Context
(Previous Level Design)
Before I go into the work that i have done in terms of level design I will need to give some context for why this work had been done, Late into development during a playtesting session the team came to a unanimous decision that we all felt that the level we currently had needed reworked.
Due to a couple of factors the team just felt that it wasn't sitting the way we wanted to be and as such we made a risky decision late in development to scrap all of our levels and remake them from the ground up. Myself, Holly, John and Josh would all take on a different portion of the level and work on them individually so that we could get it done in time while also working on our respective disciplines.
We knew this was risky due to the strain that it would but on the team but we also knew that if the risk paid off it would be well worth it.
So I took it upon myself to create a new level flowchart detailing the players journey from start to finish, this way then the team could each pick what area they felt they wanted to work on and we could all break off and work on our levels and then bring them all together at the end.
(Old Temple Design Vs new Temple)
As previously stated we each took a different sub-level within the main project and worked on them, I decided to take on the Ice Temple which would be the final area of our game where we would have a puzzle and a boss fight take place. This temple was already in the older Level Design and we wanted to keep that in while keeping it fresh and new.
Pre Production Work:
As it happens this semester we have been taking a module on level design and learned a lot about how important pre production is, so I took that on board and created some pre production documents to plan out the level before I went on to the block out stage. The above images show the initial high fidelity wireframe of the intended level as well as the intended player path. I had thought that having a level that held some secrets as well as some puzzles would make from a nice break from all of the combat the player experiences before and just before the boss encounter.
Initial Block outs:
After pre production I had created an initial block out of the map design above and the above images are showing off the interior of what that looked like, The map in itself took a lot of trial and error to get right as scale is something that can be hard to nail down, especially in VR. However I wanted to try an create an environment that look and felt untouched, somewhere vast and open lost to time, an area that made you feel claustrophobic and open to danger.
Puzzle Design: Cube Puzzle
The puzzle idea I first came up with was the idea of having a pressure plate that opens a gate and that gate only stays open as long as the pressure plate is activated. This would then lead the player to have to use an object such as a cube to place onto the pressure plate to continue to the next area.
Puzzle Design: Puzzle Room
The next area was something that I have to give credit to John for. As I had taken over his previous temple with my own I only felt it fitting to pay homage to his work by keeping the same puzzle he had in his temple and put it into the new one, that way his ideas didnt get lost or scrapped. The puzzle room is essentially a bunch of pressure plates and falling bridges that the player has to traverse in order to reach a button at the top that opens the door to the boss.
Boss Room:
The Final aspect of the Temple level is the boss room, this room has been designed specifically to fit the encounter with the golem boss and contains an item that unlocks the players next magic ability, on either side of the room their are staircases that lead up to a platform that needs to be accessed to damage the boss when he enters his damage phase. The room I left purposefully empty and open so that the player wouldn't get stuck on any obstacles during the boss fight.
Overall the team took a massive risk in completely revamping the levels from the ground up, but I have to say it is a risk that well paid off as I can't stress enough just how worse off the project would have been if we didn't. I'm extremely proud of the team as well as myself for pulling this all together.
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