 in the US. Pre-orders are currently available here. I'm still trying to figure out which version I want and where I'm gonna end up shipping it. But I'm definitely going to make sure I pick it up.

Labels: blazblue, design philosophy, game industry

posted by Saikyo at 2:32 PM

Monday, June 8, 2009

Blazblue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 4

And now today we continue with the long delayed Blazblue posts! If you remember we are discussion the individual character drives and why each is a radical departure from traditional fighting game mechanics.

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Rachel Alucard - Sylpheed

Rachel has my favorite drive, because it's one of the most unique ones I've seen yet. Her drive ability is to create wind on the battlefield. She can create wind in any of the 8 cardinal directions on the joystick by pressing the drive button in conjunction with that direction. The wind lasts for several seconds and affects the movement of both her and her opponent. Rachel uses a special wind gauge to determine how many times she can use this drive before it runs out. The bar stocks 4 uses of wind, and actively recharges as long as Rachel is standing on the ground and not defending.

Now this drive would be interesting on it's own since it affects the movement of both characters when its used. For example a player can use wind to blow himself at the enemy or use wind to blow the enemy away. While the wind affects both characters, it affects them more strongly when jumping, so it's possible to use it to mess up an opponent's jump in attack as well. In fact some of Rachel's moves and combos require wind to get the maximum effect.

I said it would be interesting on it's own, but in fact there is also more to it. Rachel has a set of projectile moves which are also affected by the wind. One of them shoots a projectile in an arc which has three variations on the ground and in the air. The wind affects these projectiles so the player can determine where they land. In some instances it's actually advantageous to blow a projectile back towards you to hit an enemy. The second projectile actually does nothing on its own. It just sits there and slowly floats upwards. However when the player uses wind, it becomes an active projectile, which can hit the opponent or cancel other projectiles. This creates a dynamic multi-directional projectile that can even come from behind the enemy.

The originality of this drive as well as the fact that Rachel's movelist builds upon the mechanic is what makes it my favorite.

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Arakune - Crimson

Moving on to the next drive reveals not only an interesting mechanic but also a very oddly designed character as well. Arakune has the appearance of an amorphous blob and as a result many of this attacks change his shape in addition to his size on the screen. This has interesting effects on the gameplay since he even dissapears completely when performing a forward dash.

His drive ability is a set of moves which "curse" the opponent when they hit. (One variation curses even on block.) Once cursed, a small meter appears that represents how long the opponent is cursed for. After this point pressing any of the attack buttons (including drive again) causes a small bug to fly on screen from a preset location to attack the enemy. This action also causes the meter to deplete slightly although it can be renewed by connecting with another drive attack.

Outside of this very different drive attack comes a very different style of play. While most characters focus on combos (and Arakune does have combos) his drive mechanic and moveset seem to support a style of play which involves tricking the player into blocking incorrectly. Since the bugs can attack from multiple angles, this allows Arakune to switch sides with the enemy several times using his unique array of teleport and short movement skills. The bugs enhance this ability to do strange and different combos when the opponent blocks incorrectly.

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Bang Shishigami - Burning Heart

Bang has a more natural feeling drive attack, but this is offset by several other game mechanics that he has and how they factor into his overall playstyle. His drive attack causes him to do a slow and telegraphed powerful attack. However the start of the attack guards against incoming attacks. Some version guard against more types of attacks than others, but all of them guard against something.

This "guard point" style is actually present in other games so it might seem strange that I still call it very unique. The reason for this is the other systems linked into this guard point system. First, when Bang successfully guards an attack with his drive he has the ability to instantly teleport before finishing the attack. This allows for movement options if the guarded attack has more hits coming and allows Bang to even appear behind his enemy while completing the attack. Second is that the attack itself is linked to one of Bang's supers commonly refered to as "Bang Install" which completely changes his base mechanics. Activating the move requires the player to land 4 hits with his drive and changes his movement options to allow dashes in 8 different directions as well as allowing him to move through opponents. This causes him to become even more mobile than Taokaka, however it also strips his ability to block attacks, making the guard points more important. Bang becomes a unique character because of how his drive mechanic factors into his other moves.

