Stone Tower Temple - Flipping the Puzzle Concept Upside Down

I've always admired the Zelda games for their interesting and well thought out puzzles, and Majora's Mask has got to have some of my favorites of all time.

The Temple itself

The fourth and final dungeon in the game, dubbed the Stone Tower Temple, is rife with puzzles. To enter the area, you must play a song on your ocarina which spawns a duplicate of you that stands in place, which is used on a series of switches to spawn a bridge that you can jump across.

The effigy which spawns in Link's Hylian form

But perhaps the most interesting mechanic of all which is found in the temple is the ability to turn the entire place upside down. The entire dungeon is literally flipped, but everything stays in the same place. The dungeon can be flipped by firing a light arrow at a gem located above the entrance to the tower.

The location of the gem

An interesting note about this mechanic is that the light arrows are not actually found until about halfway through the dungeon. That means that you are forced to go through quite a bit of the dungeon, witnessing chests and switches and all sorts of different entities on the ceiling, but you are always unsure why. When the mechanic is revealed, the player is forced to recall on all of the strange things they saw and encountered throughout the dungeon, and how the changed properties of the map make actions and solutions to puzzles which were once impossible now possible.

Because the layout of the map is changed, the player is required to enter each room at least twice, using this new perspective gained as a result of the map flip. In a way, the mechanic hearkens back to the light world/dark world mechanic found in A Pink to the Past. 

The mechanics which make up the Stone Tower Temple almost turn the entire entity into one, giant, walkable rubix cube. There are also few encountered within the temple allow you to flip it while you're still inside. By giving you the typical mechanics of a Zelda game and coupling them with the flipping of the temple, the player must think in two different mindsets at all times.

Hey everyone! Check out a sweet trailer I made of everyone's levels from this year's Sophomore Spinout, including mine!

Making a fitting trailer for my race game level

What's up! I've lately been doing some research and finding some examples of interesting racing game trailers from throughout history. There were definitley a few that caught my eye!

This one comes from Blur. It stood out to me because although it lacks any type of HUD or gameplay interface, it still consists entirely of in game footage. It begins by showing off the game's visual fidelity, then moves on to some pretty intense action. The fast cuts, intense music, and cool effects draws viewers' attention in, while at the same time distinguishing itself from any other game of its genre. It might as well be wearing a sign that says "I'M NEW AND FRESH!". We see cars exploding, shooting weapons, jumping, flipping, doing crazy boosts, and tons of other cool tricks. But they're real cars?! What? Crazy!

Anyways, here's a bonus video that almost made the cut...

Making a Racing HUD

Hey everybody! Recently for my programming class, I've been working on a HUD that will display along the Volkswagen T2 Type 1 I modeled for the Sophomore racing game. I decided to go along with my mod kit and create something that follows a busted up skeumorphic design. 

To begin my research, I looked at pictures of the actual dashboard of a T2 Type 1.

As you can see, the speedometer has a very distinct classic style to it. When it came to integrating the actual design language of the speedometer into what I wanted to do for my hud, I had to do some research of some games with cool examples of skeumorphic HUDs.

This one is from Fallout 2.

This one is from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

And here's a photo of a dashboard from Mad Max: Fury Road just for fun!

When i t comes to integrating all of this within a hud, I had to get creative. First, I grabbed a really nice reference image of an actual T2 Type 1 speedometer, and made some customization to it to make it look more beat up and rustic. Then, for elements like the dashboard HUD and the gear indicator, I went into maya to make a 3D model of what I wanted to depict, then textured it all in Substance Painter before doing some further modifications in Photoshop. The results I came up with can be seen below, one with callouts and one without.

As you can see, we are depicting the speed, the gear, the RPM, ammo, lap times and lap number, vehicle health, ammo, and kills. The kills are displayed as little notches in the bottom of the HUD, giving everything a more savage look. The bar (which was originally a weapon cooldown meter) will depict the health of the vehicle, and the slider on the left will be used to depict the current reload status of the weapon. When the slider is at the top, it will be ready to fire. However, when the slider is down and coming back up, it will indicate that the weapon is reloading.

I'm really excited to get this all working in Unreal soon!

BOOM SHAKA LAKA

 

So here's a fun look at my finished barrel blueprint and model. Had fun with this one!

Thanks for checking it out!

Analyzing the Intro to a Racing Level

For my racing map, I will create a "fly through" to give players a view of what is to come before they actually play on it. Before I do this, however, I thought it would be wise to do some research on how other games accomplish this.

Take a look at the level intro from DK Summit, a level present in Mario Kart Wii. It begins by showing a key landmark of the level, the giant statue of Mario snowboarding, to set the tone of the track. It then trucks through a half pipe, displaying multiple hazards which are present in the level. Finally, the camera pans down to reveal the start area, mentally leading the player right into the race.

I always thought the Mario Kart series did a really great job introducing players to their levels, and they do it in a super simple yet effective way. Hoping to emulate something like this in my own map!