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Octopath’s Developers:

• Original Released
• July 13, 2018�
• Success
• Nintendo Game of the Year (2018) [Golden Joystick Awards]�
• Excellence in Art (2019) [SXSW Gaming Awards]�
• Excellence Prize; Rookie Award; Best Game Music Award (2019) [Famitsu Awards]

Today’s Topic

A Staple Of The RPG Genre…

• Turn-Based Combat
• Popular among RPG’s & J-RPGS’s
• Naive Implementation
• Software Engineering Improvement

Naive Example

Story Time!

• Example:
• 2-Player Tic-Tac-Toe
• How might we implement this battle system in-code?

public void PlayerOneTurn()

{

... // Turn Functions

}

public void PlayerTwoTurn()

{

... // Turn Functions

}

public void RunGame()

{

while (isPlaying)

{

PlayerOneTurn();

PlayerTwoTurn();

}

}

While we are playing the game:

​

Perform Player One’s Turn,

​

Perform Player Two’s Turn,

​

Repeat.

Issues

• Static Command Execution Order
• Immediate Command Execution
• Centralized Application Control

public void RunGame()

{

while (isPlaying)

{

PlayerOneTurn();

PlayerTwoTurn();

}

}

While we are playing the game:

​

Perform Player One’s Turn,

​

Perform Player Two’s Turn,

​

Repeat.

The Client sends a Command to the Invoker.

​

The Invoker handles Command processing, execution order, timing, etc.

​

The Invoker passes the Command to the Receiver.

​

The Receiver executes the Command’s instructions.

Composer

Yasunori Nishiki

• VGM: Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Princess Connect! Re: Dive
• Anime: GranBlue Fantasy: The Animation, and Azur Lane.

Chords!!

Chords are a stack of different notes–often intervals of 3rds

​

Major chords!

• Happy sounding

​

Minor chords!

• Sad sounding

Alphabet

A B C D E F G A …

Alphabet

A B C D E F G A …

Major chords

A B C D E F G A …

Minor chords

A B C D E F G A …

Progressions

You can take any chord progression and swap the quality of the chords

C maj F maj C maj

C maj F min C maj

Mode mixture

You can take any chord progression and swap the quality of the chords

C maj F maj F min C maj

Mode mixture

You can take any chord progression and swap the quality of the chords

C maj F maj F min C maj

Examples

• Tressa’s Theme

​

​

A maj - D min - A maj

Examples

• The Flatlands

​

​

D maj - G min - D maj

Examples

• The Coastlands

​

​

G - Eb - C min - G - C min

Combat

In-combat strategies (BREAK)

• Each enemy has specific Vulnerabilities and a Breaking Point
• Vulnerabilities unknown at first
• Hit with weapons or magic that enemies are vulnerable to and they will…

Combat

In-combat strategies (BREAK)

• BREAK
• Enemy loses turn plus extra damage!
• What does this system do?
• Encourages experimentation
• Risk vs reward
• Party composition modifies chances

BOOST

• Build power over time
• Relieves stress, emphasizes timing
• Feels good

Party System

Octopath utilizes a party system

• Path Actions
• Skills & Talents
• Unique to each Character (There’s like 8 characters LOL)

​

So how does Octopath’s party system challenge and reward the player?

Let’s find out !!

Party System

Even out of combat, players need to make choices on their parties due to Path Actions

• Some characters only have specific path actions
• Challenges the player to adapt

​

Path Action Duality

In Octopath Traveler, some characters have similar path actions, but fall under two distinct categories: Noble and Rogue

• The risk of going Rogue reaps greater rewards than the Noble, but can hurt your reputation
• Choosing two characters with the same Path Action can limit your options, but benefit you in other ways

​

Eight Characters to choose from challenges players to experiment

​

UX/UI Design

Key Characteristics of Great UI Design

• Give players the information they need and want at any moment
• Simple, not overwhelming
• Feels INTUITIVE
• Quick and easy to navigate
• Does not confuse the player

UX/UI Design

POP QUIZ !!

3 Questions !! (Winners gets STICKERS)

• What makes good UI Design?
• What does the BREAK mechanic do?
• What is the difference between Noble and Rogue Path Actions?

Worldbuilding!

Along with their characters, Octopath Traveler excels at worldbuilding

• The starting place for the characters means something to each character
• The rules and experiences are told through the character’s motivations and background

The Quest

Octopath Traveler features eight perspectives/storylines that feed into one

• Each story is finished over four chapters
• You can choose which characters you want in your party

The Story

They all come together for one overarching story…or do they?

