Level Design for Computer Games - Basic Blockout Summary, Analysis & Next Steps

To summarise at what is effectively the half way point of this project, in strictly terms of level design, I feel I have improved on the levels I have designed in previous projects. I have been able to competently get a grasp on the narrative elements that need to be on display throughout the games design process and implement some early work there also.

I am still a way off in terms of the completion state, but I am relatively happy with where I currently stand, I have been able to take my knowledge, expand on it and implement features to not only provide the user with some basic visual elements of narrative context, but some elements effectively force the user to engage with the narrative.
Narrative is going to play a large role going forward through this project and I will need to research more to gain a wider knowledge on multiple narrative types and implement these successfully into the level.

As well as the narrative, I will be taking the points raised in the peer feedback I received and, implementing them as and where appropriate where I have not already made slight changes. This will come as I also work on the more core functional aspects and necessary visuals of my level design.

My next steps for this project as it stands are -

- Modpack bar/saloon.
- Modpack high class district house.
- Modpack Sheriff's quarters.
- Further research Narrative elements of games design.
- Full texturing including Diffuse, Normal, Specular maps etc.

Further steps -

- Potential sound effects (Necessary regarding some of my narrative aspects).
- Further ambient lighting if/where necessary.

Level Design for Computer Games - Peer review cycle

I have set up four different sets of questions, as required by the brief, these would be questions based on four factors of my current game design process.
Some of the factors were easy to ask for feedback on, however some were pretty tough to ask for feedback on at this stage as elements like gameplay are hard to gain feedback on when it is still being worked on parallel to this work.
I have received feedback from two of my peers and will detail both the questions and answers below.

The questions I asked were as follows;

Task 1 – Level Blockout.

Questions:

1. Do you feel as though I should the sheriff/lawkeeper’s square be populated with more buildings

2. Do you feel the courtyard is of an adequate size, bearing in mind I intend this to be populated as the end of the project? If not, should it be increased or decreased in size?

3. Do you feel the boss arena is sized adequately for the battle at the end of the area? If not, should I make it larger or smaller?

Peer 1 Answers;

1. Give or take but it feels good to play, density of the area/’buildings’ feels solid.

2. Yep, you’d be tweaking and this will be easier to deal with when you actually have the scripted events occurring.

3. At this point it looks pretty solid to eyeball from a birds eye and when actually in game, however once we implement the actual combat and AI you might feel you need more space because obviously the AI tracking we’ll be using will lose sight of you at certain distances and dependant on how you tweak speeds of both your character and AI you may or may not need more space and so on.

Peer 2 Answers;

1. From what I have seen in the gameplay you have got a good amount of buildings for the level.

2.  The size that you have got now works well. Even with the place populated, it will still be able to fit them all in.

3. The boss area is a good size. You have got plenty of room for the AI to track you and you can even expand it by adding some extra elements to the area such as barrels or crates.

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Task 2 – Gameplay.

Questions:

1. Do you feel that dusk sets into night time at the right pace, if not, would you suggest a quicker or slower transition.

2. Do you feel I should add any more enemy conflict situations into the level, for example a possible conflict in the higher class area or around the lawkeeper’s square?

3. Do you feel the level pans smoothly enough from one area to another? Could I make the transitions any simpler and what would be your suggestions to achieve this if so?

4. Do you feel the boss arena would benefit from adding meshes for cover, for example randomly placed shipping containers, or would you leave it open for the conflict with the boss?

Peer 1 Answers;

1. Yea the pace is decent, what might be a cool alteration is per area move the time ahead slightly a certain amount whether that means limit or not limit it per area (via trigger boxes) who knows.

2. I might sound like I’m repeating myself but this is easier to answer when we can actually jump into the encounters and really test that. From the text renders you have it looks like the pacing should be at least decent.

