Mypos Games Presents:
An Auspicious Adventure
Document by David Bastien and Jonathan Stern
Contents
1. Revision History 4
2. Project Information 4
2.1 Purpose 4
2.2 Target Platform 4
2.3 Minimum System Requirements 4
2.4 High Concept 4
2.5 Target Demographic 4
2.6 Project Competition 5
2.7 Project Risks 5
3. Overview 5
4. Game Mechanics 5
4.1 Overview 5
4.2 Perspective & Playfield 6
4.3 Character Movement 6
4.4 Controls 7
4.5 Statistics 7
4.6 Attacks and Damage 7
4.7 Player Damage and Death 8
4.8 Special Attacks and the Special Meter 8
4.9 Score 8
4.10 Dialog Scenes 8
4.11 Level Transitions 8
4.12 Game Saving and Loading 8
5. Playable Characters 9
5.1 Li Li 9
5.2 Xiong 10
6. Non-Playable Characters 10
6.1 Venerable Phoenix 11
6.2 Lin Shuo 11
7. Enemies 11
7.1 Artificial Intelligence 11
7.2 About Enemy Statistics 11
7.3 Cloned Enemies 11
7.4 Bosses 12
7.5 Generic Enemies 12
8. Levels 14
8.1 Stage 1 14
8.2 Stage 2 14
9. Items 14
9.1 Restorative Items 15
9.2 Score Increasing Items 15
10. Sound 15
10.1 General Sound Usage 15
10.2 Use of Stereophonic Effects 15
11. Interface 16
11.1 Main Menu 16
11.2 Options Sub-Menu 16
11.3 Character Select Screen 17
11.4 HUD 17
11.5 Dialog Box 17
12. Prologue 17
12.1 Use & Purpose 17
12.2 Text 18
13. Dialog (Player as Li Li) 18
13.1 Beginning of Stage 1 Boss Fight 18
13.2 End of Stage 1 Boss Fight 18
14. Dialog (Player as Xiong) 19
14.1 Beginning of Stage 1 Boss Fight 19
14.2 End of Stage 1 Boss Fight 19
15. Dialog (2 Players) 20
15.1 Beginning of Stage 1 Boss Fight 20
15.2 End of Stage 1 Boss Fight 20
1. Revision History
02/21/03 - Removed two levels and roughly half the enemies.
05/29/02 - Initial Version
2. Project Information
2.1 Purpose
The purpose of this project is to create a high-quality beat-em-up game for IBM compatibles in a short development period.
2.2 Target Platform
IBM compatibles running Windows 9x, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.
2.3 Minimum System Requirements
· Windows 95/98/ME/XP/2000
· Pentium 200 MHz or better
· 12 MB free RAM
· 25 MB free disk space
· DirectX 8.1 or later
· 4MB video card
· Keyboard
2.4 High Concept
A zany side-scrolling beat-em-up for one or two players set in ancient China.
2.5 Target Demographic
Gamers aged 13-35. Might especially appeal to older gamers feeling nostalgic for old school type game play. While violent in some aspects, the cartoonish nature and lack of blood renders it suitable for 13 year-olds. As such, the game should be able to obtain a Teen ESRB rating.
2.6 Project Competition
There are no major competing products at this time.
2.7 Project Risks
Fairly inexperienced team working on their first project of this sort.
3. Overview
An Auspicious Adventure is a whimsical beat-em-up for one or two players set in what is ostensibly ancient China. The player controls either the female bandit Li Li, or the Taoist martial artist Xiong in an attempt to save the dynasty from chaos. While heavy on the action, An Auspicious Adventure also has a powerful story to tell.
