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Mid Boss Design Guidelines

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Jay Garcia edited this page Oct 28, 2019 · 6 revisions

General description

These characters are "pets" of the wizards and need to be defeated before you can encounter the boss (elemental wizard). The hero encounters this mid-boss in an "arena" style environment. The arena will not exceed the available play field size (320x224). For now, we'll just do a black background.

There are four elemental bosses: Water, Earth, Fire and Energy

image

Boss life cycle

Spawn -> Attack mode -> Death

Attack mode loop

  1. Walk N frames
  2. Transform into ball
  3. Rush attack (bounce off arena walls N Times, hit player)
  4. Return back to top of screen
  5. Revert to original shape
  6. Projectile attack

Sprite Sheets used: (src/resources/sprites/bosses/)

  • Enemy sprites:
mid_boss_earth_brown.bmp  
mid_boss_energy.bmp     
mid_boss_fire.bmp
mid_boss_water.bmp

Gameplay and Animation Characteristics

  • Sprite size is 128px
  • Hit Box is 44x75px
  • Mid Bosses (MBs) can walk up, down, left and right. While they are walking, they are vulnerable to attack.
  • Once MBs are done moving, rest on idle frame 2 (face the player).
  • MBs have two attacks: Spherical and projectile.
  • MBs will appear at the center-top of the screen, facing the hero

Walking Animation frames (all timing 160ms)

  • Walking down 0, 1, 2, 1 and repeat

mb-walking-down

  • Walking right 4, 5, 6, 5 and repeat

mb-walking-right

  • Walking left (mirror right)

mb-walking-left

  • Walking up 8, 9, 10, 9 and repeat

mb-walking-up

Spherical attack transformation frames (all 80ms)

Spherical attack works in three phases: Transform, move & attack, revert.

  • Transform frames: 1 , 3, 7, 11
  • Move & Attack: 12, 13, 14, 15
  • Revert: 11, 7, 3, 1
  • Spherical attack is a "rush" attack, but the MB bounces off the screen in 45 degree angles.
    • Player receives damage if the MB hits the player
    • MB is invincible at this phase

Projectile attacks

MB will return to the top of the screen after the bounce attack and revert to it's original shape. From here, it will fire its projectiles. Projectile animation frames:

  • Shooting 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
  • Impact player 5, 6, 7, 8

Fire projectile example:

66718339-d845f080-edb0-11e9-9842-453ff7b0bd52

Death sequence (80ms)

Using death mid_boss_explosion.bmp, animate 10 frames of the animation sequence around the hit box of the MB.

Layer up to 3 explosion animations at a time, with a 3 frame offset.

Timeline looks something like this.

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
., ., ., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
., ., ., ., ., ., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

After 7th cycle, stop rendering boss

Continue rendering explosions for 3 more cycles

Example of the cycle (crude)

mid-boss-death

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