First boss: Advanced Target Dummy

Alrighty. The first boss has been made - called "Advanced Target Dummy".

The main goal when designing this boss was to test the currently implemented encounter programming system(the stuff I described in the previous post). Safe to say, I am not fully satisfied with the way I've built that, and there will be a good amount of adjustments to streamline the process and remove some redundancies.. But nothing too major, however. The system holds up and does what I need it to.

Given the major Final Fantasy XIV inspiration behind the game, the first things I wanted to implement in a bossfight were snapshotting danger zones(if you stand there at the moment of the snapshot = you take damage) and "towers"(if you do NOT stand in it at the moment of the snapshot - the group takes damage). These two will probably be present in every single future boss encounter.

White dots are players. Yeah, I haven't started figuring out the sprites for them yet...

After getting those done, I decided to add some "lingering" danger zones, which present a long-term threat. To make it more interesting, I made them "follow" a player, and then snap to a position - the followed player indicated by a tether. This lets a player choose where the danger zone would be.

Then, in the initial picture in the first devlog, I already planned for the player to be able to "cleanse" lingering zones, so I added a way for boss "projectiles" to interact with each other.  The screenshot above actually shows a player directing the "cleansing"  attack to clear the way through the fire in the middle. After that, I thought that I might as well try and add another way - and do some groundwork for more combat stuff - and added player-attached cleansing projectiles.

And so, the sequence was:

1. A few "autoattacks", with the boss targeting a player's lane
2. Two mechanics with towers, where fire lines push players into the tiles where towers would spawn
3. The first "big" mechanic, with a bunch of burning floor going on, and cleansing to make way to safety/mechanic resolution
4. Advances "autoattacks", where two lanes are targeted at the same time
5. Another big mechanic that pushes players into a corner, and then lets them cleanse all the fire from the floor
6. More advanced autos
7. Another big mechanic, a slightly more complex version of the first big mech, with towers being covered in fire and requiring cleanses to make way
8. A few more advanced autos

Now, all that remained was an enrage. I felt like slowly creeping fire would be the most thematic thing to do.

And there it was, scuffed but functional.

• There's plenty of roughness - in visuals and masking, in zone alignments, and so on.  Some of the implementations are temporary(such as how projectile visuals work), others - were altered mid-way through, which lead to this. That's fine, since the purpose of this first fight was to work with the encounter creation system.
• I didn't want to implement "aggro" and boss movement, so I wanted a stationary target. Which is why.. "Advanced Target Dummy". I thought it'd be cool to make a target dummy that's more threatening than normal MMO ones..
• As I was implementing and testing mechanics, I was considering what would be a good approach to designing fights that would be interesting. For this one, my approach was extremely simple - I wanted to make a few specific mechanics, I wanted to limit boss movement, and I wanted a fire/ice theme as a medium for placing and cleansing danger zones. My approach to mechanics resolution was "where do I want players to go", and I am not happy with how this set of mechanics turned out to be. One of the core goals of the next encounter would be to design a fight that is more visually clear and engaging.
• The "damage" system is pretty simple. Players do their rotation on the boss, players do not get hit by avoidable stuff, and all is right in the world:
  • Boss requires x damage to be done to it in order to defeat it
  • A player "taking damage" applies a 30% damage reduction debuff to that player for 30 seconds
    • Taking damage within those 30 seconds = death

Here's a vid of the bossfight. It's me testing it in two windows, so you'll see me frequently clicking between windows. I've turned off the "death" state for the recording purpose, and ended up failing one of the last mechanics - it's a bit too fast to execute while clicking between the windows :D

Well, so far - so good. Given the changes I am planning to implement, this fight will be broken/unplayable in the next build, but I might revisit it later. I am still considering whether the next fight should be a 2-player or a 1-player encounter.. But maybe I could figure something out that only requires 1 player to complete, but can be played as 2 - perhaps, that would be the beest option for testing purposes, but could present extra design challenges.

Let me know what you think!