GO TO BOTTOM OF THE POST TO PLAY THE FLASH MINI-GAME AND MAKE YOUR OWN BIONIC GLADIATOR!
Hey all. You might have seen some of this concept art from the doodle thread, but here's the project in all it's entirety.
This was one of my term projects this semester (and will carry over to next semester) where we basically just had free reign to self-direct ourselves in wherever the fuck we wanted. Most people did gallery show art, or editorial series or whatnot.
I decided to do a mock up video game (vaporware).
Next semester it will have a couple 3d models done, and a fake dvd box and some advertising images. But this semester was for concept stuff.
IMMORTAL CIRCUIT is my game, and its pretty straight forward in principle. I took Roman Gladiators. Then I dressed them up like modern mainstream Racecars and Football players, plastered with sponsorship logos and bright colours. And then I crammed a wide variety of bionic limbs and power-tools onto their arms and legs. Stick a bunch of them in a huge stadium, and let them beat the snot out of each other in wild and inventive ways.
The gameplay itself I envisioned as kindof a multiplayer fighting game where it uses a physics engine to determine movements, damage and effects (rather then a bunch of preset 'moves'). Each player can fully customize their own fighter/s, balancing several stats such as weight, strength, stamina, and speed. Then players fight in a wide array of e-sport type games such as 1 on 1 battles, or large objective based team games (murder-ball!). More gameplay description will come with the next phase of the project.
But now on to the meat!
This was the very first doodle I did when the idea struck me.
Some sketches just playing around with some cybernetic aug ideas.
More refined concept, starting to go in the right direction.
Whole mess of various weapon and aug ideas.
Two gladiators duking it out.
Concept for a stadium, as well as a bunch of various flying robots.
Environment shot of a stadium
Concept for a pit-lab where they make the gladiators. A cross between a surgery ward and a car garage.
Unfinished shot of a pit-lab in action.
And this is the cyborg creation mini-game I made to better flesh out the idea of player-customization. Next semster I will be making a model of a "poster-boy" gladiator that I think looks cool and represents the spirit of the game. If you think you've made a kickass looking loadout, feel free to post a screenshot or tell me the names of all the augs.
CLICK HERE TO PLAY MINI-GAME
(you may want to resize your browser to defeat pixelation. I have yet to give it a proper website)
And here's a few sample cyborgs I made with the creator. Hopefully I can revisit it and add more augs, because I had to stop myself from putting stuff in so I could meet the hand-in deadline.
Let me know what you think of the project, and have fun with the dress-up-doll!
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The Flash gadget is a nice little dress-up game but I adore that concept art. I'm especially fond of the environmental shot of the stadium itself, although the default playing field is really bland by comparison to the surroundings.
There's something vaguely Games Workshopish about the limb sheet, it reminds me of looking at a model's sprue. Awesomeness. If this was a real game, I'd certainly play it...
you are one talented mofo :O
Seriously though, those character sheets are so diverse and rad.
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Edit: This needs to be a video game, like now.
Edit Edit: Ok at first I was thinking like a mechwarrior style sort of thing, but now I think like a tcg would be sweet
But great stuff man!
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Why just a plain green field? Robot Cyborg gladiators should be duking it out on gigantic rotating blades with spike pits and flame traps. The stadium just seems too conventional for such a sci-fi concept.
There's a little bit from the beginning of House of M that seemed to have a pretty good sci-fi stadium feel to it:
how do you draw all this? is it all done in PS? or do you sketch with pencil?
also one last thing, did you use reference for the open field image?
just wanna get a feel for how all this is done.
Don't know if you're looking for it, but some ideas:
- Tank treads!
- Additional appendages! (quad legs/arms)
- Pneumatic extending weapons!
- Flamethrowers!
- Chest/head/leg mounted weapons!
- Tails!
- Jetpacks!
The possibilities really are endless, great stuff so far!
Sucking up aside, I think the flash navigation leaves something to be desired. I'm sure its quite a bit less important than the general concept, but if you add a ton more stuff I'd consider adding another way to get to the objects than just shuffling through all of them.
I also agree about the blank feild, but would almost prefer simple sports marking, maybe rings to isolate a dude for extra points or something, or if you can hold a ring/clear a ring extra points. Or go the hockey route and slap some adds on that shit. Or the foot ball route and get the stadium name in there.