If that wasn't enough Bang also utilizes a supply system of "nails" which limit the amount of certain attacks he can do. He starts with 12 nails and uses them up as he performs certain moves. These moves consist of different styles of projectiles which give him strong options for attacks and a move which creates a "bumper" in the air which persists for the entire round. The presence of the bumpers is yet another unique thing about Bang as he is allowed to dash in any direction as soon as he touches one. This allows him to control his movement with a high degree of precision, but only in locations where the bumpers are.

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Litchi Faye Ling - Mantenbou

The last character is Litchi, who's drive allows her to control a special staff weapon that floats alongside her as she fights. Pressing the drive button sets the staff on the ground (or throws it to the ground in some cases). Pressing the drive button again calls the staff back to her, hitting anything in its way. Certain special moves also plant the staff to be called back later. Litchi's drive can be used in a variety of ways to create unique custom combos. Traditional combos with the staff involve knocking the enemy to the ground with the staff, only to relaunch them when the staff is recalled.

This mechanic is similar to a character in Guilty Gear (not surprising since its the same company) though Mantenbou adds onto the previous ideas. First is that Litchi's attacks change depending on whether or not she is in possession of the staff. She basically has two sets of moves with differing properties depending on if she is holding the staff or not. Additionally besides the special moves she can only do with the staff, certain special moves require her NOT to have the staff in her possession. Things get even more interesting because some normal moves with the staff cause her to lose possession of the staff for parts of the moves. This means that the available move list can change in the middle of combos which creates not only an intesting gameplay element, but likely a challenging aspect of this character for balancing.

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That's it for this week, one more post of characters, as I push to the end of the list of characters.

Labels: blazblue, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 7:21 PM

Friday, May 8, 2009

Hard Times

Seems like pretty difficult times for the game industry. Not that I wasn't aware of this from being laid off, but I recently read an interesting article that estimates the number of layoffs to be around 8450 since last July. It's a pretty staggering number when I think about it, and it only makes me realize how much harder I need to work to find a new job.

The interesting thing about that article is that the author also talks about a Gaming Renaissance movement that is taking place. It's an interesting read, and makes me a little concerned about the my future in this industry. Although at the same time I suppose I am also cautiously optimistic about the changes and the new studios that are springing up...

...though I'm not so optimistic as to stop applying for jobs and make my own company just yet. I'd like to get more experience in this industry before I can do something that radical, but it's definitely something to consider in the future.

Gonna be putting of the next BlazBlue installment for a little while since I have yet another design test I need to work on. I'm hoping to finish that set of blogs before the game actually comes out on 6/25. Well assuming it comes out on the same date in the US...

Labels: blazblue, game industry, job

posted by Saikyo at 10:25 PM

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

BlazBlue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 3

Continuing today with more drives! They just get crazier from here.

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Noel Vermilion - Chain Revolver
Noel's drive is pretty interesting in that it opens up interesting combo chains. Basically by pressing the drive button and different directions you can chain together a certain set of moves. There is one that hits overhead and one that launches and another that switches sides with the opponent. You can do up to 4 or so of them in a row but you're not allowed to do the same one twice in a row. At the end you can even do a finishing move that blows the opponent away! It allows players to mix up interesting combinations of moves all in a single sequence with just one button. This drive isn't quite as radical as some of the others but gives many more interesting options for the player with only a single button.

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Iron Tager - Voltec Battler
Tager's drive ability is basically magnetism. If he hits you with a drive move, you are temporarily magnitized for a duration dependant on the move that he hits you with. Until it wears off ALL of Tager's moves which use the drive button will pull you towards him. Add to this that Tager is BlazBlue's throw character and you've got an amazing departure from the norm. Unlike throw characters from other fighting games who try to get close to the enemy, Tager can also attempt to pull the enemy into him. Tager also has a very fast magnitizing projectile that he can fire for magnitizing enemies who try and play keepaway. This is balanced by the fact that he has to charge it up before firing (or wait a while since it chages slowly by itself). This effectively limits him to being a close range character with the option to occasionally magnitize longer range keepaway characters.

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Taokaka - Dancing Edge
Besides Tao's character design (which I'm a big fan of), she also has a pretty neat drive mechanic. Pressing the drive button plus any direction causes her to launch herself in an attack in that direction. This wouldn't be that unusual except for the amount of range the attack covers which is practically an entire screen length. Additionally she can cancel this drive move from just about any of her normal and special moves as well. The end result is a ridiculous amount of movement control over the whole screen. No other character really comes close to matching her sheer speed and movement options. Speed characters in fighting games aren't that uncommon and like most speed characters, Tao has low damage on her individual hits to make up for her longer combos. Taokaka really breaks conventions when put into practice though. The ability to transition between retreating and attacking with the press of a single button makes for some very flashy combos as well as movement control not common to any other fighting game.

