Behind the scenes design: Chimera (DevLog #5)
Hi everyone!
Earlier, you might have seen us use a graphic with a strange, 3-headed creature - either on our merch or social media posts. It's called a Chimera, and guess what? It's one of the bosses coming to Achilles: Legends Untold!
For this DevLog, we wanted to do something a little different. We're going to show you how this enemy came to be and reveal a bit about its design process.
It can be a very complicated thing! We're a small team that works closely together, either remotely or in the office, and that allows us to give each other constant feedback. While it can get frustrating, it's ultimately a quite rewarding experience, resulting in what you see on the screen.
As our game is based in Greek mythology, there's a lot of inspiration to draw from - this includes some well-known mythical characters, locations, and many beasts, with each one being scarier than its predecessor.
One that particularly catches the eye is a 3-headed creature we already mentioned - the Chimera. A big-sized mixture of three different animals - a lion, a goat, and a snake. Sounds fun already, right? So we got to work.
Designing the head itself had its challenges. It's like two heads melted together on one body! In the end, we decided on making the goat head a little more laid back and to the left of the lion one.
While creating the Chimera's body, we had to ask ourselves a lot of questions, like “How big do we want it to be?” or “What attacks will it have?”. Our artist had drawn up some concepts, so we could decide which direction to choose.
As you can see, the designs varied a lot. You might look at some of them and think "Wow! That one's great, why didn't they use it?" Well, there are reasons for that. For example, take a look at number 2 and number 6 - they have wings! While they might appear cool, we already knew we didn't want it to fly, so they'd just be a nuisance and they had to go. This way, we picked the features we liked and thought were appropriate, while discarding the ones we didn’t - this was the result:
We had the shape for the Chimera, but that’s not all. It also needed some colors!
Again, our artist prepared a few variations. We ended up with a mixture of red and brown for the body, with a blue and green serpent for the tail.
Then came the modeling. Our 3D artist did an amazing job while making the concepts into reality. The beast came out even more horrifying than we thought it would!
And now, the most important part - the gameplay.
A four-legged enemy is always tough to create, and making it a boss only complicates matters further. We want each of our bosses to have their own unique identity, so we're constantly tweaking, making new animations and giving them more special abilities.
The first problem in Chimera's case was its size. The first iteration was small, barely bigger than the average Lion or Wolf, which made it look quite underwhelming - especially when you consider the isometric perspective.
We definitely wanted it to appear big, scary and intimidating. But then we hit a new obstacle - an enemy of this size gets really clunky and is prone to abuse. When the Chimera was attacking with its paws, they couldn't be seen from some angles as its body and head was covering most of the animation. It created an unfair fight, as the player had trouble reading its movement, so of course it all had to be readjusted.
We are still looking for a perfectly balanced point and trying to get as close to it as possible. We want the boss to be challenging, but fair and enjoyable - as befits a good fight.
The Chimera will join the boss roster on the game’s full release. We'll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments, or on our Discord server - you can come chat with us! In the meantime, you can expect more DevLogs, where we'll get deep into other features of the game.
Hope you liked this format, and see you in the next one!
[h3]FOLLOW US[/h3]
Discord ► http://discord.gg/achilleslegendsuntold
Website ► https://achillesgame.com
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/DarkPointGames
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/AchillesLegendsUntold
Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/achilleslegendsuntold/
YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/c/DarkPointGames
[h3]Did you know? [/h3]
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was “a bane to many men”, as it was killing cattle and devastating the country.
One day, the hero Bellerophon was tasked by the king of Lycia to slay the beast, as the ruler secretly hoped the renowned warrior would perish in battle. Although Bellerophon knew the fight would be a great risk, he “trusted in the signs of the gods”, as said in Homer’s Iliad, and marched into battle. He mounted his winged horse, Pegasus, and while riding on its back, he shot the Chimera down.
The term "chimera" since then has come to describe any mythical or fictional creature with parts taken from various animals and anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling.