The plot itself is not comprised of any true historical events, except in a vague sense. The general “feel” of the game, however, is that of the Eastern Han dynasty. In the semi-mythical game world, four catastrophic events threaten the four corners of a once great empire. In the North, bandits hiding deep in the forest attack and rob indiscriminately. The player(s) must rout them and defeat their odious leader in order to restore peace to the area. In the West, taxes are no longer sent to the seat of the empire, and our hero(es) are sent to investigate. The cause of this problem is an obese and corrupt official guarded by an army of mercenaries. After solving this mystery and defeating the mercenaries, the player(s) must then defeat a powerful but sometimes inept sorcerer who is summoning zany demons, causing disturbances in the East. Finally, the game reaches its climax in the fourth and final battle. A powerful warlord named Fang Yi is advancing from the riverlands of the South towards the capital. It falls upon the player(s) to destroy a dam in order to delay the warlord’s army long enough for imperial troops to arrive. A memorable battle with the warlord himself on top of the dam is the game’s final scene.
The story is enhanced with short dialog scenes of a comedic nature. The zany Taoist priest Venerable Phoenix, who recommends the heroes to the emperor in the beginning of the game, appears at the end of each stage to cause chaos of a slapstick nature. These dialog scenes also add replay value to a genre typically devoid of it, as they are different depending on the characters used to play the game.
An Auspicious Adventure will no doubt appeal to gamers of all ages. Older gamers will appreciate the classic gameplay and lush graphics, while younger gamers will no doubt be intrigued by the fast pace and raucous comedy. A lack of gore and graphic violence will also be a refreshing change of pace for parents in this world of bloody digital decapitations.
4. Game Mechanics
4.1 Overview
Essentially, An Auspicious Adventure is an oldschool 2d side-scrolling beat-em-up with some interesting differences. Many of the gameplay mechanics are traditional, such as the combo-able attacks, but there are also many less than standard features, such as dialog scenes and dashing attacks. Despite these differences, the controls are kept simple in order to preserve a sense of arcade-like gameplay.
4.2 Perspective & Playfield
While 2d in nature, An Auspicious Adventure will employ a pseudo-3d look traditional to games of its genre. As such, the playfield itself is essentially 3d. The X-axis maps directly to the X-axis of the screen. The Z-axis is essentially the Y-axis of the screen. The Y-axis also maps to the Y-axis of the screen, and this is where the confusion comes in. The Y-axis represents a character’s height in relation to the floor, while the Z-axis represent the character’s position on the floor. This is difficult to explain on paper, but understanding is intuitive once one plays a similar game.
4.3 Character Movement
General Movement
Characters can normally walk along both the X and Z axes. The rate at which they do so is determined by their Speed statistic. Characters move along the Z-axis much the same as they move along the X-axis, however at a somewhat slower pace due to the perspective.
For playable characters, the Up and Down controls move the character along the Z-axis; Left and Right move the character along the X-axis.
By pressing Up or Down in conjunction with Left or Right, a character can move along the X and Z axes simultaneously.
Dashing
While dashing in a direction, a playable character runs in that direction until they hit an obstacle, execute a dashing attack, or the direction is released. Running speed is to be approximately 1.5 times the walking speed of a character. Characters may initiate a dash along the X-axis only, however, while dashing a character can also move across the Z-axis by holding either up or down as they continue to hold the direction they pressed to initiate the dash.
If a playable character runs into an enemy while dashing, it will count as the following attack:
· Dashing Ram
Damage: 10 Knockback: 2
Knockdown
For more information on attacks, see Attacks and Damage.
Enemies may “dash” as well, but only as part of an attack, and as such is treated on a per case basis.
Jumping
Playable characters can jump by pressing the jump button. This simply causes them to move along the Y-axis in proportion to their Y-Jump statistic. When a direction is pressed along with jump, the player additionally moves along the X and/or Z axes (depending on the direction pressed) with respect to their X-Jump statistic. A character will travel a shorter physical distance when jumping along the Z-axis due to the perspective.
If a character is dashing when a jump is executed, the character's X-Jump will be (X-Jump * 1.5) for the purposes of the jump, and the character's Y-Jump will be (Y-Jump * 1.25).