• Each character has a strong story/characterization
• The overarching narrative is…lacking

Let’s link up!

The narrative design choice to include eight main storylines with small side quests led the overarch

• Some side quests can reveal hidden dialogue between characters, but this party has little to do with each other
• The player has to trigger the big bad of the game, rather than it find the player

Meet the artist: Mika Iizuka

• Lead Artist
• Part of Acquire, a Japanese video game developer and publisher who worked w/ Square Enix
• Joined 2005
• Oversaw Octopath Traveler and was in charge of various tasks
• Portfolio:
• Kamiwaza (2006)
• Way of the Samurai 3 (2008)
• Tencha: Shadow Assassins (2008)
• Way of the Samurai (2011)
• Link to development presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6wW0pO08LE

Let’s Rewind

• Last General Meeting, we talked about the 16 bits
• Set the stage for game artists to further the design of their games
• History of the 2.5D
• ? = 2D plane that appears to be 3D (sometimes called pseudo 3D)
• Came about around the 1970s
• Interceptor = 1st game to implement the 2.5D graphics
• So, how are 2.5D graphics and Octopath Traveler related?
• Square Enix and Acquire’s goal to achieve “HD-2D”
• Both developers wanted to modernize while bringing back the 16 bit era of RPGs

My Body is Technical: Development and Concepts

• Goal = “Revolutionary Pixel Art” style RPG
• To utilize Super NES visuals and Photorealistic, modern-platform visuals
• Initial concept:
• Maya used
• Concept movie
• Environment = dungeon
• Unknown character
• Dynamic lighting and shadows applied around the character
• Each pixel of the textures on the wall changes dynamically
• Adapted rich materials (an asset that can be applied to a mesh to control the visual look of a scene; tldr “paint”)
• “Create a ‘miniaturized’ look through post-processing”

Development and Concepts Cont’d

• Moved onto Unreal Engine
• This time, conceptualizing a small town in a valley

Lights, camera, action!

• Drew light from the upper left directly in the texture (double-lighting)
• However, this had a bad effect on lighting pixelated buildings
• Solution: Light the textures w/ 3D lights and prioritize pixel are look over real lights
• Character has a “spotlight” to make them pop
• Walls get casted w/ shadows
• Characters get their own shadows
• Color grading to emphasize shadows
• Emissive lights (materials) applied to areas w/ texture masks
• Bloom effects (shader effect that causes the illusion of an extremely bright light overwhelming the camera or eyes) on the windows

Lights, camera, action! cont’d

• Remember! Camera positioning is art.
• Adjusted camera scale to be close to a 2D game camera angle
• Adjusted density of object placement (how packed the character and objects are in a camera’s view
• Scaled buildings to be bigger
• Camera zooms in to characters during dialogue scenes
• Dramatization

How Deep is your Depth of Field?

• Lens flare
• Ambient cubemap (a post-process effect that lights a scene from a provided image) to brighten any dark areas on the screen
• Vignette to reduce any corner darkness
• Depth of field changes depending on circumstances in the game (for example, during a battle scene sequence.
• Circular alpha mask to blur objects in the foreground

Les Models and Textures

• 2.5D models used
• Bridges the gap between 2D and 3D
• Models are scaled as character size
• Gives off that “pixel” feel

♥ Chulip ♥

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Slide where Rachelle tells me Im wrong

How do you pronounce

XOR ?

What is XOR?

• Truth tables in Computer Science
• ‘0’ is FALSE, ‘1’ is TRUE
• Used to create “logic gates”
• Used primarily to manipulate bits or binary
• “XOR” is the exclusive OR operation

List of Logic Gates

XOR Operation Example

100101 ⊕ XOR 111001= ?

​

​

Is it pronounce “zor” or “x-or” ?

Why is it pronounced “zor”

• American English usually dictates that X is pronounced as /gz/ when it comes before a stressed vowel or y
• For example,
• example, Xylophone, exam, Xander
• You do not say N-and for NOT AND or X-and for XAND
• Although there are exceptions like XNOR which would not be pronounced “Znor” because X would not make a /z/ sound before N while Xo- and Xa- can and do
• 77% of GDA officers agree with “zor”*
• Jerrod is wrong. Checkmate.

​

*who filled out the survey

Thank you for coming to my XED Talk

Jerrod rn:

also Jerrod rn:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uBcfOC62GS8d5N4HsOnnwq_zFkEAeBHmoDMvXmnJF0/edit?usp=sharing

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