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That's it for this edition, stay tuned for my favorite one next time!

Labels: arcade games, blazblue, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 7:08 PM

Friday, April 17, 2009

BlazBlue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 2

The job hunt is going about as well as can be expected and I've got my first design test to work on now. In the meantime I thought I'd continue my discussion of BlazBlue and the original game mechanics it introduces to the fighting game genre. Today is a discussion of the "Drive" system and the start of the individual character analysis.

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The Drive System

The button scheme for this game consists of 3 attack buttons of varying strength plus a 4th button called the Drive button. Now the first part isn't very unusual. Many fighting games have 3 or more attack buttons, but 3 is about the bare minimum that most games get away with currently (although Virtua Fighter only has punch and kick). Of course the problem with having less buttons is that you have to use additional button combinations and direction/button combinations to get more moves. So based on the ratio of actions the character can perform the amount of complex interactions can change.

I'm getting a little off topic here, so getting back to the drive system, the 4th button in BlazBlue is used for character specific actions. I believe in an interview someone related to the game mentioned that it is the button "that makes your character do something cool". It's an interesting button because the effect of it varies wildly percharacter. For some characters it is a separate attack, but for others it is an entirely separate mode or action that interacts with attacks. The result of this drive system is that every character has one ability that wildly differentiates them from the other characters beyond the simple special move properties common to most games.

Additionally behind each of the drive systems is a completely unique mechanic that none of the other characters really have. Some drives can be used an unlimited amount of times while others have special meters. Additionally the applications of each one are different, some have multiple moves associated with them while others only have a few.

The drive system is the crux of why I'm really attracted to this game. It screams original design and feels like a huge stretch beyond just simply giving each character a different theme. It sets them apart on an entire game mechanic level and I imagine it was incredibly difficult to balance as a result of that.

I seem to have written a lot there so I'll just do a few characters this time

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Ragna the Bloodedge
Drive - Soul Eater
Ragna is the main character and his drive allows him to steal health from the enemy. For him the drive button acts as a separate attack button. Each attack that hits using this button drains a small portion of health fromm the enemy. I found this to be a really crazy idea for a fighting game when I first heard about it. Generally ways to heal are rare in fighting games since the matches are decided based on who loses all their health first. Any way to heal is generally very difficult to pull off or has very small rewards. (In awkward contrast suicide style moves which drain the player's health tend to be much more common.) The fact that only Ragna has these types of attacks is a pretty bold move on the designer's part, since this kind of ability is one that can easily be either too powerful or too weak to be useful. So far tournament play from arcades seem to suggest that it was balanced fairly well. The drive attacks steal life and Ragna was created with lower than average health and an offensive oriented playstyle to compensate.

As a final twist Ragna also has a special mode called Blood Kain that causes him to actively lose health gradually while increasting the amount of health that his lifestealing takes. It's an interesting tradeoff though from what I've seen most players find it to be too risky to bother using.

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Jin Kisaragi
Drivce - Frostbite
Jin's drive as the name implies freezes the enemy. It's similar to Ragna in that it is done in the form of an attack and can be used indefinitely without penalty. Freezing in fact has been done before in some other fighting games and I think it's tends to fill the role of stuns in other games. Jin's is no exception, but the number of freezing attacks he has in comparison to other games seems to be much higher, but is balanced by the fact that two freezing attacks in a row will not freeze in succession.

Now as I said the actual freeze mechanic has been done before, but where it gets interesting is how its combined with another mechanic common to games. I guess I'll call it the EX mechanic. Certain special attacks, when performed with the drive button drain 25% of the player's super gauge in order to launch a more powerful or upgraded version of the attack. In addition to the freezing mechanic, this gives players a many more moves to work with when playing Jin and allow them to plan effective strategies through the use of their super bar (since the bar is also used for the roman cancel and super move).

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That's all for now, I've gotta get back to design tests and applications. I will eventually finish this segment though so stay tuned.

