Legend Of Titans: Sungod Plant Process of the Development

Link to the game on itch.io: https://jt-eagle.itch.io/legend-of-titans-sungod-plant

The developer Jiantao Hu made a narrative game called Legend Of Titans Sun God Plant. He created the story based on the mythology of Trojan War. He developed the game in Unity 3D. He designed and 3D modelled the main character. For other models, he chose them from CGtrader website to use as assets in the game. The developer used the technique of Fungus and scene management to make the narrative playable story in the game. Some of his level design got the inspirations from the game Witcher3 Wild Hunt and Monster Hunter Generations. The developer felt he made a good choice of the art style including the game environments and the bgms but the acting of the characters in the game were not clear and strong enough to tell the story.

Here is the plot outline of the game:

In ancient time, there used to be ten sun gods, who are the sons of the Space Emperor (Zhou Di）. They led the Cloud tribe to enslaved the human beings on earth for many years, until a human god of war, Hector appeared. With the help of the rebel sun god Jiaotu, Hector rescued many tribes of human beings from the enslaving of the cloud tribe. However, he was still defeated and killed by the Space Emperor because of the shortage of his power. His whole army and family were executed, except for his youngest brother TengSnack. TengSnack died in the Trojan war but he gained a rebirth by moving his soul into a dead boy’s body. As he was escaping from the hunt of the cloud tribe, he experienced the suffering of human beings, which made him understand the evil of the cloud tribe and why Hector fought hard for freedom. The cloud tribe wanted to get the sun god plant in the North Hill, Islands of Jade, which empowers the Space Emperor to rule the whole universe. To stop him from slaughtering and enslaving more innocent lives, TengSnack and his friends decided to work with the Titans tribe to save the sun god plant with all cost.

There are two parts of the game, the first one is about Tengsnack’s bad dream, the second one is talking about Tengsnack’s journey to find the sun god plant. The developer made the art style including the character design and game environments be close to the background and the atmosphere in the story. In the first part, the story was created based on the Greek mythology, he made the outlook of the assets in the game close to the style in that period.

The environment of the first scene happend in Trojian war so the developer build the game scene with the inspiration from the painting The Burning of The City Of Troy(Heil).

To make the enviornment be close to the style, he used an ancient castle building as the main part of the environment. The first scene talks about Tengsnack’s bad dream. He dreamed about he was dead with his sister Helan when he was a kid in the Trojan war. The developer chose the castle as game environment. He selected a castle from varebal (Varebal) He made the fire explosion effect in Maya and imported into unity. The fire flaming on the casle was created by the PBR shader graph in Unity. The developer used the texture of the castle and the sky from paper backgrounds website (IshYoBoy.com & admin_x) and LuGher texture(Medieval messy STONES wall 10 — Lugher Texture Library.)

To make the child Tengsnack, he chose the model from Svyatlykhosherstov (Svyatlykhosherstov ) on CG Trader. He recorded two BGMs from the Chinese Animation Series Wu Geng Ji (Wu Geng Ji). He re-colored the character and created the animation, then importing them to Unity.

Helan is the sister of Tengsnack. the developer selected her dress on CGTrader(3, 3dia, ) and made the her model in Maya.

The dragons are the enemies in this game, they are named “no-eyed dragon.” Their models were chosen from Dommk (Dommk ). He keyed its animation in Maya.

With Fungus, the developer created the dialogue between Tengsnack and his sister Helan.

To make one scene to another, he created a button and a script called “skip.” This allows the players to press the button and enter the next scene.

The developer designed Helan grabing Tengsnack to jump off the castle as the end scene of Tengsnack’s bad dream.

From what can be seen, the developer made a good choice on creating the game environment close to the style of the story but the expression of the conversation is a little vague to tell the story. The developer only used pure character models in the scene with the Fungus dialogues rather than the ones animations. If the characters have some animated actions when speaking, the players would feel the emotions of the characters and engage more into the game. The reason why audience would be interested in playing the game with narrative story is that the emotions expressed by the character and the whole level would attract and lead players to stay longer in the game.

The developer created the home UI with the render image of the main character animation he made in Maya as the background image.

The second part of the game is the fantasy that developer created. There are two characters, one is Tengsnack and another is his friend Achai. He created different atmospheres in different scenes. With using different styles of bgms in different scenes. However, the rates of acting of two characters are not balanced, which has Tengsnack is more vibrant than another character Achai.