3. Yea, this is well done imo. Feels smooth, decent distances per area. Cool.

4. I’m honestly not sure how our finished AI will work with geometry blocking line of sight and aspects like this as it could make or break the idea of having cover in. I mean you could add your cover into your scene outliner and group it into a folder and just hide/unhide it to test without any impact on performance.

Peer 2 Answers;

1. The transition to dusk to night is at a suitable pace. 

2. You have got a good amount of enemies for this game. The higher class areas don’t need any more enemies, but what you could do is to increase the number of them as you go towards the boss.

3. The gameplay for the level smooths well. One thing you could do for a transition is the have the player smash through some glass as you goes towards the shanty town.

4. Depending on what kind of boss you are facing, adding in some assets will greatly help for the boss encounter. Without them the boss encounter may be harder.

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Task 3 – Moodboard.

Questions:

1. Do you think my mood board provides a relatively fair reflection of what I have accomplished thus far with my level?

https://uk.pinterest.com/plissken1989/unit-76-games-design-for-computer-games-level-desi/

Peer 1 Answer;

1. I only really see a couple of shanty town pictures going on. I see what you’re trying to go for with the western theme element but this isn’t really shown in your map because it can’t really be with basic textures and such like we’re using. Once you start adding dusty/roughness based textures this will shine through easily.

1.1 A plus point is your character, fits in as a western / biker type vibe which can fit.

Peer 2 Answer;

1. Overall you have got a good amount of resources needed for your game idea. You got all the images you need to cover each of the sections of them map and you can also use them to decided what kind of material you need for your map.

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Task 4 – Lighting.

Questions:

1. Similarly to a gameplay question, do you feel the dusk setting transitions into night time at the right pace, and should I change the amount of light given off by the dominant directional level light at all?

2. Do you feel the other lighting throughout the level is appropriate taking into account the time of day which I have set my level in, if not, how can I improve upon this.

3. Do you feel the flickering light leading into the higher class district of the settlement flickers randomly enough, in terms of speed, if not would you shorten or lengthen the period in which the flickers occur?

Peer 1 Answer;

1. Nah its fine as is – I mean these really are all later tweaks with proper lighting imo, but to test it as it is it’s already ahead of a block out. It’s pretty nice man.

2. Don’t think there’s any issue with street lamps, you actually have meshes and current lights spread out as to not clash or lead to light bleeding / artifacts which fits. Once you start adding lights to other buildings, lights on exteriors this might cause you issues but you’ll find out as and when.

3. Nah these are fine although make the light shatter / stop once you run upto this (DoOnce node) and it’ll add that bit of realism.

Peer 2 Answer;

1. The light for the transition will be ok.

2. Some of the lighting that you currently have should not affect the overall map. The street lamps for example can have their lightness removed via the use of a blueprint or the material when the day time comes.

3. The length that you have currently have will be ok and it does not need to be adjusted in any way. 

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Feedback Analysis - Level Blockout:

From at least these two peers, my blockout would appear to be progressing at a respectable level, and I will be taking into account the comments made about the boss arena as I continue to develop it, including the possible changes I have mentioned previously within the blog.

Feedback Analysis - Gameplay:

I tried to ask questions which would have been easy enough to gain some form of feedback on, as game play is currently being constructed within the level parallel to the level design. The feedback I have received for this aspect of the design process has brought to my attention a possible flaw in the "line of sight" methods we are using to allow the boss to track the player pawn. If I use meshes to cover, the line of sight may end up broken and the boss will no longer chase me, this may work well dependent on the structuring progress I make within the boss area.

As a result of this, I am now more likely to use smaller objects now to put in between the character and the boss than larger objects which could potentially break line of sight, this may allow the player to regain their bearings if attacked relentlessly by the boss and needing to evade temporarily.

Feedback Analysis - Mood Board:

I generally feel my mood board feedback is positive, despite it being pointed out that I have few resources displaying the shipping container style I have gone for with my shanty town.

The reason for this being that there are actually few resources that I'm aware of which have utilised these in the past, the main two being Defiance and iRobot.

