Rock Of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder [Dev Blog #6] - Rockin designs: The Medusa Boulder feature

Today we are sharing the design process for Medusa's Boulder.

In Rock of Ages 2 we have a greater variety of boulders, so we figured we could associate one new boulder to every character you find in Story mode. Every time you defeat a new army leader you win their boulder which you can later use in your next matches.

The Medusa boulder is made of unfortunate greek heroes who were sent to kill Medusa; they all of course looked at her and turned into stone. It's funny to imagine how Medusa would arrange for soldiers to petrify in specific poses, each one like a puzzle piece she can use to build a giant boulder.

...And to solve the soldier puzzle ourselves, we used M.C. Escher's repeating patterns as a reference.

By designing a couple of interlocking tiles, you can repeat the pattern as much as you like.

To make these types of repeating patterns, it is helpful to start with just the structure and then complicate the edges. It has to be said that it is easier to make these type of patterns today because you can have your software modify all the rotated copies of a tile simultaneously as you are working on just one. Doing this without a computer would have been way more challenging!

Finally, we used a simpler tile structure because the previous one was not designed to wrap around a sphere... oops!

Here's how the final result looks like:

Enjoyed this new boulder? The game will feature a wider variety of new boulder designs, some which will have unique special properties (more on this in a future post). We'll keep on covering new boulders and more units in upcoming updates.