As a fan of your Locust series (and I'm sorry to see that be stopped...) I can't wait to see what you do with this.
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I was thinking more like Cyborg Justice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QreMOqvexKw
I can see the similarity... especially in the paperdoll "build your own" type aspect.
Oxymoron?
It didn't really hit me before, but I kinda dig the nice green pastures. It makes me envision a time where a sport such as this could be a nice family outing.
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Most movies and popular media would lead you to believe that roman bloodsport is essentially just a bunch of sweaty dudes with weapons in a sandbox hacking at each other until one of them dies.
In truth, gladiator fights were extremely organized events, with many different tiers and classes of fighters. Different types of gladiators were equipped with very specific armor and weapons, and usually fought only against thier counterpart class of opposite tactics (for example, a slow and heavily armored fighter would fight a quick but lightly armored opponent)
Fights themselves usually ended when one fighter conceded, and only an estimated 1 in 10 fighters died during their career. If a gladiator was killed in combat, a large compensation must be paid to his owners, which increased with his value (an experienced gladiator was a huge asset)
In fact, most gladiators had an estimated life-span longer then most normal citizens because they had access to good food, and excellent health care. Though technically slaves, gladiators earned prizes through fights, and were allowed to keep all their winnings. Successful gladiators were rich famous mofos, and could by their own freedom if they won enough fights.
Some places do gladiator reenactments, and they're very interesting to watch. If it was still around to day, I'd imagine it would be popular as hell. You dont get all worked up when a ufc fighter gets knocked out or a football player gets tackled. Its not much of a stretch from that to a guy getting cut with a sword.
I want to crawl inside your brain and just hang out in there for a day now. It seems like a wondrous place.
One point I'd like to make is that gladiatorial matches weren't confined purely to professional gladiators. Many wild animals, slaves and prisoners died for the sake of the entertainment of the crowd. It'd be cool if the matches could be shaken up a bit through the introduction of some similar elements. It might be a bit cliché, but I still think it'd be interesting if you threw a few genetic abominations in to the mix, or maybe have some rounds where instead of slaughtering each other the gladiators worked together to take on a larger force of convicts or the like. I also have to agree that the field looks a bit bland as flat grassland; some variation would definately be an improvement.
What you have already, though, is great, and I'm definately looking forwards to seeing more.
EDIT: Just gave your thread on CA.org a 5 star rating. You've earned it. ;-)
On a side note though, that one guy made a good point, the every day matches between gladiators were perhaps not overly brutal, but if you figure in the special matches involving less valuable slaves and animals, then it really was a bloody past time.
Awesome.
Basically, I wanted to have a transforming field that could switch between a wide variety of different layouts for the different game-modes. The ground itself could change elevation to make hills or valleys, and different obsticals such as walls or blocks could pop out of the ground to add some variety to the terrain.
Most of this stuff I figured would be used for team-sport game-modes sort of like a paintball field to allow for team dynamics.
For 1v1 matches I figured a simple arena would be the best . Just two fighters and nothing else to get in the way.
Larger "gimick" matches (like, 10 person free-for-all) could have some kinds of traps or something scattered around, but in general I wanted this to stay as "sportsman" like as possible, and less like the usual underground 'pit' fighting you usually see in this sort of genre (ala battlebots or thunderdrome)
You don't see spike strips popping out of the ground in random places on an indy500 track.
I'll be fleshing out the actual gameplay mechanics next semester, but I made a bit of a list of possible gameplay modes:
1v1 (duh)
Team fights (2v2 to 5v5 or something. Its all about balancing complementing gladiators to win)
Battle Royale (huge free for all)
Objective matches (capture the flag, king of the hill, soccer, etc etc. If its been made into a paintball type game-mode, it will probably fit here)
Beast Fights (coop gladiators face off against cyborg animals, either a bunch of crappy ones, or a few really tough ones)
Survivor fights (Same as beast fights, but with AI controlled gladiators instead)
probobly more I forgot...
Not wanting to get hung up on the stadium, because it's still awesome. Just think it could stand to be awesomer. :P
edit: beat'd by the creator.
As an additional mode though: AI vs AI. If this was a pretty enough game, I can totally see wanting to just toss in 10 gladiators and see them duke it out.