Principles and Practices of level design report – LO1
Level design practices – P1
There are many techniques used to design levels, these principles are not fact but are certainly factors of good level design that should be taken into consideration when designing a level, light, composition and affordance.
LIGHT
A good level leaves the choice up to the player but leaving no guidance on where to go is not the way to go around this, using light to guide the player’s eyes towards the next location is a subtle way of informing but not telling the player.
In this image, there is 4 light sources, one at the top left, two on the wall to the lower right and one in the low centre. In this example a player is guided towards he highlighted ramp and towards the door light in the centre in order to reach the door at the top, which is lit to act as a marker to continue the game. [ 1 – The Level Design Book, 2022] If the surrounding area is dark enough, lampposts, car headlights, flames or sunlight will always catch the players attention
COMPOSTITION
Also called framing, composition is about using the environment to guide the player to the right objective. This technique has the environment set a frame from a door way or rails in order to centrally focus on the players goal. In this example, the high location is framed with a path directly towards it as well as braziers with fire which indicate to the player that to continue they need to reach that location. [ 2 – Gunson, 2013]
Pillars, walls, fences create a frame that draws the player into it. Leading lines direct the player towards their goal and are framed inside of the composition, separating the ground and walls as well as placing objects amongst the ground creates a steppingstone path for the player to follow.
AFFORDANCE
Mechanics of the game give the level some affordances when it comes to design. A ramp is used to jump off, if the game hasn’t had any ramps to jump off, a ramp wouldn’t be used in the intended path of a level. Affordance plays hand in hand with the mechanics of a game, if a player does not have any way to fight enemies, they can be used to push the player towards the right direction whilst collectables will pull the player away from the right path but doing so brings rewards like more in-game money or in some games audio logs or letters that explain extra pieces of the story that the average player does not need to know but gives players with an interest in the world the opportunity to learn more.
There are different ways affordances should be measured. The culture the person comes from and what the game has taught the player factor into what the player can interpretive from the environment. Uncharted has many climbing sections which are shown with horizontal ridges for example. Those horizontal ridges indicate the path the player needs to follow and keeping those separate from the rest of the area around the path is important as the player may see a horizontal ridge similar to the ones they use to climb whilst that ridge is part of the environment not the level. The culture the player comes from brings different affordances. A stop sign red hexagonal stop sign means something different to someone who comes from a culture where stop signs are triangles and yellow for example. [ 3 – NIC Phan, 2016]
Aesthetic considerations – P2
The aesthetics of a game and its levels can create an impact on how levels are designed and as such need to be taken into consideration when designing levels. Some examples of what considerations should be made whilst designing levels would be the environment and setting of the level, where it takes place is going to have an effect on how the world is designed, colour theory is a useful tool when it comes to intuition. The first aspect to consider is the colours used. How does colour inform the design of a level? Yellow paint is used in many games such as Borderlands 3, Dying Light and Uncharted to indicate a spot where the player can climb and usually leads to an offshoot in the level. Colour theory can be used for more than just indicating a climbable object, red commonly indicates health, which isn’t directly correlated with level design but using that, the player can be guided towards a location where they can heal or get health pickups [ 4 – Valve].
How does theme inform level design? The theme of a level is an underlying and unifying idea that makes the design cohesive and is more abstract then a location as it defines the stylistic choice of that location. a 1950’s themed cityscape would have a very different design and visual style then the same city in 2050. A level has a design that was made to suit the narrative, the theme dictates what the level looks like, a steampunk theme does not fit in with a modern murder mystery, the theme of the level and the narratives requirements for the level do not match, which is the whole point of designing a level, creating a space for the player to understand. The lack of cohesion caused from contrasting themes in level design and what the narrative says the level should be causes distress in the players immersion during the level.
How does narrative inform level design? The narrative has a great effect on the level, it is the reason the player is there, the theme is an underlying idea that creates a cohesive level but the narrative is the content and context of that environment. In some context of the game, the world might be a singular aspect where the narrative takes place a main example of this being an open world game set in a city, the city is the location of the narrative, the narrative effects level design when the location takes place in the narrative, when a narrative takes a player to a location, that location is designed to match what the narrative needs it to be.
