Reaverbot Design and Concept(s) Discussion

Gentlemen! It's time to talk about our favorite, ruin-prowling machines of metal and, well more metal!

Reaverbots are the primary opponents the player will face in a Legends game, being encountered primarily in ruins and sometimes in other venues (—I.E. the Sub Cities in Legends 1). They are of many different sizes, shapes, routines, armaments, blah blah blah. And they are very important for ruin design and providing challenge and pacing to a mission and/or a ruin, in general. It is vital that we get these guys right—it's absolutely encouraged that we up the ante on Reaverbot design and do what the developers have failed to do before us: expand on how the player fights Reaverbots. This is an open discussion—I'll set a topic for us, though.

—Which Reaverbots from the last three Legends games should we consider bringing back for our project?

Well, there was that one poll with the 6 or so Reaverbots that won. I'd need to look around for it though, unless you've found it already.

Reaverbot Re-vival Contest—look'zit up at the Devroom, if you can spare me the effort. I've got more posts to make!

http://www.capcom-unity.com/devroom/blog/2011/05/23/presenting_our_reaverbot_reave-ival_selections#comments

1st (Japan and US): Gorubesshu
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml1/rvr-gorubeshu
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml2/rvr-golbesh

2nd (Japan and US): Mimic
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml1/rvr-mimic
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml2/rvr-mimic

3rd (Japan): Firushudot
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml1/rvr-firushudot

3rd (US): Poh
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml2/rvr-poh

Special Selection (Japan): Arukoitan
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml1/rvr-arukoitan
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml1/rvr-orudakoitan
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=motb/rvr-arukoitan
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=motb/rvr-orudakoitan
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=motb/rvr-koltjeepkoitan

Special Selection (US): Mandomantal
http://www.legends-station.com/?page=mml2/rvr-mandomantal

I gave the links for all the koitans, just to be complete.

I'm going to bring something to the table here:

—While there will definitely be Reaverbots found in all ruins, being the bread and butter of the main Reaverbot forces, different contexts will inevitably require different types of Reaverbots. A factory-themed Reaverbot is more likely to pump out its own little minions, getting in your way—it's all built around the theme of the awakening/awakened facility you're exploring. This is definitely something to keep in mind.

It similar to what I said in the other thread, really. After all, in other games, there were mechaniloids and viruses designed for certain areas, and Reaverbots have been no different.

Well—there it is. It's important to tie in Reaverbot design to ruin design, as such, as the two really do complement each other.

So, are we going to have another contest where we can design a Reaverbot?
please, please, please, please!

Actually, all of us might design some more Reaverbots. Although, if we get too many, we could do a quick in-house vote.

just a suggestion, but we could just put up a poll with each reaverbot that everyone designs, for which one your favorite is, and then the top 5 or 10 with the most amount of votes make it into the game...

I guess. But I feel it would be better to look through the submissions cast in the previous reaverbot event first, before we move onto adding MORE reaverbots in.
I understand that some of us may be eager to put things into the game, but you have to understand that it's simply not too good an idea to add to a product unless we REALLY HAVE TO.
From what I know, the previous dev team has already gotten this nailed down, so we should focus on building onto what they have already established.

We only need to remember that each Reaverbot will need to be unique in some way so you're not fighting the same old junk everywhere. When the ruins are being designed we need to have places where Reaverbots have advantages on the player so that needs to go into the desgin of a Reaverbot. We could add our own Reaverbots but if we put in so much with no purpose the variety will be plain and the player could lose interest in the Reaverbots due to them having no unique purpose.

smalltrouble wrote:We only need to remember that each Reaverbot will need to be unique in some way so you're not fighting the same old junk everywhere. When the ruins are being designed we need to have places where Reaverbots have advantages on the player so that needs to go into the desgin of a Reaverbot. We could add our own Reaverbots but if we put in so much with no purpose the variety will be plain and the player could lose interest in the Reaverbots due to them having no unique purpose.

Agreed. I think we can actually do with the older reaverbots from L1 and L2, maybe taking liberties with their placement in the ruins, as SmallTrouble suggested. At this point in time, I don't see much of a need for newer Reaverbots unless it's absolutely necessary- e.g Ruin bosses, etc.

