Level Design of Touhou Fuujinroku

Lighting
In previous Touhou series, whenever boss use spell, player use bomb or any other special things happen, the background turns black, the character portrait shows up then something flashy explodes and takes out bullet and enemy on the screen. In Touhou 10, bomb is now an aura circle that still has the wipe-out function, but it just not as colorful and flashy as it was. What also light up the screen is the bullets that come from enemies. I personally believe that they are the major light source of the game since they are usually white and can be generated more than 30 of them in one second on the screen.

Structure/Architecture/
Fuujinroku is a linear shooting game, which means the game is a straight line until the end. Well, Zun (the game developer) have some building pictures in the background
presented in the boss fight, but they are merely a silhouette. In either the normal scene or the boss fight, when player is concentrating on dodging the bullet, I think the only structure that player can see in the game is the veil of bullet, aka, the spell card. Man, if the normal difficulty of the danmaku is called structure; Lunatic or even extra should be called the masterpiece.



Color and Contrast / Scale
Like other Touhou series and most other shooting games, bullet must be beautiful and colorful, otherwise they don't attract people. In Touhou, bullet color sometimes has different meaning. In general cases, the bullets is either coming at you in pattern, away from you in pattern, or randomly fly around with no pattern. Zun design the color of the bullet in the way that experienced players know when they see 2 or more bullet patterns are coming at them in 2 or more separate colors, there is only few of them is aiming their position. From that point, players can build strategies of how to make room for surviving (even they still look god impossible).

For the matter of the scale, there isn't much. Some bullets are in size of player's hit-box; some are as huge as the character sprite; but all that matter is: squeeze through the gap and live.

Level Design of Final Fantasy XII

FFXII is a Role Playing Game with realistic 3d background and awesome music composition. The story of FF12 takes place in between mainly Dalmasca and Archadia, so this blog will be looking at the level design of these two places.

Lighting
The city of Dalmasca set in a environment surrounded by desert. There are climate changes, which are rain season and dry season. When dry season, maps around the Dalmasca city is as bright as sunny day. When the rain season takes place, the cloud thickness will change, so is the lighting, depends on how heavy the rain is. Inside the city Dalmasca and Archadia, weather conditions are ignored and player see the weather condition by default since players can stay in a city for a long while. Of course, other city can be in different weather, depends on the story setting.

Scale
In the world of FF12, characters and building are in proper proportion. Different races that have different height and anatomy (slander bodies of Vierra, small and rabbit-like Moggle, and the average Hume), children and adults are all presented in the world of FF12 to show the cultural and history combinations instead of boring character design that almost everyone has exactly the same height. This applies in the boss fight as well. Some bosses are 50 times larger than a Hume in size. When that kind of boss is introduced in the cut scene, such power of largeness can be felt from the movie.

Structure/Architecture
Since the city of Dalmasca is surround by desert, the structure of the city buildings are appear to be kind of yellowish stony, which makes the city feel old and history are contained within it.
The city of Archadia is a total different story. The city is at the top of its development, the design of the city makes me feel like I'm in 25 century Prague (by that I mean Europe style future).
And the major element that cannot be forgotten from any FF series is the crystal. Both and other cities in FF12 are using crystals as the tool of internal lighting for their shininess.

Color And Contrast
In the case of the characters, color and texture is used in the way making their characteristic very recognizable. Vaan's light armor gives him a look of a young man with full of energy. Balthier looks very experienced, his outfit also gives him the look of 30, but in fact, only 22.
In the case of the environment, we can clearly see what is coming toward the characters unless obstructed by weather setting. Even though player is in a cave environment, either monsters have red eyes that shine on them or they just have fancy equipment on their body that reflect light and give away their position.

Narrative
Final Fantasy XII is set in the world of Ivalice, and for years the two Empires of Archadia and Rozarria have been fighting against each other in a epic struggle. The kingdom of Dalmasca located in a strategically important position between the two empires. Soon Dalmasca falls under the control of Archadia. Ashe is the daughter of the king of Dalmasca. She becomes the leader of the resistance against the Empire. In a pursuit, she meets Vaan, and a adventure begins. . .

Ashe meets Vaan in the sewer underground, in which reflects how desperate the situation was. The story as the whole, it's very easy to get dragged into their world and their problems, because the theme political battle as the main target instead of some love story. Character's different personalities are very likable and their development plays a big role in this game.

Formal Abstract Models, and Drama of MGS:TTS

Final Fantasy 12

Formal Abstract Models

Intension
Play the famous Final Fantasy series with tow reasons: enjoy the great story and beat the boss. FF series is always telling good stories about a big society, and country, or even one or two worlds; so is FF12. But what happens after the story? Beside the main story, FF12 has several side quest that can make people understand more about the history and people in FF12. "The Hunting" is also one of them. For those who have played FF12 should know the secret final boss "Yazmato", because that is the ultimate challenge.

Perceivable Consequence
In FF12, you have a 6-people group and the game system allows players travel around the world without countinue the story. But any RPG always have a rule that when all of your teammate unable to battle, the game is over and please continue from the last save point......
so, I travel around the world only I know I have enough level.

Story & Drama
All the RPG does the same thing---tell a story. But of course, it wouldn't be just a boring story, cause the game won't sell. The square-enix's FF story is not about the hero fight monster and save the princess, no way. There are conflict between countries, between races, between people, and sometimes between one's different thought. The stories are expressed in the way that makes people think "how did it all started", "how did it came to this", "ok, i didn't quite get that part". The drama comes with those elements. The game has got players thinking, so is the feeling towards the character. The story of a country's rise and fall and a teenager's thirst for freedom within FF12, is the reason why this game had me played 3 times.

Formal Abstract Models, and Drama of MGS:TTS

Touhou Fuujinroku

Formal Abstract Models

Intension
In Touhou 10, or in any bullet curtain shooting game, players require complete focus and endurable stamina on the play screen. The reason is players are introduced in a rectangular shape area and must face huge amount of bullets coming at them in mathematical formations. But the intension is, in fact, very simple: hold the shoot key and dodge whatever you can and for as long as possible. I know those patterns are very fancy and beautiful, but they are meant for dodging, not for being watched like a painting in the museum.

Perceivable Consequence
We believe that the players who are brave enough to play this game is well aware that when the life count on the right-side of the screen reaches 0, the game is over and will be ask whether continue or not. For some hard-core players, "no continue" is the only option they have because they may want to see the good ending. As I have mentioned before this blog, there are unlimited amount of continues in Touhou 10, but for the non-hard-core players, practice is probably the only option they have.

Story
Before the release of every Touhou series, the author will make a special introduction website to explain the interface, game system, and of course, the story But telling the entire story will definitely make no one want to play the game no more. So the "story" here in the intro website is merely a prologue--- the reason why the main characters set off for the adventure.

Drama & Uncertainty
For the people who first time playing Touhou series, the first reaction they have towards the attack formation, from my observation, there are mainly two:
1. WTF
2. OM(F)G
and both are usually followed by "how do you pass this!!!????".
However, the people who have played before is not anywhere better. The real drama happens when you know and played a formation/spell over and over again and still unable to pass, the frustration is the element that has chance to make you another "keyboard crusher" and say the two words above. Why, just study and dodge the math formula then pass, you say? Well, from my experience, it's not the math formula that really kills you. Most spell in Touhou 10 generate random 10px by 10px round-shape bullets that fly out of no where, that is what make you pain the most.