Gameplay & level design
The relationship between level design and gameplay – M1
Gameplay refers to the mechanics and rules of a game. Level design the world and environment that the game takes place in and challenges the players capabilities. [5] The relationship between the two varies from genre to genre, many games have a difference of gameplay and so the level design and environment that act as the canvas and challenge need to reflect the changes. Taking a game and assessing the level and gameplay and then comparing that to a different genre will provide criteria to effectively evaluate the relationship between level and game design.
The first game that I will be looking at is Risk of Rain 2, a 2013 Roguelite. The level and character of RoR2 as the design of the level changes from each level and the gameplay changes from character to character as each has their own set of attacks and abilities but each level needs to facilitate the same mechanics that the player uses no matter the character. Starting with the gameplay loop, the player starts the level and must kill enemies to earn gold which can be used to buy items. These items bring changes to the player stats or give the player a different way to deal damage, a soldiers syringe increases the attack speed of the player, an ATG missile gives the player a chance to launch a missile when they hit a enemy. The items the player picks up will synergise with different characters and their abilities. The level design needs to facilitate this gameplay. How can the level do this? There’s a few ways that the game does this, the level is designed both for a combat arena and exploration. Various rocks ramps and environmental pieces give the player cover to use or height to take advantage of but it also hides sections of the level away, enemies can spawn out of the way and pounce without you knowing, it can hide the various interactables of the game that the player needs.
The second game I will be looking at to compare to RoR2 is Bloons Tower Defence 6. BTD6 is a Tower Defence game, prepare yourself by placing various monkeys that each have their own upgrade branches with their own strengths and weaknesses, after working on your defence your towers face against a wave of bloons and if you win the round by defeating all the bloons without reaching zero hearts, you can work on your defence before facing the next wave which brings more challenge, more bloons, stronger bloons or bloons with special properties like immunity to magic. The gameplay is matched by the difficulty of the map. Easier maps have the bloons come from one location and leave out of another, all along the same path which loops around itself or takes a while for the bloons to travel across. As the difficulty of the maps increase, the bloons come from more lanes, taking advantage of the limited range of most towers, the line of sight of towers is blocked by geometry and some maps introduce a unique mechanic, Geared has you place towers on a large platform that rotates on each round, making some towers you place useless for a few rounds of the game.
The levels in Bloons helps facilitate gameplay through an understanding of the advantages of a tower, a large map with little coverage for towers to shoot, a sniper with full line of sight will be useful, a map that loops around itself, a tack shooter which can shoot in multiple directions at once will perform great. Taking advantage of what the level presents with a towers strengths and weaknesses account for creates an interesting challenge. There’s over 60 maps in the game and over 20 towers in the game which presents a large array of ways a can play. The criteria to creating a challenging map for bloons that facilitates informed gameplay of towers strengths and weaknesses would be multiple paths and exits, environmental blocks / line of sight and taking advantage of a towers weakness to influence creative thought.
I would say the criteria needed to create an engaging level for RoR2 you would need to create a variety of choke points and open areas where the enemies can swarm around the player or overwhelm with numbers from the same direction. Using large pieces in the environment which blocks the visibility of chests, items and enemies increases the players need for movement and drives them to explore around corners that may hide loot, death or nothing. The criteria I have listed for the two games outline that for a roguelite and a tower defence you would need to create levels with different ideology. This does not prove all genres to be this way. For example there would likely to be crossover in level design from CS:GO to a dungeon in Skyrim. Even the examples I have given both have criteria relating to blocking visibility, taking two different forms of the different points of view of the player but both use the line of sight to influence the players decision which shows how that the relationship between gameplay, genre and level design are all related.
Game genres and their level design requirements – D1
The requirements for a games level will change with the genre of the game. The content of the game brings various criteria for the level to facilitate the gameplay adequately. Looking to examples, Risk of Rain is a 2013 2D Roguelite, the gameplay revolves around starting a stage, killing various enemies with your abilities to earn gold which you can buy items with before finding a teleporter, fighting a wave of enemies and a large boss before moving onto the next stage. The level design needs to reflect this gameplay loop, commonly in roguelites, procedural generation is used to create the diversity between runs however RoR (Risk of Rain) moved away from this common denominator and moved towards platforming and exploration. This tied within story, another factor that level design needs to account for, the player is a survivor of a ship crash on an alien planet, having the player go through the same location plays into the narrative loop of the game. Rather then creating unfamiliarity with the world, staying away from procedural generation allows for a deeper and designed level which facilitates the platforming of the game by having the player learn as they play and come to understand the world to a greater extent.
