The project I wanted to be based on nature and have a more green and earthy feel with forests and caves. I also wanted to give the player an adequate challenge but also make sure that our levels were fun and meshed well with each other’s.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

·   Level flowed smoothly

o   From iteration, my task was to make a level that was fun to play. I learned early on that my strengths in game development were not level design. I struggled to develop the concept of my stage early on, as I could not envision it. I misinterpreted the assignment on getting concept images to base my level on and struggled to find a concept. However, I was determined to use what I had and combine what worked together to produce something good. I had ruins in my level start to give the player platforms to give the player obstacles to get around to start. On my focal point, I made a river, leaned into my programming strengths, and made a script to kill the player when dropped in. Thus, giving the player another obstacle. Lastly, at the end, I used a castle which was part of my level start concept images but since I did them wrong, I had to work around it. The climb to the castle and level end is the last obstacle. Finally, I think that I produced a level that flows smoothly and gives the player an adequate challenge to keep the player entertained.

·   Assets meshed well

o   When making my level I never took into consideration that I would eventually swap out the meshes with actual assets. Which in hindsight, I should’ve seen coming. Consequentially, my level lacked detail in certain aspects and required me to either change or completely revamp the look of the level. My team had settled on a theme which made it a little easier to progress toward the goal. However, my task was to make my level look more realistic which didn’t give me many options when looking at my level before asset integration. I figured I should start somewhere, and I started with my mountains. By using static meshes and combining them to create static meshes the task seems more doable as the level comes more alive by adding the rocks and creating mountains with them. Then paired with the landscape and foliage tool I was able to blend my level smoothly with my teammates' level and the campsite. The toughest task I had was creating my mountain for my castle which required me to not only make the cliff but make it realistic and not just a lump of rock. And I’m satisfied with how it came out, especially the castle and surrounding areas.

·   Testing

o   Throughout the class my teammates and I played each other's levels and were transparent on what was working and what was not. Which helped improve a lot of our design choices and make sure the player was on track to target the path we wanted the player to go on. Early on, when playtesting I would go on the path, I expect the player to go but everyone plays differently. I wanted to make sure the player doesn’t exploit alternate paths in a way that lessens the experience of playing the level so when given feedback, I was able to in most ways limit that and keep the player on the path needed for them to progress.

·   Communication

o   Communication with team members through Discord and online has been smooth (for the members that were here). We were all in different time zones and worked full-time jobs, however, when something needed to be done and whatever issues we had we were able to communicate effectively and essentially follow through. We made sure we were transparent about what we added to the level and never had any issues with our level throughout the month. E.G. No accidental deletion or broken levels. Our gold presentation required little effort as we were able to get together and finish it on time.

·   Level Integration

o   When discussing how we wanted our levels to follow the same theme, I didn’t think it’d be possible as our levels are very different in themes. Mine is a more water level with a muddy grassland, one teammate level being part cave and grassland and the other being located on top of a mountain. But once we settled on an asset pack we were able to merge our levels seamlessly. When creating the static meshes for my mountains, my classmates also repurposed those same assets giving them the same look. I had made a platform going under the castle to a cave that transitions into the next level. And shortly before the next level, there were mountains heading upward that were climbable to essentially transition into the next level in the mountains. These transitions made the levels flow smoothly and made the game feel like one gigantic level instead of three separate ones which I am proud of.

WHAT WENT WRONG

·   Struggle to make the level feel realistic.

o   As spoken about before, when designing my level I struggled to envision how my level would be built as I had chosen various themes which didn’t mesh well. However, I was determined to use at the very least parts of it, so that my efforts didn’t go to waste. That’s why my level start, focal point, and level end feel like different themed areas. Despite my efforts in masking that and succeeding this ended up making it timelier and required more focus than expected to make sure the level looked realistic.

·   Animation

o   When making the logs in my river that the player needed to jump on to cross the river, I saw that they looked a little out of place. I thought about it and concluded that logs don’t just sit unmoved in a river, so I thought to animate the logs as if they were floating. However, when exploring animating the logs I noticed I could only do one at a time, well at least from what I could figure out. So, I wasted A LOT of time sitting and animating each log to make sure they float more realistically.

·   Broken Collisions

o   When I migrated my assets into the team project, a couple of meshes I grouped were now separate, and was hard to locate a few of them. So, to make sure this doesn’t happen again, I combined them all into a static mesh as I have seen done in the lectures. However, after packaging and testing the level, I found that certain meshes I made had no collision and I kept falling through. Therefore, I would have to troubleshoot and end up having to make collisions for each static mesh and make sure they were wrapped appropriately around the object so that it would be realistic.

·   Unclimbable Assets

o   When integrating my assets, especially for my ruins area I would have a hard time with some assets as a lot of their collisions wouldn’t work properly and when the player climbed on top of those objects the payer would just sink in and limit the jumping ability of the player essentially nulling any progress to be made in the level. One thing I was able to do was to combine those assets with other assets that had a proper collision and move them to the top to create a sort of platform the player could stand on. I would also have to use the modeling tool for certain assets so that the player can climb properly and effectively. This problem caused issues for playtesting as my play tester couldn’t progress as I didn’t catch the problem in time thus cutting down on productivity.

·   Block Mesh Blunders

o   As said before, when integrating assets that I grouped they were somehow ungrouped, and my folders were deleted that housed meshes that I wanted to categorize to make sure they were easy to get to. One example of said meshes was my trees as I had combined a cylinder and cone object to make my trees and kept copying and pasting to my surrounding areas. When it came time to replace these assets with real assets I would then have to go and delete each asset with both the logs and trees separately which took a long time to do. Going forward, I would make sure to always combine my meshes into one static mesh to prevent myself from doing double work.

In conclusion, I think we made a well-made level. The only thing I would improve on is adding more features and personally expanding my level. I intended to expand my level this month, but it took a lot of time to iterate real assets and fix the mistakes I made on the making of my level which took a lot of time from that. However, I know for a fact because of this I have grown more as a designer. Playing into my strengths helped me out, but also getting out of my comfort zone and expanding my skills in something I wasn’t confident in as I didn’t initially have the vision for it helped me grow. The more I kept going and iterating more designs the more it opened my creative mind and could envision where I wanted to take this level and do, as opposed to when I first started and had no idea where to start.