Sprint 6 - Blog - November 18th, 2021

For these last two weeks, I finished the last of the annotated maps and built those levels in unity, as the team is reaching the end of our development. Now is the time to polish and not try to implement any more features as time is coming to a close. I am currently instructed to go back through the levels to fix any issues and to also update them with additional models that have come out from the artist team. Currently, paintings, bones, cobwebs, and new candles / luminescent mushrooms have been introduced and can be used to help populate empty spaces.

One of the issues that I have noticed is that levels that were created back in sprint 2 are somewhat messed up or I should say completely unplayable, BUT I have been using this time to go back and fix those issues (as pictured above). The reason for the issues is the prefabs had been updated or removed and the extent of the damage was more than thought to be so. Though it is nothing to worry about as those levels are being fixed and can be reintroduced into the game so we can have that extensive world generation that the team wanted from the beginning. Another issue was a miscommunication between me and one of the 3D artists about the backdrop of the levels. I had originally thought he was referring to the skybox but was actually talking about the actual background to the level. There was material that needed to be put together on my side which I had originally thought would have been put together through someone else's branch that was being pushed into the main branch for the development builds.

Planning for the future the process of going through all the levels that have been created should not take too much time besides the levels that need to be fixed as previously shown the amount of damage that was done compared to what they should look like. A lot of the time will be spent playing with the placement of objects that are just for aesthetics for the level and provide little to no actual use for the player. The little being the light that the torches and mushrooms give off, but the levels are decently lit with directional lights with a low intensity to still give a darker feeling. Moving forward from that should prove to be effort well put for how levels will play for the player and world generation being able to have more levels to draw from to create an experience for the player each and every single time that they either start from or respawn from. No game should be played the same.

Sprint 5 - Blog - November 4th, 2021

Beginning this sprint, I was assigned annotated maps to design for the leads to approve for the game's levels. Before starting on those annotated maps, I finished 12 levels with lights, enemies, platforms, and breakable items that potentially give you health, mana, or absolutely nothing. I got those levels finished before the end of the day while also taking advice from Beren, one of our 3D artists, on lighting for the maps. I started messing with directional lights which I ended up switching away from to work on the torch prefab itself. The torch prefab had zero lighting set on it so I went ahead and added a point light to the prefab which is gonna work well as the base prefab will update all the prefab torches in all the current levels. I added a point light exactly on the base of the flame on the torch light to make it as authentic as possible while adjusting the light intensity. Moving forward with the torch prefab light I ended up finding that upon placing multiple torches in the unity scene that only some of the torches were rendering their light. After a quick google search I found that most people set the light's rendering from auto to important which you would think would fix it but people still claimed to have issues. As of the moment I believe it has to do with my personal unity editor settings after finding to have the same issue that other people were having. Pictured below you will see the same level but one running with the level's lighting and the other running the editors default lighting. The image on the left shows the effect of the torch on the environment.

For the annotated maps I kept up with making designs that revolve around more open spaces and not just a straight path to the next door. Even if it's a dead end there is room to explore and keep the player moving through different paths.

Based on feedback unity block height of 3 is a struggle for players to jump to. Additional 1 unity block width is pretty much impossible for the player to jump through. So on this feedback part of my next goal is to go back and quickly expand those sections on previous levels and moving forward continue to keep that in mind as further levels are being developed. Speaking of which the next levels to be designed are entrance 4 maps. Which are levels designed to have 4 doors to them to expand the current possibilities of the level generation. Currently, there are 1, 2, and 3 entrance maps designed and should be in the next coming build.

Which brings me to the next exciting addition of the boss entrance rooms. They are very distinct from other rooms. These maps will have a single door in them representing the entrance to the boss room. Currently there are 12 variations designed and planned and awaiting approval to be built in unity. All 12 variations are 1 entrance rooms, this is just to keep it simple and easy.

Sprint 4 - Blog - October 21st, 2021

For the past two weeks, I have spent a lot of time on Photoshop designing annotated maps for our designer and producer to approve for levels to be created in the Unity project. Below are all the annotated levels made in Photoshop. These levels were important as they would expand the current level generation. Unfortunately due to time and constant changes to new demands only some of the levels made it into the current build to be tested. As of this moment, I was assigned 10 cards for this sprint totaling 10 points. Only two cards remain to be completed with 5 cards awaiting to be verified by both the designer and producer.