In this image of the first level, several ropes and jump points are in the same location each time the player encounters this version of the level, this allows the player to become familiar with the world, just as the survivors of the ship would as time went on. This familiarity also heightens the player skills, the platforming in the game can be difficult at time, timing movement at the right time to reach a platform or attach onto a rope is difficult at first but as the player plays more, instead of struggling to climb on a rope, you can time the boost from a jump pad to match the apex with a higher point of the rope, which is slow to climb up, saving time, which adds up over time as the difficulty is constantly rising with it. Moving away from procedural generation and designing the levels of the game allows for this closer relationship with gameplay.
What about other genres? There are many genres and whilst RoR is a classic Roguelite, the requirements needed for cohesion between level and genre would change if I where to compare it to the Shlooter Borderlands 3, the requirements would change to match the genre and its gameplay. Borderlands 3 is a high octane action game, the games levels are split into defined sections, there’s spaces for narrative to unwind, large areas with complex geometry to facilitate the gunplay and combat and sections for the large and impressive boss fights of the game. To highlight these three sections, I will look at one map which contains all of these sections of the level.
Each section of the map is split into one of three coloured sections, red is a boss arena, yellow is general combat areas and green are the sections for the narrative. With the gameplay being focused its well designed gunplay, a large amount of the area of a map is dedicated to providing the player with a play area to take advantage of the mechanics. Boss fights being the most designed enemies that the player fights, the arenas are open to give the boss the advantage over the player, Borderlands 3 isn’t a cover shooter but having limited space in the arena to hide from attacks makes the player take advantage of the movement system and the little amount of geometry in the arena. The narrative of Borderlands 3 is a long and winding one and is told over many conversations which start in the green sections of the level, designing the narrative to be delivered outside of combat frees up player choice, they can listen to the conversation and consume the story content with the undivided attention or continue onto the next yellow combat section and continue the gameplay, facilitating player choice into the design of the level.
Bibliography
[1] – Book.leveldesignbook.com. 2022. Lighting – The Level Design Book. [online] Available at: <https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/blockout/lighting> [Accessed 2 October 2022].
[2] – Gunson, L., 2022. Composition techniques and player direction. [online] SHAPE OF PLAY. Available at: <https://shapeofplay.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/composition-level-design/> [Accessed 2 October 2022].
[3] – Nicphan.com. 2022. Affordances in Game Level Design. [online] Available at: <https://www.nicphan.com/post/affordances-in-game-level-design#:~:text=In%20Game%20Design%2C%20affordances%20are,something%20on%20the%20other%20side.> [Accessed 2 October 2022].
[4] – Developer.valvesoftware.com. 2022. Color Theory in Level Design – Valve Developer Community. [online] Available at: <https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Color_Theory_in_Level_Design#:~:text=The%20primary%20colors%20(Yellow%2C%20Blue,provide%20the%20shades%20of%20colors.> [Accessed 3 October 2022].
[5] – Game level design: How to do it and with what tools (2022) Starloop Studios. Available at: https://starloopstudios.com/game-level-design-how-to-do-it-and-with-what-tools/#:~:text=Game%20design%20refers%20to%20the,player%20capabilities%20to%20accomplish%20missions. (Accessed: December 18, 2022).
