Agents start off their game life at the base level of these five core skills, today I'll talk about what's quite possibly my favourite - Agility.
The principal goal of the Agility skill is to provide constant pace & fluidity to the player character's movement, we wanted to avoid the stop-start nature that some platform games suffer from. We wanted the player to be able to seamlessly grab a ledge, thrust upwards to a rooftop and then leap out into open space while searching for the next outcrop to grab or surface to land upon.
Inspiration
The inspiration for the Agility skill came from a few different subjects. Games we were all big fans of: Ico and Prince of Persia. Games that had brilliantly adaptable player characters with superbly animated character actions. Games that constantly challenged the player to figure out how to use these abilities to plot an acrobatic course to reach their goal, taking leaps of faith along the way.
We also took inspiration from movies we'd all seen: Blade and The Matrix, we absolutely loved the visual finesse and the insane physical capabilities of the main characters. The way the ground cracked when the Agent landed after that massive jump while chasing Trinity over the rooftops in The Matrix. The scene where Blade throws the woman across the street on to a distant rooftop before launching himself from the window to the same spot. We loved watching these superb action sequences, but we really wanted to know how it would feel to actually perform these actions rather than constantly playing the role of the thrilled spectator. That's the type of gameplay experience we tried to recreate with the Agility skill, and I believe we did ourselves proud in that respect. ?¿
Progression
As I mentioned earlier we wanted to ensure that skill rewards were provided for actions that the player frequently performed. One of the things we found ourselves doing from the very first moment that we could jump and grab in our initial test environment was trying to somehow scale the buildings to reach the highest rooftop. So, we came up with a simple plan to place a collectible object on strategic rooftops so that when the player gained access to them they would be rewarded with skills for their efforts - this is how the Agility Orb was born. The collection of Agility Orbs quickly became our main method to progress the Agility skill. The player will find Agility Orbs placed throughout the game world, on ledges, overhangs, rooftops, water towers, smoke stacks, anything that requires the player to jump, grab, traverse and climb their way up.
There are four different types of skill orb, each one rewards the player with a different amount of Agility skill points .The more difficult the route up to the orb the more likely it will be that the orb you'll find at the top will be more valuable.
We also noticed that people playing co-op would start impromptu races across the rooftops "race you from The Royal Vista rooftop to the top of the Daily Digest?". Therefore we created specific checkpoint races that snake along our favourite rooftop routes with set time limits for the races to be completed within. If the player can complete the race within the specified time they will pass one of our 'Over Our Heads' sub Achievements which will also reward the player with Agility skill points. There are also other fun in game Achievements that we setup which will reward the player with Agility skill points, like getting to the top of the highest building in the city, or performing the longest/highest jump without dying, and so on.!
An area that Dave Jones really wanted to push was gaining Agility skill points for taking out the bad guys from an elevated position. If you manage to kill someone from say 50 feet above the target, not only will you receive skills points for the offensive skill you use to kill them, you will also receive a small but worthwhile amount of Agility skill points. The act of gaining skills for killing the bad guys is something we ended up referring to internally as 'skills for kills' - which will be explained in the coming days.
When we first implemented the skill progression system for Crackdown we instantly knew that we were on the right track, but we had some problems communicating to the player that they were indeed being rewarded skill points and more importantly which skill they were being rewarded points for. To solve this issue we went for a quite 'gamey' approach, where every time the player receives skill points representative effects are generated and then absorbed by the player character. This worked very well to communicate to the player when they had performed an action that rewarded them with skills and which skills they were about to receive. It also had a rather welcome side effect of underlining that the player had successfully killed a bad guy - particularly a distant one - as the character erupted with skill orbs…I love it when a plan comes together!
New Abilities
As the Agent advances their Agility skill, they open up new abilities. Thus allowing them to run faster, jump higher and fall from greater heights. This might not sound like much on paper, but in game it makes all the difference in the world!
At the base level an Agent can run at 20 mph, jump over 10 feet high - clearing the crossbar of a Football goal - and leap a horizontal distance of 45 feet - the width of a basketball court. They will also be able to comfortably survive a fall of over 120 feet - greater than the height of the Statue of Liberty from head to toe! However, after earning all four agility stars he can run at 40 mph, jump over 40 feet high - which would allow them to leap into the air and grab the top of the Hollywood sign - jump a horizontal distance of 160 feet - the full width of a Football field - and they would comfortably survive a fall of over 550 feet - say from the top of the Washington Monument to the ground below!
As you can see each Agent starts off as a formidable opponent to the three gangs dominating Pacific City, but at their full potential they truly become a force to be reckoned with!
That's all for the Agility skill, tomorrow I'll go through finer details of the Firearms skill.