Labels: arcade games, blazblue, design philosophy, game mechanics, job

posted by Saikyo at 12:01 PM

Monday, April 13, 2009

Quick Update

So it looks like my external drive is pretty much done. I still can't believe the horrible timing of it breaking, but I'm working on getting some new videos to replace them. They won't be the same ones unfortunately, but they should at least be the same dungeon. Not sure when I'll be able to get them, but at least I should be able to get some higher quality videos at some point.

I've also been contemplating changing a few things about the website. It's been a while since I graduated from the Guildhall and I'm not sure it's clear yet from the way the front page looks. The Team Projects section seems a little vague too, I'm considering renaming it to something else.

I haven't forgotten about the BlazBlue stuff, job hunting has just been taking up a lot of my time recently. I try and hit another section of it this week.

I'm also thinking I should start another personal project but I'm not quite sure what just yet.

Labels: blazblue, guildhall, job, side projects

posted by Saikyo at 4:07 PM

Thursday, March 26, 2009

BlazBlue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 1

I mentioned before that I was looking forward to the Arc System Works game BlazBlue in an earlier post, and I wanted to take a little time to explain why I find it interesting. Now there are the obvious fanboy reasons for it, since it's made by the same team that made Guilty Gear, one of my favorite games, but from a design perspective, I find it facinating that the designers managed to set up a game that seems to have a good balance and yet also include a whole bunch of bizzare design ideas.

This first part is an introduction to the game and it's predecessor Guilty Gear and how the base game system has a lot of things that are a radical departure from how most fighting games are set up. After that I'll take a few more posts to go over each of the characters and how in their own way each of them expore a radically different playstyle and how it factors into the overall game balance. And hopefully at the end, I'll have an analysis of how the game compares to other contemporary fighting games and their systems.

Hopefully I won't bore anyone.

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So as a bit of background, both Guilty Gear and BlazBlue are 2D fighting games which have a unique anime-style artwork and fast-paced, heavily offensive battles. The original Guilty Gear game was released in the U.S. in 1998 for the Playstation and subsequent releases mostly came out for the PS2. Each game expanded on previous mechanics and usually added a few new characters. The series has enjoyed a fairly large tournament scene which flourished around the time of the third game, the first game being considered a cult hit and the second somewhat unrefined. By the third game, several interesting mechanics had been developed and refined to provide a unique game experience. Specifically the mechanics I'm focusing on are:

Perfect Guard - Removing Chip Damage
In both games the player can hold two buttons while blocking to activate a perfect defensive manuver which prevents them from taking block damage. This mechanic also pushes back the enemy during combo strings to create space. In Guilty Gear the penalty for using this guard was the sacrifice of your super meter. In BlazBlue, it consumes a separate meter which recharges over time automatically. The advantage of the BlazBlue system is that it allows players who are not as offensive to use the technique (super meter is gained in both games from offensive actions), however if this extra gauge is depleted the player takes additional damage until it fills up again. Thus it becomes a different type of resource that the player can manage.

BURST - Combo Breaker
This is a mechanic that allows the player to immeditely break a combo initiated by the enemy. It makes them temporarily invincible and then causes a knockback effect in a radius around them. Both BlazBlue and Guilty Gear use this mechanic although there are some small differences. Guilty Gear used a timer for the burst, and had it charge up faster as the player gets hit. This generally allowed 2 bursts in a three round match. There were two types of bursts, one used defensively which rewarded you with the gauge refilling a bit if it hit, and one used offensively which completely charged the player's super bar if it connected. In BlazBlue the burst is given to players every round and there is no longer a recharge timer, the player only gets one each round. The penalty for using the burst is that you can no longer use a perfect guard and your overall defence is lowered. This changes the mechanic from an ability that players tended to use early in Guilty Gear, to one which players tend to use late battle because of the strong negative drawback. This new tradeoff is interesting because it requires more strategical thought on the part of the player.

Roman Cancel - Custom Combo Creator
The Roman Cancel or Rapid Cancel as it is called in BlazBlue is a game system that allows players to immediately stop any action that hits the enemy and allow all normal movement options again. Both games use this mechanic to allow players to create specialized combos and unique actions that couldn't otherwise be created. This action costs 50% of a player's super meter (Guilty Gear has a special version of the roman cancel that costs 25%) and so the resulting action generally needs to be worth the amount of damage a super move would do, since those cost the same amount. It's another type of tradeoff that gives the player some new options.