The rest of the mood board feedback is positive and I have been told that my character fits the theme of the level well, I did not personally feel this myself at the beginning but the advantage of having my peers review my work is that I can gain fresh eyes on my work easily. This has pleased me and I will take this point on board along with the constructive criticisim, any other sources I find through research and general development will be added to the mood board for future reference.

Feedback Anaylisis - Lighting:

The feedback I have received for my lighting has pointed out some constructive elements which I can use going forward also, the points being that I could add a shattering effect to the lights which flicker as the player reaches them. This could add the effect of the lights being physically broken and would also serve as a further interaction as I could potentially add spark particle effects to the light if it were to break.

The second point I have had made is that the lights could be rigged to turn off at set times of day, I feel this is also a very good point and will look into implementing this within my design development pipeline. Even though I personally feel my level may not necessarily require the lights to switch off due to progression speed, and the boss fight ideally taking place at night, there is no guarantee that a player would be able to quickly beat my level's boss, and as such, the level could potentially do with this implemented feature.

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Overall I feel I have a good number of points to be progressing forward with through the design process and I will definitely look into all points raised constructively and address them appropriately as I continue development of my level, as these points could be easily reflected in the opinions of an end user in the games industry.

Level Design for Computer Games - Playtesting/Current test issues.

Through the development process comes a lot of playtesting, and with this comes constraints.
Whilst I can test a large portion of the project thoroughly and any and every issue, there are certain aspects which I currently cannot test to the fullest, Gameplay being the main factor.

I will be looking to test the layout making sure everything fits into place mainly, making sure everything flows as smoothly as possible for additional pieces of gameplay to fit into, however as I am currently working on gameplay beside this, I will not be able to test the gameplay until the functionality has been implemented.

Things I will be looking to implement alongside the rest of the level design pipeline in the work running parallel are as follows.

1 - Boss battle (Currently in progress).

2 - Grunt enemies attacking in numbers/Being able to dispatch these enemies prior to the boss battle (Will be looked at once the Boss has been successfully fully implemented).

3 - Waypointing system to guide player through checkpoint-styled navigation to the boss battle (Possibly a simple beam into the sky giving the used a rough direction in which they need to go, as to not give them too much guidance thereby making progression too easy).

Other things that will be getting looked at soon in other parallel running work are cutscenes, which I will be able to functionally use to introduce the player upon entering the settlement courtyard, sound effects for throughout the level no matter how technically simple and proper lighting schemes.

I will be looking to get my peers to review my level and will be gaining whatever feedback I can prior to any deadlines so as I can summarise their feedback and build on it to potentially improve my level flow overall, this will be covered in my next post.

Level Design for Computer Games - Lighting and interactive elements

As a requirement for this unit, I was presented with the necessity of adding a lighting scheme and a set of level based interactions.

- Initial lighting scheme;
As my level from a narrative perspective was be set at dusk, I needed to light the area relatively well using streetlamps, this combines with any natural light in the scene lights the in-game woirld fairly well. I have also used a set of shanty town camp fire type pieces, in an attempt to guide the used through the shipping container shanty town, this will double up at a navigation method along with being force into combat whilst in the area

I had some ideas for interactive elements from my initial mind mapping and researching and produced a total of five interactions for the player to be affected by;

- Forced walk volumes;

To allow for narrative emphasis to be placed on the character from the outset, I placed a large volume on the courtyard and tweaked the values within the character's blendspace, this specific unit ascertains to another piece of work, but as I am working on the two at the same time I have been able to bring these into engine effectively.

I added an Idle, a Walk and a Run to a blendspace and tweaked the values for each movement speed accordingly to allow me to set a realistic walk speed through level blueprints. I implemented a simple trigger box, connecting an "On Actor Begin Overlap" node via reference, and subsequently set the player speed for the time the character mesh spends within the trigger box, returning to normal speed when the overlap between the trigger and the character ends.

