Devlog #4 Level Design

Dev Log

Elunga

Earth will be consumed within five minutes.

A player is within stolen Spaceship near a man-made blackhole, which needs to be stopped. The Corporation are trying to stop the player from going back to the past.

We arrived at an agreement to individuate roles or positions for each team member furthermore such positions included level design, programming, narrative, and environmental design. To ensure individuated roles were non-mutually exclusive and synergetic, we aided each other or oscillated between roles.

Level design being my role, it also encapsulated environment design however at a lesser account. To elaborate upon my modus operandi, as a consequence of being an introduction to our game, from my perspective. Such a level must captures the essence and auspicious nature of our game. In translation, the opening location should Supervene drama as players progress (indications of a black hole may be present to players), moreover the dramaticism decreases during player structured exploration, resulting in the revealing of the “BLACK HOLE”, which should be represented as shocking.

Such a level constitutes two categories concerning exploration (core mechanic) one being linear exploration, and two being open exploration. To elaborate linear exploration implies a structured exploration in which players are excluded from decision making, whereas in open exploration the implication being players are represented with various alternatives relating to exploration.

Due to unforeseen series of circumstances moreover a collection of other elements, we decided to shorten our game vision in order to complete and enable it to function. It follows that four originally planned levels including the opening level, were decreased to two levels, of which are the space station, and the scientific facility.

Regarding the level design of the scientific facility, concerns are mainly centred around aesthetic representation of a futuristic facility. Exploration being the core mechanic, furthermore, it serving as the final level, I concluded that a structured exploration with an open area was the appropriate precept. Concerning general atmospheric emotion is as such, environmentally calm, however, destructive as a consequence of enemy positioning within the open area.

Eoin was in charge of creating the game's characters. As such it included animating, constructing the models, including creating individuals’ backstories.

When we originally commenced the development, Erik selected to construct the player controller first to enable for simpler preliminary investigation of the game's white boxes.

Adam was responsible for creating environments based upon level blueprints submitted, as well as providing meaningful information and suggestions regarding proposed level layouts to guarantee producibility.

During the beginning of our development journey, we held meetings in discord 3-4 days a week moreover later it became every day with the exclusion of class days, with a significant majority lasting 2 hours. Such meetings somewhat served as production hours, furthermore, we discussed topics covering game progression, game design, programming, level/game difficulty, story/narrative, and encountered problems to ensure our development was synergetic.

Ostensibly, given additional time, I am quite confident that we would have actualised our game’s derivation concept. I am satisfied with the creation we constructed.