Designing the games level
Brief requirements – P3
At the start of the assignment, I was given a brief that I need to work around and as such defining requirements by analysing that brief is important to understanding needs for my game level. The main point made by the brief is about theme. The theme of the game must be around the climate crisis, no genre is defined so I am free to work on whatever the ideation process creates. The brief also outlines that the game produced must be worked on in a team. No requirements for the design of the level are outlined, but the I must produce a level for the game decided by the team that I work with as well as providing associated evidence that I did make the level. Summarising the brief, I need to make a level for a game decided by my team and I about the climate crisis. A considerable aspect of the brief is the Green Game Jam. A Game Jam is an event based around creating a game in a set amount of time and to a set theme, the green game jam follows this and brings a theme around being “green” or a theme that focuses on the environment in some form. The theme based around environmentalism for the project that I am working on is outlined inside of the brief, climate crisis. This theme presents many possibilities, which is commonly seen in game jams as an open ended theme allows for a wider range of games to flourish through the creative ideation process. Because of the wide range of possibilities that are presented when given an open-ended theme, the team I am working with should present a range of ideas and see what aspects of the climate crisis we can present through the game that we choose develop. Whilst the Climate Crisis theme of the game presents a wide range of possibilities, the brief does not outline what genre the team needs to create a game for which leaves each genre a possibility for the game we end of working on.
How do these requirements outlined by the brief impact the work I do on environmental and level design? The design of the in-game world is heavily determined by the theme that is set for that world, with the theme being an aspect of the climate crisis, there are many ways that the choices that are made for the theme can impact the visual aspects of the game that is created. The level design for a game is dependent on the genre of that game, the design of an FPS game like Team Fortress 2 differs greatly from the layouts in an open world game like Dying Light. The various aspects of level design are set by the genre of a game, the analysis of the brief does not present a set genre for the game that I will be working on and so the level design of that game has not been decided, however, the level that is created must reflect the climate crisis in some form though the environmental design of the game.
Iterative testing and design of level design – P4
There are some features that are not explicitly level design I have done in the past such as adding collectibles or cut scenes. There are considerations that I need to make in order to effectively demonstrate skill in using those ludo-narrative mechanics, by this I mean mechanics of a game that are used to infer a narrative to the player that would not be used in other tellings of narratives such as film and books such as collectibles and cut scenes. There is one major issue with this, I do not currently know what these affordances are. Starting with cut scenes, how should I use cut scenes? Are there any times where it is best to use cut scenes? What ‘changes’ do I need to make to my level to put in a cut scene? The same questions also apply to the collectibles in a level. Both of these are tools and so I should understand them to effectively use them in my level, the content of them is important to the narrative.
Through a few discussions about the game we as a team are making, we have decided what the main idea of each of our levels are, mine is at the end of the bunch. The player starts near the top of a sky scraper and needs to solve puzzles to avoid the sun and reach the top where the game will end.
Video call focused on presenting designs for our individual level
The purpose of this video call with the team was to present our level ideas to each other so that we all have an understanding of what each of us are doing. All of us ended up presenting a different format of design. These are a picture of the designs I presented, what I presented was a collection of drawings about the visual design of my level rather then a layout of the playable area.
Alongside these designs for my level, I created a small mood board for the atmosphere of my level. I used these images for my own ideation but providing the team with a copy of the file grants them insight into my own vision of design in a more interesting manor then my drew designs. A large part of the atmosphere of my level is the thick smog, coloured a deep orange to represent the everlasting heatwave that forms the game. In game it will be used to block the players sight of the streets below, in order to save on processing power, an important aspect when it comes to accessible design. In my mind, it originates from extreme levels of pollution that have stuck to the city after years of wasteful consumption and is another aspect of the climate crisis topic as a whole.
After presenting our ideas, I will need to change the format for my idea, the level before mine is the lower floors of the same skyscraper and that is designed with a trio of main buildings that you need to explore. The major change i need to make to my designs is to incorporate the trio of buildings of the lower levels.
This is the second iteration of my level design. The major change is the 3 buildings, following along with the design of a team member. The design for the buildings seen on the right comes from an image I found online whilst looking for a trio of skyscrapers.
This image is reminiscent of Amy’s level and with that level being directly related to my own, they take place inside of the same building, it is important for me to have the architecture and structure of the buildings match the planning of her own.
Amy’s initial level design of the level before my own.
The level that takes directly before mine is in the same building and as such following the same layout of that building is a crucial part of the level design for the sake of the players immersion, a factor that good level design should take into account through the form of consistency, affordance and aesthetic considerations.
Along side designing an iteration of my level, I have thought about the puzzles the player will have to solve in my level. I decided to have 3 puzzles each one being tied to a building, one will have a player searching for a key, the next push or moving an object and the last being a lever match puzzle.