I placed another identical volume near the shipping container shanty town to slow the player down upon entry, as I intended on having the civilians living there entering their homes upon seeing the bounty hunter approaching.

These in turn allowed me to implement another interaction for the blockout.

- Visual Narrative Dummy Run;
Making use of the forced walk volumes, I created a blueprint using an Unreal Engine base character mesh and four spotlights, these spotlights were set to flash to draw attention to the character mesh.

This blueprint was set to a dummy run through the level to effectively guide the player in the right direction during the blockout phase of production. The movement is set by a matinee and is triggered around the same time the player steps into the volume triggering the slowing down.

- Flickering lights;

I have added two flickering lights in an attempt to guide the player with the use of light, for now this is set up using a blueprint with a light in, set to toggle on and off at random intrervals between 0.001 seconds and 0.5 seconds, this gives the toggle a lot of room to work with to provide the user with a varied length of flicker in the light.

The lights are placed with the aim to alert the player to the suspicious character entering the higher class area of the level.

- Day/Night Cycle;
With more lighting in mind, I have also implemented a day/night cycle, which has been put in place to allow the time to progress through the level, the character enters the settlement at dusk, and with time passing the skybox in use displays through to night time. Left for long enough the time of day will roll through back to daytime but the level should be finished before the timer has time to tick around that far.
Taking into account that this is set to scroll slowly into night time, it is easier to show this element via a blueprint screenshot.

- Enemy encounter matinee trigger;

The final level interaction I currently have implemented is within the shipping container shanty town, this is in the form of another trigger box, which sends a play command to six matinees which are applied to six shipping container doors respectively.

These are designed to be used with NPC's, as I would like a group of enemies to enter a conflict with the user, once cleared, the player can progress further through the stage.

I have a feeling I may insert more interactions yet within the level, whether in the form of more enemy triggers, or I may indeed make a cage in a Thunderdome type of style placed in the boss arena to stop the player from running away. Whichever way I go with this, the interaction will need to be triggered, with potential trigger points being either at the beginning of the fight or at any given point within the fight, for example on dealing certain amounts of damage to the boss, possibly 33%, 50% or 75% to make the fight harder progressively.

I'm sure I will think of more interactions throughout development also, as the level progresses in design, following the narrative within.

Level Design for Computer Games - Finalising the first blockout iteration.

I proceeded to plot out generic placement of meshes around my top down layout to fill each segment of my map. Once I was relatively happy I began applying basic placeholder materials to the meshes within.
Some of these materials have been taken directly from the unreal editor and as such are compiled with normal maps, with some being simple standard materials. Most notably, my shipping container shanty town has been textured using simple materials to implement variety in colours between crates.

Most other buildings, as my level currently stands, have been built as one piece for the sake of speed, with the intention of modpacking them at a later date in production. The buildings in question are the larger houses in the higher class district of the settlement, the bar in the Market/Bar area and the Lawkeeper's building in the Lawkeeper's square, located between the higher class district and shanty town areas.

As these buildings are made of one piece, the UV's skew any advanced materials and as such I have placed generic grey texture on them all.

The initial idea to my level was for the player to proceed through the shanty town, a sandstorm to hit near to the back of the area and to blow a shipping container down. The shipping container was to then act as a break through a fence, leading to a mine shaft, which the boss would be at the end of respectively.

This idea as of right now has changed, and may yet be subject to change again. However as it currently stands, the area is square in shape, with the wall made of shipping container, I have considered either changing this to a Thunderdome type area, this may just be added into the area as a cage which lowers from above as opposed to being in place immediately upon entering the boss area.

This would provide the used with a sense of claustrophobia as they are trapped within the area with the mutant boss for company.

Level Design for Computer Games - Creation of blockout meshes

Whilst this is a blockout unit only, I felt it necessary to actually model most elements of my level properly, for this I headed to Maya and began modelling the required elements.

I did not make a full modpack for each building in my Maya scene however, I decided to create the main buildings in my level as one mesh for speed purposes, to give a proper look at my level as quickly as possible.