Recovery - Avoiding Followups
This is actually a more common feature of fighting games than the last few, but I thought it was worth mentioning because of the way that BlazBlue handles it. If the player is hit into the air, he can recover by pressing a button and a direction to flip away from a followup attack. In some cases it is advantageous to wait before recovering in case the enemy anticipates your recovery, so it becomes a guessing game that keeps the players engaged as soon as the previous sequence which resulted in the recovery ends. BlazBlue takes it a step further by allowing the player to recover on the ground in different directions. This is actually common in 3D fighting games, although 3D fighting games generally do not include air recovery. Since the player can be hit during ground recovery in BlazBlue at certain points it opens up new combo options and a deeper overall gameplay.

Instant Kills - The Counter-Intuative Mechanic
Both games have the concept of instant kills moves (called Astral Heat in BlazBlue), these are manuvers which kill off your opponent in a flashy way. In Guilty Gear they were ridiculously difficult to do and resulted in the player sacrificing his entire super bar if it missed (which means no supers, perfect guarding, or roman canceling). Also because they were so powerful, most of them were set up to be incredibly slow and almost impossible to connect with. As a result, they were rare and a gimmick at best. BlazBlue's mechanic is a little better in that the Astral Heat moves are a little easier to hit with (at least the ones shown so far) and they do not remove the super bar if they miss. However as a tradeoff this move can only be performed when the enemy is at low health and on the last round. This changes the nature of the move to simply be a flashy finish to the round. It will likely see just as little use as the original Guilty Gear instant kill, due to it being more useful in most circumstances to use the super bar for two normal supers or roman canceling, but because they are no longer as strong, the moves can be made more useful and easier to connect with. Hopefully this will increase their usage.

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That's the end of part one. Next time I'll start going of the drive system and some characters.

Labels: arcade games, blazblue, design philosophy, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 6:28 PM

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Back to the Blog

So first off, it's clear that I need to post here more often. There have been a ton of things going on recently that are highly relevant to my design work and thoughts on design.

Now that I've got that out of the way, onto the important stuff:

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COLOR OF DOOM WINS AT IGF

Color of Doom ended up as a winner in the 2009 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase. I'm pretty proud of this and I think it shows how much work everyone on our team put into the game. The fact that it won makes me really want to take the whole game concept further. My original concept for the game turned out very different from what our group went with, and while it obviously turned out great, I still feel like I'd like to do something more with the original concept and story.

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BLAZBLUE COMING TO THE U.S.

I've been really psyched up about BlazBlue recently. It's a game by the studio that did Guilty Gear and I've been a fan of their games since the first game hit the U.S. in 1998. The new game is an HD 2D fighting game for both the PS3 and XBox 360 with a simultaneous release in Japan and the U.S. on 6/25.

I've been immersing myself in the game system and videos from the arcade version that are populating youtube recently. The game has some great new characters and design systems that give it a fresh look that is both very new and different, but also keeps itself similar enough to Guilty Gear that it's easy to see relations.

This would all be a great thing, except for the part where I don't own a 360 or PS3! I'm still not sure which is better as there are many things going for each console. The 360 has the exclusive Guilty Gear 2: Oveture, but the PS3 has free online play to name a few differences. I still have a few months though, which is great, because with student loans to pay off, I need to save money in order to buy it!

I'll talk more about the game systems in another post.

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BIG HUGE... PROBLEM?

So it's been announced on a few websites so far about THQ closing the company I work for if a buyer is not found within a certain timeframe. Due to NDAs and the like I can't say too much about it, but it's definitely something that I think about a lot. Maybe I'll be able to talk a little more about it in the future, but for now all I'll say now is that it's a reminder that the game industry is very volitile and ever-changing.

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GDC A LITTLE OUT OF REACH

It makes me sad, but given my current financial outlook I won't be able to make it to GDC this year. Last year going with the Guildhall folks was a blast and I would have loved to have gone this year as well. However given the section right above this one, I felt it was better to opt out in this case. Hopefully my situation next year will be more condusive to going.

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There's a lot more to say to catch up for the last two months, and definitely more to say. If anything I feel like I should be updating here more than once a month.

Labels: big huge games, blazblue, color of doom, GDC, guildhall

posted by Saikyo at 5:04 PM