While enemies may jump, they are not actually jumping in the same manner as players. Rather, they can only jump when executing attacks, and these are handled as special cases.
4.4 Controls
For a more technical look at movement, see Character Movement.
Up, Down, Left, Right
These buttons are used to move the character about the game world at a walking pace.
Tapping left or right twice and holding that direction causes the player to dash.
Attack
This button is used to execute an attack in the direction the character is currently facing.
If the button is hit while a character is running, the character will execute a dashing attack.
It can also used to pick up an item, if the character is positioned directly on top of it.
Jump
The jump button causes the character to leap straight up in the air.
If pressed in conjunction with a direction, however, the character will jump in that direction.
While in the air, pressing the attack button will execute a jumping attack.
Special
Triggers a character's special attack. Each character has a unique special attack, and can only execute it if the special meter has enough energy.
4.5 Statistics
Both playable characters and enemies have various statistics.
Life represents how difficult a character is to kill. This can be in a range from 1-65535.
Speed is a rough approximation on a scale of 0-15 of how fast the character will move in the game.
0 indicates that the character is incapable of movement. 1 is an arbitrary base movement value. 2 is 10% faster than 1, 3 is 10% faster than 2, etc.
X-Jump and Y-Jump represent a character's jumping ability with respect to those axes on a scale of 0-15.
0 indicates that the character is incapable of jumping. 1 is an arbitrary base movement value. 2 is 10% farther than 1, 3 is 10% farther than 2, etc.
4.6 Attacks and Damage
See the Player Damage and Death sub-section for information regarding player damage.
Enemy damage is to be implemented in a simpler fashion. When an enemy's life equals zero, their death animation is displayed and they are removed from the game.
Attacks may knock a character down. A true flag for the knockdown attribute of an attack denotes this.
An attack can also be capable of knocking a character back. In terms of gameplay, this results in the character being moved along the x-axis proportional to the knockback value of the attack. With larger values of knockback, the character will obviously also have to be propelled in the air to some degree for it to look right. The knockback value will be in a range from 0-31. 0 indicates that the attack does not have any knockback effects. 1 is an arbitrary base knockback value. 2 is 10% farther than 1, 3 is 10% farther than 2, etc.
Certain attacks are projectiles, such as throwing knives or arrows. These projectiles do damage to a character they hit based on the damage rating of the attack. Playable character attacks destroy projectiles should the two connect.
4.7 Player Damage and Death
When hit with an enemy's attack, a player loses life equivalent to the damage rating of the attack. When a player reaches zero or lower life, a life is subtracted from the remaining stock and the player is respawned. Should a player run out of lives, his or her game is over. Should all players run out of lives, the message "Game Over" is displayed. After the "Game Over" screen is displayed for a short time, the game returns to the main menu.
4.8 Special Attacks and the Special Meter
Each player has a special meter, which represents the character's ability or inability to perform a special attack. This meter recharges at a rate of 2% of total per second. A playable character's special attack drains a certain amount of power (denoted in Attacks under a particular character's sub-section in Playable Characters) and may not be used if the special meter contains less than that amount of power.
4.9 Score
Each player will have a score, which is a numerical representation of success in the game. This value will start at zero and increase as the player kills enemies and picks up score raising items. A player will be granted an extra life every 15,000 points.
4.10 Dialog Scenes
Dialog scenes are simple plot-advancing events that take place on the normal playing field. Characters' conversations are shown in the dialog box (see Dialog Box under the Interface section). Dialog scenes may also consist of scripted movement and can contain sprites not normally used during gameplay.
4.11 Level Transitions
At the beginning of each level, the name of that level (see Levels section) will be displayed for a few seconds on a transition screen before actual gameplay begins.
4.12 Game Saving and Loading
Whenever a level is beaten, the current number of lives each player has and their score will be saved. By choosing the “continue” option at the menu, a player may continue an unfinished game.