Earlier, you might have seen us use a graphic with a strange, 3-headed creature - either on our merch or social media posts. It's called a Chimera, and guess what? It's one of the bosses coming to Achilles: Legends Untold!
For this DevLog, we wanted to do something a little different. We're going to show you how this enemy came to be and reveal a bit about its design process.
It can be a very complicated thing! We're a small team that works closely together, either remotely or in the office, and that allows us to give each other constant feedback. While it can get frustrating, it's ultimately a quite rewarding experience, resulting in what you see on the screen.
As our game is based in Greek mythology, there's a lot of inspiration to draw from - this includes some well-known mythical characters, locations, and many beasts, with each one being scarier than its predecessor.
One that particularly catches the eye is a 3-headed creature we already mentioned - the Chimera. A big-sized mixture of three different animals - a lion, a goat, and a snake. Sounds fun already, right? So we got to work.
Designing the head itself had its challenges. It's like two heads melted together on one body! In the end, we decided on making the goat head a little more laid back and to the left of the lion one.
While creating the Chimera's body, we had to ask ourselves a lot of questions, like “How big do we want it to be?” or “What attacks will it have?”. Our artist had drawn up some concepts, so we could decide which direction to choose.
As you can see, the designs varied a lot. You might look at some of them and think "Wow! That one's great, why didn't they use it?" Well, there are reasons for that. For example, take a look at number 2 and number 6 - they have wings! While they might appear cool, we already knew we didn't want it to fly, so they'd just be a nuisance and they had to go. This way, we picked the features we liked and thought were appropriate, while discarding the ones we didn’t - this was the result:
We had the shape for the Chimera, but that’s not all. It also needed some colors!
Again, our artist prepared a few variations. We ended up with a mixture of red and brown for the body, with a blue and green serpent for the tail.
Then came the modeling. Our 3D artist did an amazing job while making the concepts into reality. The beast came out even more horrifying than we thought it would!
And now, the most important part - the gameplay.
A four-legged enemy is always tough to create, and making it a boss only complicates matters further. We want each of our bosses to have their own unique identity, so we're constantly tweaking, making new animations and giving them more special abilities.
The first problem in Chimera's case was its size. The first iteration was small, barely bigger than the average Lion or Wolf, which made it look quite underwhelming - especially when you consider the isometric perspective.
We definitely wanted it to appear big, scary and intimidating. But then we hit a new obstacle - an enemy of this size gets really clunky and is prone to abuse. When the Chimera was attacking with its paws, they couldn't be seen from some angles as its body and head was covering most of the animation. It created an unfair fight, as the player had trouble reading its movement, so of course it all had to be readjusted.
We are still looking for a perfectly balanced point and trying to get as close to it as possible. We want the boss to be challenging, but fair and enjoyable - as befits a good fight.
The Chimera will join the boss roster on the game’s full release. We'll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments, or on our Discord server - you can come chat with us! In the meantime, you can expect more DevLogs, where we'll get deep into other features of the game.
Hope you liked this format, and see you in the next one!
[h3]FOLLOW US[/h3]
Discord ► http://discord.gg/achilleslegendsuntold
Website ► https://achillesgame.com
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/DarkPointGames
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/AchillesLegendsUntold
Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/achilleslegendsuntold/
YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/c/DarkPointGames
[h3]Did you know? [/h3]
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was “a bane to many men”, as it was killing cattle and devastating the country.
One day, the hero Bellerophon was tasked by the king of Lycia to slay the beast, as the ruler secretly hoped the renowned warrior would perish in battle. Although Bellerophon knew the fight would be a great risk, he “trusted in the signs of the gods”, as said in Homer’s Iliad, and marched into battle. He mounted his winged horse, Pegasus, and while riding on its back, he shot the Chimera down.
The term "chimera" since then has come to describe any mythical or fictional creature with parts taken from various animals and anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling.