Building Alliance - Diving Bell Spider Study + Boss Mechanics (07/11/24)
When designing my mini boss, I thumbnailed many different designs that started off humanoid before I eventually experimented with rodent like forms. The thumbnails I really liked came from Evie's initial concept of a spider robot. I really like this idea and after some feedback and discussion, I settled on a pretty good idea for the mini bosses design as well as some of its mechanics. I combined this idea with my research into microplastics in landfill and junkyards. I always wanted my mini boss to be quite agile and a spider is perfect for this. A spider is also a very patient creature as it traps and sneaks up on its prey before it pounces. This lets me experiment with my junkyard being the spiders den. The player is forced to walk through it and in the second phase the spider retreats and hides in the junk yard preparing to pounce.
Diving Bell Spider Research
To help me with designing my mini boss, I did some research into my main source of inspiration which are diving bell spiders. Diving bell spiders range from mid to dark brown, although the hairs on their abdomen give it a slight dark grey look. It's native to freshwater habitats in Europe and Japan. It ranges through most of mainland Europe, the British Isles and central to northern Asia ranging as far as south as Iran and as far as north as Siberia. It's main habitat is in clean habitats with aquatic vegetation, such as lakes, ponds, canals, marshes and slow- moving streams. These spiders are the only known species that spends most of it's life underwater and only briefly surfaces to replenish oxygen.
Like other spiders, it breathes air. When it's submerged in water, an air bubble is trapped by a dense layer of hydrophobic hairs on its abdomen and legs. This is what gives it a slight silvery appearance. It's named the diving bell spider due to it's structure resembling a diving bell. The species ranges in size but has its limits depending on the spiders sex. Females are limited in size as they put more energy into building into building and maintaining their bells (females typically build larger bells than males). Males are more active and focus more on hunting which explains their larger build as it helps give them more strength to overcome water resistance and counteract the buoyancy of their mobile air supplies. They also have longer front legs than females to give them stronger diving abilities. Females build larger bells as these are used for breeding and to care for offspring. As a result of having larger bells, females are seen on the surface more frequently as they have to collect air more often.
Their bite often described as being very painful to humans and it caused localised inflammation, vomiting and slight feverishness that disappears after 5 - 10 days.
Below I did a small study on the diving Bell spider. I traced over some images and diagrams to find the basic shapes of the spider. This also helped me discover how many bends they have in their legs. The drawing in the bottom right is the one I drew without tracing and I also annotated it a bit.
Here are the pictures and diagrams I drew over
Possible Boss Mechanics/ Environment Ideas:
- Bite - My mini boss doesn't have a way to easily bite the player but I still wanted to include some mechanic to do with the side effects. If I go with the needle idea, where my mini boss injects leachate into the player, maybe the leachate causes these symptoms. I want to stay away from including vomiting as I know a lot of people hate the sight of it and we want our game to be for everyone.
- I thought that it would be cool for the player to see some visual effects that show they have been injected with the leachate. Since plastics come in a variety of colours, I wanted it to be bright and colourful. This will appear at the edge of the screen and because of it's colour, it will contrast well with the dull environment. I like the idea of having cool shapes similar to how spidey sense is portrayed in Spider-Man: Into the spider-verse (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2018)
- Perhaps the leachate can slow the player down slightly making it harder to dodge.
- Maybe before the player meets the final boss, they can encounter some of the spiders bells containing huge amounts of microplastics to foreshadow the danger.
Screenshot from Spider-man: Into the spider-verse (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2018)
Whilst I was researching these spiders, I took some time to get some feedback from my team based on some of the ideas listed above. I asked them which elements they preferred in my last set of thumbnails which can be found here. Here are some notes on what was said.
Verbal Feedback from Holly, Evie + Nathan;
- Liked the blade + swiping action (Evie + Holly) but thought the needle fit better in terms of theming. (Holly)
- Suggested a mix of both, maybe add a sort of dispenser thing that drips onto the blade, coats it in leachate. (Nathan)
In my final design, I will create a simple mechanism that allows the spider to easily coat its blade in leachate before it stabs the player. I will annotate how it works on the character sheet I will create for it.
Reference List:
Anon, n.d. Diving Bell Spider [online]. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_bell_spider [Accessed 7 November 2024].
Spider-man: Into the Spider Verse, 2018. [Film]. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Culver City, California: Sony Pictures. [Accessed 7 November 2024].
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