The developer design and model the main character. The name of the character is Tengsnack.

The developer made a new scene, which illustrates Tengsnack waking up from his bad dream. Here, the atmosphere was peaceful and relaxed so he used a background music that had this kind of style. He used a BGM from the Chinese Animation Series Legend Of Qin. (Legend of Qin Bgm Two Sides Of The River 2018). In this scene, he used his own model of Tengsnack and his animation. The panda’s name was Achai, it was Tengsnack’s little brother. The developer used the model from Cristina UY on CG Trader.(C & CristinaUY, Panda bear: 3d print model) He used the models of the trees from Xfrog on CGTrader.(Xfrog) He used the textures of the ground and the background from “Free texture library” (Free texture library) and “the topic.com”(Barbee, Wright, & Kehrt, 2019)

The developer made the dialogue between Tengsnack and Achai with the Fungus.

In this scene, the developer keyed the animation of the Tengsnack in Maya and imported it into Unity.

To make the Tengsnack move, the devloper created a script for him to run.

To make the character move to the next scene, the developer added an empty gameobject that character would enter the next scene when triggering it.

To make the scene gate work, he also created a script for the scene gate.

Tengsnack and Achai arrived at the bottom of the North Hill. A statue with hologram lighting in the background. The developer used the model of the statue from anavrin. (anavriN) He created the hologram PBR shader graph for the surface of the statue. He used the texture of the mountain back ground from Glacier National Park Journal.(Glacier national PARK (U.S. National PARK SERVICE))

When Tengsnack being close to the statue, the statue starts speaking. The developer created the message the statue telling to Tengsnack. He also added the blade model, which he created in maya.

The design of the statue speaking is inspired by one mission of wandering in the dark in Witcher 3 Wild Hunt (timeattackmodefilms, 2016).

After that, Tengsnack and Achai kept walking and reached to the top of the north hill. They met the no-eyed dragon and Tengsnack need to kill it. The developer used the texture of the dragon from “Shutter Stock”(Dragon scale background) He used the model of the mountain from Cristiano on CGTrader(Alpine rock — scanned 3d model: 3d model) as the background environment in the scene. He created the dialogue between Tengsnack and Achai with Fungus. This is a fighting scene with intensive and dangerous atmosphere and the developer used the music with this style. Therefore, in this scene, he used another BGM from the Chinese animation series Legend Of Qin (The legend of Qin OST Dark Night Soul 2012) as the BGM in this scene.

The inspiration of the level design of killing no-eyed dragon is inspired by the Rothalos mission in Monster Hunter Generations. (octaneblue, 2016)

Tengsnack can damage the dragon by using the magic sign of fire by his blade. To make the outcome, the developer created the the raycast shooting script for the raycast and selected the explosion as the bullet prefab. He also added health bars for Tengsnack and the no-eyed dragon. In this scene, the developer

After Tengsnack killed the dragon, he entered a new scene with Achai. In this scene Tengsnack would walk to one of the gate with the hologram lighting. The developer used the hologram PBR shader he made. In this scene, Achai told Tengsnack which gate to go. The developer creted the conversation by the Fungus flow chart.

After Tengsnack walked to a gate, the mountain was seperated and a fire ball came out, which was the sun god plant they were looking for. To make the sun god plant, the develoer added both hologram and the flaming shader graphs on it. At the same time, he created the dialogues and the “Thank You” text in the game.

In the second part, it is obvious that the developer created many actings for Tengsnack while Achai had much less actings. Tengsnack is the hero of the story who is responsible for finishing all tasks including communicating with the statue and fighting against the no-eyed dragon. However, his friend Achai only did one job of answering the question at the end. Tengsnack and Achai are teamates with each other so it is necessary for developers to create a collaboration between both characters. In this case, the developer could add more takes for Achai, which contains but not limits to support Tengsnack with his special power to find the path as well as fighting the dragon.

From what can be seen, the developer successfully made the scenes in the game follow the story he designed but there were still some space for improvements. The choice of the use of assets and the BGM created the mystic atmosphere of the mythology based story in the game, which is the purpose of the developer. To make the atmosphere stronger, the developer can make the character enter the next scene as soon as finishing the dialogues rather than using the “skip” button. He could also work on the logic between each scenes to make every evenet happening in this game look reliable. Story telling by game is the developer’s long term goal of his own creation and future career. In the future, he would make the game with more scenes that follows the story he wrote and specify his series Legend Of Titans.

Work Cited

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