Chinese Dragon Train Boss

Hello and welcome back to another episode of our series on boss fight design! It is actually the first time we are posting an article from this series on IndieDB, so if you are interested in previous installments visit our blog on Gamasutra -?Gamasutra.com?boss we showed you last time was relatively easy to implement and made it into the final release of X-Morph: Defense. The one we will be discussing today had no such luck. Made up of hundreds of little pieces, the task of making all the components work together turned out to be a little bit too much for us, given the time restrictions we eventually had to impose on ourselves. Let's take a closer look at it - here's the Chinese Dragon Train.

This is the untextured prototype from a very early stage of development.?
Notice the scale of the train compared to a regular tank.

Even the sheer size of it is quite daunting. This boss was supposed to be the final enemy of the China stage in X-Morph: Defense. The battlefield is located in the middle of a military base. It is not unusual for the army to carry their freight by using specialized trains, so we decided it would be fitting and more unique than another ultra-heavy tank or a gigantic aircraft. Comprised of four completely different carriages, the Chinese Dragon Train had a number of ways to make the players sweat.

TRAIN DESIGN

The entire Chinese Dragon Train would fill up a large portion of the level

and would be too large to fit on a single screen in-game.

As you might expect from EXOR Studios, the visual aspect of the boss design was rather over the top. The train with all its carriages spanned across almost half of the map. Since each part was specialized to carry out a different task, all of them had to vary significantly. That meant, of course, that our artists had to prepare 4 models to be later connected into one consistent entity. It was a tall order, especially given the fact that all the parts had completely different purposes.

The parts of the train were connected by dynamic joints,?
allowing it to slightly bend while making turns.

The Chinese Dragon Train is not just a vehicle packed with weapons. In fact, it is a military base on wheels, complete with an artillery cannon, a nuclear strike calling satellite dish and even an aircraft factory! A MIRV missile launcher rounds up the package nicely, giving the boss complete control over all the aspects of the battle taking place around it. There simply isn't an aspect of the warfare the train couldn't control.

The cannon carriage doubles up as an engine for the whole train.?
It is able to move forwards and?backwards. It's better not to ask about the power of its engines.

譯文：

中國龍列車頭

您好，歡迎回到我們的另一集關(guān)于老板戰(zhàn)斗設(shè)計系列！實際上這是我們第一次在IndieDB上發(fā)布這個系列的文章，所以如果你對之前的部分感興趣，請訪問我們在Gamasutra-Gamasutra.com上的博客boss，我們上次向你展示的是相對容易實現(xiàn)的，并使之成為X-Morph:Defense的最終版本。我們今天要討論的那個人沒有這樣的運氣。由成百上千個小部件組成，考慮到我們最終不得不對自己施加的時間限制，讓所有部件一起工作的任務(wù)對我們來說有點太多了。讓我們仔細(xì)看看它-這是中國龍列車。

這是一個開發(fā)早期的無背景原型，注意火車與普通坦克的比例。

即便是它的龐大規(guī)模也相當(dāng)令人望而生畏。這位BOSS本應(yīng)是《X變體：防御》中中國舞臺的最后敵人。戰(zhàn)場位于軍事基地的中間。軍隊用專列運送貨物并不稀奇，所以我們決定它比另一輛超重型坦克或一架巨型飛機(jī)更合適，更獨特。由四節(jié)完全不同的車廂組成的中國龍列車有很多讓運動員流汗的方法。

列車設(shè)計

整列中國龍列車將占整個水平的很大一部分。它太大了，不能放在游戲中的一個屏幕上。

正如您可能從EXOR工作室期望的那樣，boss設(shè)計的視覺方面是相當(dāng)過分的?；疖嚰捌渌械能噹麕缀鯔M跨了地圖的一半。由于每個部分都是專門執(zhí)行不同任務(wù)的，因此所有部分都必須有很大的不同。當(dāng)然，這意味著我們的藝術(shù)家必須準(zhǔn)備4個模型，以便以后連接成一個一致的實體。這是一個很高的要求，特別是考慮到所有部分都有完全不同的目的。

列車的各個部分通過動力接頭連接起來，使其在轉(zhuǎn)彎時稍微彎曲。

中國龍列車不僅僅是一輛裝滿武器的車輛。事實上，它是一個輪子上的軍事基地，配有一門大炮、一個叫衛(wèi)星天線的核打擊裝置，甚至還有一個飛機(jī)工廠！一個和平號導(dǎo)彈發(fā)射器很好地包圍了這個包裹，讓老板完全控制了圍繞它戰(zhàn)斗的所有方面。火車根本無法控制戰(zhàn)爭的任何方面。

炮車兼作整列火車的發(fā)動機(jī)，它能前后移動。最好不要問發(fā)動機(jī)的功率。