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Godswar Online: Moulding the Medusa
In this developer journal, the team from IGG's GodsWar Online writes about bringing a mythological creature like the Medusa to life in an MMO.
Dev Journals By Guest Writer on July 06, 2009
advertisement Setting foot on the sandy shore of the infamous isle, your teammates were tensed for battle. After a short distance, monsters rose to challenge you, and after a brief struggle, your party was wiped out. 'The legends were true...' was your last gasp. Even those that make it to Medusa's lair will be shocked to see some of their best spells and strategies don't work. You may wonder - who could have conceived of such a creature? Today, the GodsWar Online developers will be revealing what kinds of demented ideas they were considering during the design process of this venomous instance.
Making Medusa
Recreating a mythical creature of her status was difficult to be sure. Medusa is not some no-name deity, she's about as famous as you can get, so we faced two challenges - first, how do we put our stamp on this creature so that it fit in our game, and would it live up to player expectations? We found some original artwork and monster pattern designs and then turned it over to our graphic designers for inspiration. The first design was fairly realistic, which was ironic because it's exactly what we asked for but not even close to what we wanted. Far too much detail was included, and it almost seemed to be ready to jump out of the screen and eat Sigourney Weaver. Check out this similar image we found:
;)
Note: This image is not originally
from GodsWar Online.
We wanted Medusa to be able to slither right into the style of graphics we had already established in our game. We gave the designers a few specifics and let them work out the rest - green hair, and a mermaid shape with a snake instead of the fish. When they came back this time we were impressed. It was even better than we expected.
The Next Step
With graphics resolved we planned how we would breathe life into her. It took us some time but we needed to make her seem like the deific creature she was. Clever, cruel, she would have no doubt have expected enemies to use magic against her, after all, she wielded powerful spells of her own. So we integrated magic resistances that would render certain spells ineffective. Teamwork and proper tactics, not brute force, would be needed to defeat her. A dull and disorganized team would never win.
Creating strong bosses is not especially difficult, the hard part is maintaining the balance between imposing and overpowering, and I think we hit the mark with Medusa. In testing it was fun to go up against a legend from my schoolbooks, fight a tough battle, and prevail.
Future plans
Medusa's island has been geared more towards advanced players, and is not a newbie friendly instance - but we haven't forgotten about our lower level players. In coming instances we will have some special places for these players to explore. Teamwork will play a key role in all instances, and along the way you may harvest exp, treasure, and even some new friends. After all, who knows who you might run into?
The pic is priceless