470 Sprints 1-3

I became a level designer for a game that my group is making which is Cutthroat Dungeon. The game became a immediate interest for me when I realized that the visual direction of this game is going to be 2-D sprites interacting with a 3-D world environment. The idea of that sounds fun and would make for some interesting level designs that I could make for the game. In total, the amount of tasks that was assigned to me were 12 tasks with one of them still in progress. The task that was assigned was to create a transition for descending levels, but there were still some uncertainties on how we wanted our game to turn out.

(Game: Zombie Estate)

I started to make some simple level designs based off zombie estate with a bit of a mix. In the game zombie estate the player is rushed by waves of zombies that they must survive on. The level was built so the player will have room to dodge zombies and run away from them. There is usually not a ton of obstacles blocking the player's view to their character too. I created my levels similar to that idea but made it a bit more interesting to traverse around.  

Each dungeon represents a different idea for our game. Dungeon one is a mix of an open area and tight spaces the player could walk around in. Dungeon 2 represents just a pure open area that the player could just walk around and not worry about obstacles getting in their way like Zombie Estate. Finally, dungeon 3 involves a bunch of enemies in tight areas where in order to get through the level they must go through the enemies. After the paper prototype the most favorite dungeon seemed to be the first one with dungeon 2 and 3 being tied for second place.

It was then when I decided to implement the paper prototype design into digital form with a few changes. Dungeon 3 and dungeon 1 both had the same similar designs that the players were looking forward to in our game so I decided to set aside the first dungeon for now and create another design that involves players looting for chests. The placement for the kitchen is in the center of the top boxed area where the player could just walk straight in to perform the second biggest mechanic of our game which is cooking. It was decided that it was going to be the player interacting with a object and they would either load into another scene to start cooking or a UI will pop up that the player can interact with.

After our modeler was finished including some basic assets for our game I got to work on implementing this assets for my level. I made sure to make the levels aesthetically pleasing for our play test  where the players won't feel that they are roaming around in some empty, emotionless level. When I showed this to my modeler he said that roaming the levels feels like they are roaming in a zen garden.  We did however had some issues where programming became hard when it comes to player movement so I had to take away the chests the player were suppose to loot from for now. Eventually the play testing for the levels had to be pushed back since we made a ton of changes to our game character setup.

With those changes came the issue of where the player was able to clip through the corner of each wall intersection. Since we were still working out issues with the player movement I decided to help solve this problem by adding another wall to eliminate the sharp corners the player could glitch through. This is a problem that I had on a previous game I worked on and this solution seemed to work out fine for this game as well. 

I have made sure to implement these corner fixes to my level as well on areas that needed them. It seems that placing the rock colliders that were implemented in the game as well as the tress seems to do the trick too. It took quite a bit of time to implement these colliders since the player would sometimes go through them anyways if it was placed incorrectly but it was all worth it since I was seeing the player not being able to glitch out of the level. 

Eventually we made a simple level where the player can roam around and test out the movement controls and fighting mechanics. We made a level where they can chop down trees and find different ways to fight enemies. Even though this was a really simple level to make, this made me realize how I want the players to wander and fight enemies in the level. I decided to do some research on levels of Paper Mario The Thousand Year Old Door and luckily I have found a website that has just what I needed. This website includes all the levels of the game where I am free to no clip through the environment and explore their level designs.

(Palace Gardens)

These two levels is what brought my attention on how they made their designs. For the palace gardens, this level design layout is all centered around the tower in the middle. The camera never shifts to the left,right, or the backside of the tower which leaves only the front view that the player can see. I want to design some of my levels like this where the transition to a dungeon could be a room where the entrance is located in the middle with their introduction to their own theme. For example, before the player enters the dungeon they enter a room where it introduces a preview to the theme of it.  

(Rogueport Main Square)

Rogueport caught my attention of how they got around the issue of what happens if they ran the player to explore what is in the back of the main square. I always had this issue where I wanted the player to be able to explore the back of a wall or building but was unable to think how with the way we built our game for the camera to always lock onto the player. 

Luckily I still had a copy of the game and saw how they were able to get past through this obstacle. It was just a simple trick of making their back walls planes! The camera shifting might be a intimidating task for our programmer, but if we are able to pull it off for our upcoming sprint, then this opens more room for creativity when it comes to level design. 

Sadly for this sprint I was put on hold when it comes to level design because of the character changes that needed to be made and polished but I am looking forward to our upcoming sprint where I plan to make up for the lost time by designing interesting level with this new mindset that I have for our game. It was a bit of a bumpy ride from the start of our sprint 3 to the end of it but everything should be running smooth by the start of our sprint 4. 

I thank you for reading this blog post and in case you were curious about this no clip website I shall provide the link here! Noclip.website