The key puzzle is the puzzle for the first building. The player steps out of the elevator and must find a key to unlock a door to a sky-bridge connecting two towers. After finding the key and reaching the second building the player must move an I beam in order to create a improvised bridge to make it across too the last building. The third building takes place on a roof in direct sun light, the main hazard that the player needs to work around. To get past the roof and finish the level the player must use the correct format of levers and buttons in order to have some form of moving barrier, possibly a solar panel array, in order to create a traversable path to the end.
The next iteration of my level design will be done after I have done some more research into the narrative of the game. When I work on this iteration I am going to create more of a level layout, whilst up to now I have done some work on the visuals and structure, I will need a layout of the level in order to have something to build off of, as well as that the quicker I produce a layout of the level, the more time I have to refine the design and create a better playing level.
The version of my level that I will be working from for production follows the same approximate design of my previous layout but is more detailed and thought out. Each building still has its corresponding puzzle, finding a key card for the first, pushing pulling and platforming for the second and a rotation / button puzzle for the third.
The first and second stages need a more detailed design then the third as the third stage consists of a control panel, solar panels and a helicopter landing pad. The major design decisions with the third is the layout of the solar panels and putting them in a way in which they can be used for the puzzle.
Researching the main mechanic
Before starting production, the team has spoken about what scripts will be needed for the game and we have decided who will be responsible for what scripts. Other members have taken on a group such as AI or UI and will be working on scripts related to that area but I will be working on the main mechanic for the game which I have called the sun sizzle, based off of the game which my research comes from. Grounded is a 2022 survival RPG created by Obsidian Entertainment, in this game the player has been shrunk and must explore a back garden to find a solution. During this time they will find a sandbox and when in the sun inside of the sandbox their temperature will rise, indicated by a a pop up UI bar labelled sizzle. The details of the mechanic will influence the design of the system.
When the player is in the sun, the temperature bar rises steadily over time, when this bar is full the player starts taking health damage. Stepping into the shade will stop the player taking health damage if the bar is full and will also start lowering the bar. Creating a script which can do this will be complicated, which is good as the main mechanic of the game is something that should be complex as it will be thought about by the player but has some downsides as it will take a good amount of time for me to create this.
Production of the level
Sun Sizzle script
Temperature is the main mechanic of the game and having that system work is imperative to the design of the level. Out of the team, I am working on this script as my personal interest is designing game play and mechanics and whilst that does not include solely programming, working on this script will allow me to design how the mechanic works. The first thing that I need is to detect when the player is lit.
This section of the script is the most complicated script wise to create. The first part is a render texture. This is a material that can be used to “stream” a camera to a material. Using this and two cameras focused on the players front and back allows for me to the for loop section of the code near the bottom. This loop compares RGB values that are streamed to the render texture to detect when the player is brighter then usual. This is returned as a 7 digit number which I can then compare to a public int which can be changed called SunThreshold. When this SunThreshold is met, the temperature section of the mechanic come into play.
The temperature is more testing theory then the light check section of the script. This section needs a temperature scale which rises over x seconds when the player is lit. When the player steps out of the sun and isn’t lit, their temperature falls. When the temperature is full, the player takes health damage steadily during the time the temperature is full and in the sun. There where many difficulties with this section and there still are issues as the script isn’t finished.
The major issue I have had with this is raising the timer up, after the script is done, it will be attached to two GUI, a temperature bar and health bar. Because of this, the temperature raising needs to be a float and be able to raise by decimals so that the GUI raises steadily rather then jumping up every second. The first attempt at the temperature scale is below. This attempt had a large amount of variables, too many variables. Temperature, temperature rising, temperature delta and temperature rising. All these variables made a temperature system that didn’t work. This first attempt ended up with quite the strange bug, the temperature script worked so awfully that the players temperature measured as infinity. After being in the sun, after 3 seconds the temperature scaling was far out of control. The reason I think why this is happening is the void that the script is in and that the time used is deltaTime which is a time scale that measures the time between frames. Both the void update and delta time are factored by frame rate and the temperature rising variable not accounting for the frame rate ended up with the temperature skyrocketing way past what it should be.
