BATTLE ANGEL
LEVEL DESIGN
Battle Angel: The Motorball Hunt is a collaboration project made with Nick Cunningham. This is the second level of our two-part game that I was responsible for, though this area focused more on the combat of the game. The Motorball Hunt is based off of the Manga “Battle Angel Alita.” In The Motorball Hunt you play as a Hunter Warrior, who is tracing down one of the many assassins of Motorball Athletes. The game takes place within the Scrapyard at the Motorball Stadium where the player’s intel has informed them about the next attack. Though this segment of the game is below the Motorball Stadium in an uncharted area called “The Pit.” Where lives are thrown away and athletes are put on for auction. It is up to you as the Hunter Warrior to stop this plan from enacting and save thousands of civilians of the Scrapyard. Travel into uncharted depths of “The Pit”, eliminate Kuze Saito, and claim your bounty rightfully so.
The level starts off very calm and somber, giving the player a moment to experience the environment they’re in. One of the things Nick and I wanted to focus on when making our game is making sure we got the atmosphere and visuals right for our game. We wanted the player to feel like they’re in this Sci-Fi world of Battle Angel Alita. Some examples of this are being able to give the player nice Vista Views to bring them closer to this world, as well as having the player feel like a Bounty Hunter. Though we didn’t want to directly tamper with the canon material, but instead creating our own character within the Universe.
Combat was one of the main focuses in this area. In our verticle slice, we wanted things to be fast paced and have the player being surrounded by multiple enemies, constantly keeping them on the move. Though if there is one thing I’d like to work on more with combat is how our enemies function. Given more time I would have added more depth to how our AI functions.
One thing that I believe makes this project stand out from others is the Nexus V implementation, voiced acted by Julia Fernandez. Nexus V added another layer to our game, making the player feel like they always have a companion along with them through the adventure. Overall we were satisfied with what we were capable of doing within the two weeks we had.
We wanted to make an action game. Though the objective was to make a game based off of the first four volumes of Battle Angel Alita. Specifically the Motorball story arc. So rather than making a racing game about fighting other opponents, we wanted to execute something that was rarely touched on within the Manga. With how we wanted to handle the combat of being a Hunter Warrior within the game we felt First Person Action was best.
Was implemented within the verticle slice to indicate where the player is being shot from rather than being confused and trying to locate the enemy.
Used as a companion for the player, but more importantly helps the player know their objectives within the game without cluttering them with UI.
