Kinect Disneyland Adventures

Kinect Disneyland Adventures

Format: XBOX 360 + Kinect

Metacritic: 73

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/kinect-disneyland-adventures

"Harnessing the controller-free magic of Kinect for Xbox 360, Kinect: Disneyland Adventures will allow children and Disney fans of all ages to explore Disneyland park, enjoy immersive adventures based on popular attractions, engage in challenging quests, and interact with beloved Disney characters using their full bodies and voices, no controller required. Kinect: Disneyland Adventures is your ticket to the magical world of Disneyland through Kinect, right in your living room."

Kinect Disneyland Aventures allows the player to freely explore a highly accurate and detailed version of Anaheim's famous Disneyland theme park.  Using the kinect, the player is free to explore the park and discover the various attractions and hidden secrets with their avatar character.  Disneylands theme park has been created to an exacting degree of detail, complete with famous disney characters and many attractions and events for the player to interact with.  

The various rides and attractions have been expanded into adventures, with each adventure using the theme of the real life park attraction to create an idealised version of the ride.  For example the real life ride for peter pan's flight is a roller coaster that simulates flying through neverland, and the kinect disneyland adventures (KDA) ride are a number of themed levels including a virtual flight around neverland.Jungle CruiseI was given ownership of the jungle cruise attraction for the game.  

I was responsible for researching the original ride and producing the design of the ride in the game.  I designed mechanics for a number of individual levels that would make up the ride, and produced level designs and all the relevant documentation that was required with my designs.  Later I used my designs to implement the jungle cruise levels into Frontier's proprietary game engine.  I also created the initial theme and story progression for the ride.

A video demonstrating the real life attraction, used for research

The Jungle cruise ride was divided into three seperate levels, each with a specific theme and unique mechanics and controls.  Each required the use of different tools and methods to create, however I will detail the specifics below.

Jungle cruise - Level 1: River Cruise

The first level of the jungle cruise ride is the river cruise.  This level closely mimics the real life ride, with added fantasy elements.  In the real life ride people sit inside one of the safari tour boats and are taken round the ride.  The ride takes the player through representations of the worlds famous rivers, such as the amazon, congo and the nile.  Along the way various animatronics represent the local fauna for each area.  Along the way a tour guide explains each area and tells (terrible) jokes.

Video of Level 1: River Cruise

For the first level of the Jungle Cruise attraction in KDA I tried to create a level that closely mimicked the real ride.  The player(s) stand on the front of the safari tour boat manning water cannons mounted to the rail.  Using the kinect, the player must hold out their arms to aim and fire the water cannon.  As the boat passes through the various themed sections of the river they will have different targets to shoot at, scoring points for every target they hit.  The player can hit targets to take different routes along the river, and the tour guide calls out terrible puns based on the players actions

 The River Tour Boat, with added water Cannons

Due to art deadline restrictions I had to design the river to allow artists to re-use assets wherever possible, but not spoil gameplay or break the players immersion.  I think we managed to achieve this quite successfully and we were able to achieve a high level of polish for the level.  The players route is dictated by a series of pre placed splines, with the players' actions affecting which route down the river that is taken.  In order to keep the environment target rich, and give the player lots to aim at, pre placed targets are loaded and unloaded based on carefully positioned load triggers at the start of each area.  Targets were placed in specific locations as set pieces for the player to hit.

On completion of the level the characters in the boat jump off before it goes over a waterfall, at the entrance of a native village.

Jungle Cruise - Level 2: Native Village

The native village level is themed on a section of the real life ride wherein animatronic gorillas have occupied a native village and are playing with various human items.  In the real ride the boat floats past the scene as the animatronic gorillas monkey about.  In KDA the player must make their way through the native village on foot (as their boat has been washed over a waterfall).  Facing them is an army of fruit throwing gorillas that must be overcome.

Video of Jungle Cruise Level 2: Native Village

The first gorillas facing the player are wearing invaluable native artefacts that must be recovered safely.  The player match poses with the gorillas to hypnotise them (of course) and then must perform actions to make the gorillas drop the artefacts.  The players encounter these gorillas several times through the village.  

The other gorillas the player must face will throw fruit at the player that the player must duck to dodge, and then throw to return fire.  Once all the gorillas have been hit the player can advance.

Match The Pose to save the Ancient Relics

In order to create this level I edited a lua script that determined where to spawn various gorillas from at the correct times, and to control the time each wave of gorillas will attack the player for.      I then placed appropriate spawn points and animation triggers to ensure that gorillas spawned out of sight and then moved into the players view.  I then set up the appropriate gesture controls for   the gorilla pose matching sections.  I then worked with our artists to ensure that player cover and other objects were positioned appropriately for gameplay.

After seeing off the last of the gorillas the player(s) and the tour guide find a new boat to make the journey back to base camp in.  However as he jumps in the boat the rope holding it breaks and he's washed down into the rapids.  The player's jump into kayaks to chase after and save the tour guide.

Jungle Cruise - Level 3: Kayaking Down the Rapids

In the kayaking section of the Jungle cruise the player must chase after the tour guide as he careens out of control through a series of rapids.  The player can paddle to accelerate and turn, and must avoid various obstacles in the rapids.  The gorillas from the previous level, as well as other adversaries return to oppose the player, while the tour guide throws rewards and other goodies for the player to grab.  The player can swing their paddle to hit higher items down, and can steer their boat down short cuts and alternate routes.

As with the River Cruise level the player's path is determined by a series of splines that lead to the end of the river.  The player can steer down different routes to take short cuts down the river, and they can control their speed by paddling.  Although the player cannot cath up to  the tour guide before the end of the level, the rewards he throws from the boat slowly sink and become harder to hit the further behind the players are.  Rewards and obstacles were placed along the river at regular intervals.

Once the players reach the end of the river they catch up to the tour guide and are able to jump aboard.  They head to base camp and are able to jump back to the safety of shore just as the boat falls apart.  The adventure is complete.

The Matterhorn - Level 2: Snowball fight

On completing work for the Jungle Cruise level, I was asked to complete content for another ride and, using mechanics I designed for the Native Village level, created a snowball fight level for the matterhorn.

As with the native village fight, I used lua to control the spawning of yeti opponents who throw snowballs at the player.  The player must duck to avoid shots, and throw to hit enemy yeti's.  There are a number of waves that the player must overcome in order to progress up the matterhorn.

I was very pleased with how the level fit with the rest of the game.  I believe I was able to achieve one of the more notable attractions in the game with difficult development circumstances and limited time.  I believe we were able to create one of the more polished levels in the game, and was able to help develop other attractions to a higher quality.  

I enjoyed the creative freedom of being able to design an entire series of levels from basic mechanics to the implementation stage.  I felt a strong sense of ownership and was pleased to see hard effort by everyone working on the level pay off.