Since this version of the script I have had several attempts of solving this puzzle, using a fixed update void, a void that updates at a set 50 times per second, my reasoning behind this was factoring the set frame rate into the rate the temperature rising so that for 50 times per second the temperature would rise by 0.02, equaling 1 second over the 50 frames.
The next version of the script was the first one to mostly work, I had a timer that went up a second per second which gave a proper temperature reading that isn’t infinity, which is already an indicator that it’s working better with each iteration
This version of the code is much simpler then what I had previously, this version only uses two variables for the measurements instead of 5 which let the game perform a fair amount better, but not storing infinity as a number probably had some influence on that as well. I was content with ending the day with this code, working partly as I intend the finished script to be. There were issues with this code so I still have work to do on it. The temperature scale went up when in the sun but kept counting past 10. Time.time works off of the total current tun time of the game and the temperature rising was 0.02f at this point so that when it was factored against running every frame and being multiplied by the current run time it resulted in a number that usually ended up at around 1, the math wasn’t accurate because of milliseconds being counted in Time.time. Doing this allowed for the temperature to rise but as the game went on and the run time increased, the first ten seconds of the game resulted in 10 seconds of being lit but after 30 seconds, the temperature was around 30 where the maximum intended for this testing was 10.
Moving on from this version of the script, I have moved on from the previous format of the temperature timer. I no longer use Time. I am instead using TimeSpan. TimeSpan allows for me to measure the amount of time from when I start counting to when I stop counting, perfectly fitting in with the inSun variable for light detection. Using this I have also been able to accurately manage the time and so, I am able to start the sun burn damage when the sun sizzle timer has reached its maximum. In this version there is also a health system, it would not stand up against any other forms of damage if there where any in the game as it a simple system that could still do with refining.
Since this point, I have successfully put the mechanic into the levels of my team mates, further work will be needed to be done on the script so some maintenance on my part to make sure that the team has the correct version will be needed. The mechanic is finicky in how it works so each time I put the script into the level or the main light of the level is changed, the script will need some changes to match the new environment. Content changes to the script include a UI element for the timer, ability for sounds and using the current scene manger in Unity as I currently use the old version of the manager.
Whiteboxing – P4
Whiteboxing is the first stage of producing the game, taking the level designs I have made during pre-production and using simple shapes to represent that in-engine. Whiteboxing has many uses, for later in production replacing blocks with production or final assets or for setting the scale of the level. Overall it is a tedious process which as a few ways to go through it. Taking an existing level design and using the image as a texture in unity and building off of that floor is one way which I have done in the past, I found this way limited creative decisions,large changes in the design of the level should not be happening
Utilising Assets – P5 P6
Identifying assets
After whiteboxing, the next stage of level design is importing assets to give the level a layer of visual fidelity. Identifying what assets I will use is a crucial step in this. Other members of the team have gone for a realistic look so the assets I find will need to be at a similar tier of graphical fidelity. Over my time I know many different sites where I can obtain the assets for the level, a major one would be the Unity asset store. Using the Unity store I can browse a wide selection of assets which I could use in my game. But there are still other sites that I can use, Mixamo is a website owned by Adobe where I can get dozens of rigged character models and have access to a wide library of animations that work with all of the character models all of which I can put directly into my game. One site that I have used many times in the past is SketchFab, this is a site of solely 3D models many of which are up for purchase or can be downloaded for free. A wider selection of free models is a crucial resource when it comes to creating a more realistic game like our team has decided upon. After looking through these sites I have a list of all the assets I may or may not use but all match the visuals of the game.
