Midway through out Project we had a meeting about the Level Structure of the game which would end up cutting out the Pathway to the Temple area and the beginning of an old alpha temple map with block outs of some of the puzzles we had discussed earlier in the project.
With the project being well underway and over the halfway point before the hand in and completion date, we split the remaining levels that needed to be done between 3 of us to meet the deadlines of the assignment. I was tasked with creating a new area for the game, the wizard tower. We would repurpose the Villages teleport gate they would travel to and have the player sent to this Garden of an enclosed area with a large Wizard tower.
During Development of this area, we decided to change how the player obtained the Fire Crystal for the final time and have it within the basement of the wizard tower. Originally we thought of the player going inside the front door of the Wizard tower but due to time constraints we decided against modelling the inside of a tower and making the basement entrance on the outside, compared to that of a cellar entrance.
We started with blocking out a large tower and making the area a bit more calming, unlike the area they just went through. We did decide to make this area a bit more fantasy like to get the feeling that this is a magical and forgotten place that fits into the world we are trying to convey to the player. For this part of the tower, we used some out of house assets to see what we could do to in the creation of this area of the world and liked the style we went with using things like Branches, Mushrooms, Fences and the likes of them, however it was decided after the creation of this area we would remove the assets and try to keep the project solely in house.
The early version of this area was then put into the scrapped level pile as most of the assets used were all out of house but stills lives on through screenshots. The newer version of the Tower level still retained the same shape as we wanted but featured a lot less out of house assets to what was used to create a small fantasy like pathway which I felt did hurt this section of the level overall. We did decide near the end of the project as we had fallen behind in some areas to allow the use of out of house assets but at this point was too late for the Tower area as most of the work had been done away with.
The final version of the Tower has the basement included, a sound clip would play of the Wizard character saying they will help them and open the door for the player, a sequencer would play and explosions would spawn as the Actors get flung into the air and disappear by deleting the actors as to reset their position. After the player enters the Basement they would then travel to a table which houses the first magic crystal, the fire gem, then would activate a new event which spawns some enemies into the level. A voice clip will be played for the player to hear of the wizard then spawning in a portal at the find door to lead the player to safety, this will put the player into the mountain area of the game, built by Holly.
The basement was a fun creation, the block out of it compared to the finished product was staggeringly different with a drastic change to what it was concepted to be like. The basement was meant to be almost cave like, poorly dug into the earth with crystals protruding out the walls and creating a sort of dimmer light for the player to follow. This idea was scrapped quite early into the making of the basement as with the small enclosed space it was very claustrophobic for player movement and interactions so we opted to keep the small size of the basement but have it more like a lost Library. Using some old assets that our group members made in the prior year I got to work pathing and creating what would be the basement you see today.
When first delving into the basement, the first thing the player will notice is the lighting being quite low, this was to encourage the player to grab a torch at the beginning staircase and take it with them to be able to notice the details in the room. One such detail is a small easter egg that keen eyed player can see if they take their torch to an open book on the table in the middle of the room, a small text passage is written in it that can only be assumed was written by the wizard of this tower, this in turn with the library tells the player a small story of this Wizard using the environment, they get some insight into how he lives and what he might like.
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