Below are the finished levels. One thing you may notice is that some of them do not contain the same grey blocks as they should. This is due to an issue with the material not having the color applied to it which was easily fixed and since it is part of a prefab it fixed all the levels that were created before the fix. As you look at the different images notice where the entrances and exits are placed as these were the ones prioritized to be put into the build to further test the ability to randomly generate an entire world with these levels. Additionally more enemies have been introduced for the players to come across and combat. One of the new ones is called Skeleton Lancer that chargers its attacks and then runs at the player. Currently, it is just a block, but once the model is created it will be added to the prefab which will update the model across all the levels that it has been placed in already.

Sprint 3 - Blog - October 7th, 2021

For this sprint I was assigned 9 cards with each one being worth 1 point. I ended the sprint with 11 cards being assigned to me with 2 cards being carried onto the next sprint. Both level designers were tasked with getting all the cards completed before the end of the first half of the second week. We completed all the cards with the work being successfully implemented into the build for further testing of the levels and the new prefabs that were introduced. Pots and chests were introduced to give the player a chance of getting health, mana, or nothing. Torches were also introduced for aesthetics, while enemies were also introduced to test their pathfinding and the player's ability to combat them.

Pictured above and below are some of the levels that were introduced with new prefabs such as the pots, enemies (Orcs, Goblins, Skeletons (Model coming soon)), chests, spikes, and torches. Now this was not easy as there was a mistake made with making the levels. The prefab blocks were updated with the textures and any block that was scaled, was moved out of place or stated as 'missing', which forced us the level designers and the designer to go back and rebuild a lot of the levels. Thankfully the process was not too long to go back and fix and placing the prefabs was simple and easy.

What I have learned from this sprint is that scaling has its place, but not in the instance of how we as a team need it. Scaling a variant of a prefab and then coming back to that prefab with changes such as textures seems to want to cause the designer more trouble rather than helpfulness. Which will cause more work to be redone, unfortunately.

Sprint 2 - Blog - September 23rd, 2021

In this sprint, I was assigned various templates to fill out with level designs. The way the templates will work is that the game will generate a world from the available level designs based on the entrance and exit positions. On the images below you can see along the darker gray square that there are sections cut out to allow the player to enter and exit them to other levels. The goal is to have over 100 designs so that the player will explore a new world each time they come back from death.

How I've gone about designing these levels is creating multiple paths to give the player areas to explore even if they do not lead anywhere but a dead end. In most cases the player will find some sort of treasure or boost. This is also to make it so that the levels are not so linear guiding the player in a "straight line". Of course there is some linear designs as sometimes that is the only path to take sometimes.

Currently, I am working on more templates to add additional levels to the pool of levels. After completing those I am going back to the levels I created previously to add the assets that have been created by the model design team and fix any structure to the levels that have been altered due to changes of the prefabs. Everything has been done through prefabs so as the rest of the team turns out more assets or updates, they can easily apply across all the templates.

Sprint 1 - Blog - September 9th, 2021

Starting off our sprint as a level designer I was told to go play video games. This was to get ideas of level design for Rouge like design for our game dubbed Citadel. I was advised by my lead designer to play 8 hours of Dead Cells. Did not know how much I would enjoy the game.

As I played the game I took screenshots to look back on for inspiration for the levels of Citadel. Something I was discovering was that each time you died and came back you would see a new level with different platforms and just overall look, which just helped to keep the game interesting. Because I would not want to play the game if I kept dying and kept seeing the same stuff over and over. Having the terrain change helps to keep the players' attention and want to play more. What the goal is to do is have multiple 31x31 levels to connect to each other to create the world. Having many levels will make it so each life of the player's character will experience a new world. The programmers have created a script to randomly join prefabs of levels together based on the doors that are positioned. So a door that is located on the bottom left of the level will connect to another one with a bottom right door.

Pictured above is the first annotated images of the starting room for the game. I went with something open and spacious as to let the player jump around and get a feel before diving into the world. Something I noticed about Dead Cells was that the starting room was always the same more or less. I am trying to keep it somewhat the same in design but altered as keep from the player from looking at the same room over and over. Because I expect the player to be dying and spawning back in one of these rooms. These starting rooms also have different exit doors to have different rooms to connect to them which when you think about it you have a set of rooms that will connect to either set of starting rooms which will mean the player will have a lot of variety as first it will select from either a middle left door room or a bottom left room and then select a room from those type of rooms with a door in that position.