Jordi Krut – 3D modelling – Modular office interior – Creative Commons Attribution
“Modular office Interior assets (Post Apoc)” (https://skfb.ly/6STzy) by Jordi Kruk is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Thesighet – 3D modelling – Office box and lamp – Creative Commons Attribution
Terrasquall – 3D modelling – Sci-Fi office pack – Standard Unity Asset Store EULA https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/sci-fi/free-sci-fi-office-pack-195067#description
Ethan Taylor – Textures – Cyberpunk material pack – Standard Unity Asset Store EULA https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/cyberpunk-material-pack-six-high-quality-materials-188067
FrOzBi – Textures – wood pattern materials – Standard Unity Asset Store EULA https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/wood/wood-pattern-material-170794
Unity Technologies – Programming – Third person character controller – Non Standard EULA https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/starter-assets-third-person-character-controller-196526
Nathanael Gazzard – 3D modelling – Rubble Pieces Package – Standard Unity Asset Store EULA https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/rubble-pieces-detailed-package-74004
“Green Keycard” (https://skfb.ly/F7UT) by sookendestroy1 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
“G U N Key Card” (https://skfb.ly/6UTzN) by sebyseb is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
“Papers” (https://skfb.ly/6Zo9M) by Cassy is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
“Helicopter” (https://skfb.ly/6yUvF) by irs1182 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
“Solar Panel” (https://skfb.ly/ooyOn) by Harri Snellman is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Comparing the whitebox to applied assets – M3
The full extent of the difference between the whitebox and with version with applied assets can be seen by comparing two versions of the game. After working on the whitebox, I created an export of it, the reason for doing this was for comparison. Comparing the few images I took during whiteboxing to images from the same angle in the most up to date version of the game only shows the world from that perspective. Being able to compare both by exporting the game at different points of development.
I have applied the various assets that I have downloaded to the game as well as worked with the lighting, which was a tricky situation with the main mechanic being based around it, and applying various materials to the world. I have done all of this following a project schedule which I made and kept track of with an industry standard tool and techniques. What impact does this work have on the game? There are many ways that the work on lighting and assets have had on the game. First of, user experience, the visual fidelity of the game brings the history of the location and world to light. The destroyed roofs and decaying worlds shows the player the decrepit age and abandonment caused by the climate crisis. Immersing the player into the game world is achieved to a greater extent when aesthetic quality of the game is increased. The usage of assets and lighting on the aesthetic quality is one of the impacts of adding them into the game. A previous version of the game can be played here and the most up to date version can be played on the game page but I will be comparing screenshots and looking at old videos I took during development here.
When it comes to videos that show the development, there isn’t much of the game environment shown as each of them are clips of me testing the sun sizzle mechanic and only one of the videos is of a whitebox version of the level, the other two are partway through development where I have implemented some assets and altered the lighting of the game, knowing that these are from a different stage of development, it still shows the development of the implementation of assets into the game.
Production Feedback – D2
Getting some feedback before the game has released and whilst there is still time to make changes gives me a chance to see what an audience thinks of the game and what improvements I could make now to make the experience of playing better.
Re-working the third puzzle
A while back, during development of the sun sizzle mechanic, I realised that the original plan for the third puzzle. What I intended to do was rotate a solar panel and the shadow so that the player can create a shadowed path through them. To do this in game I would need to rotate the sun, for the sake of gameplay and immersion, I can’t rotate the Sun. In light of this issue, I will need to create a new puzzle, the option to not have any puzzle their does exist but this is the last step of the teams game and having the player walk to a helicopter massively reduces the satisfaction of reaching the end and so I will need a challenge of some sort here. I have a key search puzzle, a push / pull and platforming puzzle so I could either combine both or avoid using them, I’d personally avoid repeating puzzles but if the time comes that I have not developed what I choose to do, I will have the scripts from the last puzzles to repeat them.
I could bring the cultists into the level, the player gets over to the last building by knocking a steel I beam over, that would make enough noise to warrant enemies to reach the treacherous tops. Cultists wouldn’t belong here, to late in the level to re-introduce them, overall the level is a good size but individual buildings aren’t big enough to give the cultists a balanced experience for the player. The level ends the level leaving on a helicopter, a group of people would hear a helicopter taking off, and be especially suspicious since a helicopter isn’t supposed to be there.
Pass code puzzles require the player to find a set of numbers or word to get through, this would be similar to the first stage but give the player enough options and I would say that repeating is a passable offense. A chain link fence with a gate blocks the path to the helicopter, the gate has a key pad as well as a keycard swiper. above the keypad there is a note which has a equation or riddle which when solved gives the key code. A keycard can be found in the first stage of the level in someone office and swiped. Several boxes are also on this building and so, the player can build a staircase to climb over. I didn’t want to repeat mechanics until it was a last resort but I think that doing it this way is going to leave the game off with player decision. I’m more lenient with this because it does involve a new mechanic, which also includes creating a new script.