I'll second that bosses and mid-bosses should be our focus for new reaverbot designs as of now, and that we should keep to what's already been proposed in the thread General linked up above and what has been submitted to the Devroom's reaverbot contest. I will say that I've seen quite a few interesting typical/fodder reaverbot fan-concepts, though, so we shouldn't rule them out completely.

As far as the classic and typical reaver's go, adding variety to positioning, group formations, and movesets should be considered. Just placing a reaverbot in a favorable(for the reaverbot) location isn't really enough in my opinion. With those improvements, they could be deadly and unique anywhere. Of course, terrain is still something to work with.

I PM'd Nicklas over at the devroom as I'm sure his assistance would be a great asset, however I don't know him and have no better way of getting in contact with him. If anyone actually has some kind of rapport with the guy than it'd be great if you could ask for his help.

I look at Reaverbot selection differently.

The Reaverbots in Legends 1 worked because they were distinct, were well-designed and, because there were so few of them, they were easy to remember. Many, many more Reaverbots got made for the second game, but they diluted the overall selection and, because they were either more boring or more specialized, you forgot them more easily. Context-centric Reaverbots can be made more interesting by making the context (and the Reaverbots!) interesting—using ruin design as a way to maximize the number of crazy things we could be doing with that ruin's context-specific Reaverbots would hope tremendously.

Generally, while I think some new multi-context Reaverbots would be good additions to the current fan favorite multi-context Reaverbots—those that will appear in all ruins—mostly Legends 1, and a few Legends 2, Reaverbots would be good picks to keep. The trick is not to add too much more at all—maximizing what we can do with a limited number of Reaverbots, old and new, will make them more memorable and force our designers to make smart decisions under these restrictions.

As for Niklas: we should do our god-damn best to get him in as an Artist, if it means having a great designer (overall!) who can really nail Reaverbot design. I 'aint even kiddin'!

I agree with everything commented before, one important thing about reaverbots is that they all have their own "ecosystems" and behavior, some are found in groups (in some cases in just one ruin) while others are solitary, what will take more attention is what kind of reaverbots the player will face on certain areas. There will be a mayor impact with not too many well designed and programmed reaverbots than a lot of simple reaverbots just walking at the player.

i have invited someone who was creating a Megaman Legends fan-game to come join us...

https://www.youtube.com/user/Yareare#p/u

My oh my—air-dashing and double jumping galore. I'm always impressed by the Brazilian folk.

@RS: Absolutely—that plays into AI, which will be probably the trickiest thing to nail with Reaverbots. And, boy, I could go on about enemy AI.

So when are we starting to bring designs for new reaverbots? I bet everyone here have at least 2 or 3 ready to show.

You can bring 'em into the room at any time, man. I have my own ideas, but I can't sketch them without someone else doing it for me—so nothing from me yet, I 'spose.

@GenSpec

I can't say you'd be entirely happy with the results, but if you'd want to Message me some of your ideas, I could draw a few sketches.

I know you made some of your own ideas and concept sketches back in the day, but we do have a growing team of artists here—I can go to other guys for sketches as well.

here's a doodle I made when I woke up. Right now I'm torn between 2D visual development (what I'm good at) or learning 3D modeling, but either way, here's a hippo-bot

For the record: I generally don't favor animal-deriviative Reaverbot designs, instead favoring the more alien, vague, functional and efficient forms of the Legends 1 Reaverbots. We can make plenty of animal-derivative Reaverbot designs all day and exhaust loads of possibilities, but many fans loved how odd and unsettling the more abstract designs in Legends 1 were, as opposed to those in Legends 2.

Take, for example, the winning design of Event 4: it was practically a lightening tower, developing an ominous cloud around the flared portion at the top. You can see what it is—life given to something previously non-organic and living, which creates curiosity in the player. That's just one of many examples, of course. Either, you're getting a good start on sketching and getting a feel for the ornamental kinks of Reaverbot design—I, of course, want to get down to the nitty-gritteh.