I created the meshes and imported them into the level, experimenting with position to make the visual narrative aspect of the level as easy to follow as possible.

Once I was relatively happy with the base blockout of the level, I returned to Maya to begin the UVing process, as we were informed that we could need to put basic textures on out meshes, whilst this is not necessarily a process undergone in blockout it would serve me better later on in the production pipeline, having a portion of UV'd meshes which could be appropriately textured faster than an otherwise non-UV'd mesh, bringing down completion time for assets at a later date.

I moved back into Maya and mapped meshes one by one, making slight adjustments to the meshes as and where necessary, and assigning them a new green lambert material once UV'd fully and re-exported ready to be re-imported into Unreal. I did automatically UV some objects and will return to these at a later date as some objects (notably the rails around the courtyard) have skewed textures right now, there will be fixed in due course though.

I took this opportunity to also duplicate the UV's on the meshes to a secondary set, creating simple light maps to allocate for lighting detail in-engine also, thereby avoiding potential major lighting issues when baking lights in-engine.

I have made changes through necessary design mofocations to the working of the shipping container meshes, in an effort to not only modpack them for further use, but to be able to position the doors as I see fit, whether I want them open or closed, after having a total of 8 shipping containers, I was able to drop the containers down to 4 or 5 variants and the doors separately.

This was also specifically helpful to the length of time it took to UV each shipping container.

Below is a shot of my current Maya scene, including all the meshes that I have included in my Unreal blockout. Also shown are a successfully UV'd shipping container and the UV's for the rail which is deployed around the outer edge of my courtyard, with some correct UV values and the incorrect values previously stated as skewing the textures, to be fixed at a later date.

Level Design for Computer Games - Basic map design & Narrative ideas.

Following the mind mapping and mood boarding process, I began work on a simple top down layout from which to build my ideas on top of, I headed to Photoshop to work with basic shapes and layers to generate this, using simple rectangles and test elements.

Whilst developing my map, I needed to begin thinking of ideas for level progression and how the player would be directed through the navigation of the level, whilst being able to subtly tell a story and give the player a narrative to follow.

I came up with the idea that the player would be controlling a bounty hunter, following a lead on a wanted criminal. The criminal having been located in the settlement, leads the bounty hunter to pursue the cause.

Upon entering the settlement at dusk via the only known entrance, the player would be forced into a slow walk through the settlement's courtyard (This could potentially be forced with a cutscene later in the development process). Whilst walking through the courtyard a scream would be heard from the Market area and a suspicious character would run from the market/bar area, the player then giving chase to the character, following the target through the level via the arrowed path on the above layout.

I would also have to come up with a lighting scheme as lighting is often used to guide a player from location to location. Also I would need to include level interactions to keep the user engaged, in line with game design theories which tell us that on average, an interactive element should be fired once every ten seconds to retain the players interest. Some games do not work like this and are designed differently, but in general, a lot of games work by these rules.

Level Design for Computer Games - Idea generation, mind mapping and mood boarding.

To begin designing my level, as with any other project, I had to brainstorm ideas, translate them onto a mind map and then moodboard the idea I decided on. My mind map can be seen below;

Using the ideas I had produced in my mind map, I came to the decision that I would try and design a level with a realistic, potentially post apocalyptic feel to it, a level that I could imagine being seen in an environment like that of Mad Max, but retaining elements of other ideas, with twists on the area itself. I was also inspired largely by the environments seen in both 'iRobot' and the TV show 'Defiance', most notably the utilisation of Shipping containers, seen in iRobot's scene beneath the San Fransisco bridge, and in the town in Defiance.

Building on these ideas, I visualised a possible adaptation of old western design, possibly using a Bar or Saloon in my level, whether built so as the player could enter or not.

These ideas can be seen in my mood boarding via the link below;

https://uk.pinterest.com/plissken1989/unit-76-games-design-for-computer-games-level-desi/