Evaluating the final product – LO4
Different forms of testing – P7
To analyse the game, I will be looking at three forms of testing. The first is 360 degree feedback, this form of testing is a process that our team will do which involves feedback directly to and from my peers and an overview of our teams development as well as assessing myself and what I think of the work I have done myslef and what I brought to the team. The next form of feedback is audience testing. The quality of this feedback is dependent on the tester, the store page for my game asks anyone who plays the game to fill in a questionnaire about their experience, it is not required and so it is likely that many who play won’t have much interest in filling the form out and then the people who do fill out the form may not give an in depth response like what I would get form a teammate. The responses from this form of testing will be seen when I undertake it. The final form of feedback is one on one testing, I will reach out to someone about testing for my game, it is important that this person is willing to provide ample feedback and not be a member of the team, to prevent any possible bias. The benefits of this form of testing is unbiased point of view, as this person would have no relation to the game, and that I will be asking direct questions about their experience, something that I cannot do through my questionnaire.
Analysing feedback – P8
After releasing my level of our teams, Heatwave, and gathering feedback through a questionnaire I am going to review the feedback given to me about my level which I will use to inform future development by reinforcing the areas that I can identify as weaknesses. The questions that I have asked players to fill out are for a variety of criteria that I want to review myself against and as such, there are questions related the level and environment of the game. Question 5, “What are your thoughts about finding the keys in the first section?”, question 6 “Do you like the visual and environmental design of the game?”, 7 “What are your thoughts about the structure of the level?” and then question 12 where I ask people to leave any additional feedback they may have. Each of these questions are related to level design and as such those responses to the questions is the feedback that I will be assessing.
Starting with the players thoughts about the first section of the level. In this part of the game, the player starts inside of an elevator and needs to unlock a door that will allow them to progress to the second section. To unlock the door the player needs to find a series of key cards, each one unlocking a different room in the level to find the correct key. Some of the verbal feedback that I received for this section was that it was linear and hand-holding. The player wasn’t required to find out what keys opened what doors as the doors are automatically opened, the reason behind this was that I was not sure how to make the player interact with the door and correct key in order to open the door. This feedback is also seen through the questionnaire, the key cards are all placed on desks and highlighted with a light and particles, making it easy to find out what the player needs to grab to proceed. I did not intend for the puzzle to be so easy, each player pointed out how the progression is laid out and it is an easy path to follow, I wanted to present the player with a challenge of reading what the key cards are for, they are all labeled in the inventory, and using deduction and reason to find the next room. My lack of understanding limited me to opening doors automatically limited the possibilities of me creating what I intended. Although I didn’t create what I intended too, I would not say that the end result is wrong. All of the players may not be satisfied with the lack of complexity but the simplicity does not overstay its welcome in the game.
Moving forward to question 7, I asked players to rate their opinion on the design in question 6 but question 7 was based around expanding their opinion and describe what they liked about the structure of the level. Guidance is a point raised in the responses to this question, “more subtle guidance”, In the first part of the level the player is clearly shown how to progress but in the second section, the only indicator about progression is a note that can be found when first entering the section. This note highlights how the player will progress but doesn’t show them what they need to do, this part of the level is entirely reliant on the players deduction of the environment. There is a path to follow in this section but it is made out of pieces of the environment, blending in with the surroundings which could leave the player confused on what they are meant to do. “having to jump on shelves and on the roof could have been made clearer”. Consistent design is important in clarity, one section shows that player the path whilst the other leaves to little guidance. The conclusion of this question is that for future development and an area I can improve my level design is with balance, I intended for both sections to be reasonable in terms of guidance and difficulty but I ended up with one overly guided and the other under-guided which lead to confusion for the player, though this is the case, the responses still seem to show that the players enjoyed solving it themselves and the excitement of understanding what they need to do. This leaves me with another take-away for the future, not everything needs to guided, there is more positives about the second section then the first, the challenge and reward of players moving forward themselves brings more enjoyment that if I where to guide the player as much as I did in the first section.
Justifying forms of testing – M4
Results of playtesting, areas of improvement – D2
Evaluating my work – D3
Jacob's game journal 