Explorations in Level Design Part 4

Final Level Design Walkthrough

In my final level design exploration, I designed a level that was inspired by the the Last of Us with some fantasy elements like in the Legend of Zelda.  

The level begins with a scene outside an apartment complex and they player is in an wide open prospect space but with only one clear path to go. There are not a lot of visual interests because this space is supposed to feel a bit dead so they don't dwell here for too long. 

Once they come to the first node (the stairs), the only path to take is up the stairs. 

As they climb up the stairs to this new elevated space, they arrive at a bridge that connects into the city. The player reaches the second node but both the path on the left and on the right are blocked. 

They get on the bridge and they see an open path that goes down onto the street level. They also see a tower at a far distance, this is intended to be the major landmark/weenie that keeps them orientated but it also acts as the final destination and goal of the level. Once they climb down, they lose sight of the tower, and the landmark becomes fully occluded and only reappears a few more times in the level. This was designed consciously so that the reward of when they finally reach the landmark would be heightened through this game of hide-and-seek.

They drop down to the street level, they are now in an intimate space and also their second district. There is a bit of exploration to do here, with some space underneath the initial bridge to explore and coins scattered around but there is only one path forward. They reach to the end of the path and the path forward has now stopped. Here is another node and a redirection, they turn to the right and find a new path under a highway. I wanted to create the sense of being from being in an more open, outside space to all of the sudden being in an intimate, inside space. 

When they get to the end of highway, there is another redirection node and this time they are climbing up onto the highway to another elevated space. 

At the top of the highway, they reach another node but there are two paths, one continues forward, and the other is a reversal.

The reversal is only a short path, and although it is a dead end, the prize of checking it out is a nice vista of the player's final goal/destination. 

They go back to the original forward path but the space becomes more cramped and narrow with rubble as they progress. This is to start creating a sense of danger and doom before entering the next space.  

They go through the rubble which acts as an edge between two districts, the player also gets to see the final landmark again. 

They walk through the edge and they encounter a new district, an open park space that looks like a battle arena. 

Only when they reach down, they will see enemies appear. 

After the fight, they notice that there is no way forward towards the landmark, and there is a big structure to their right that looks mysterious, also there is a coin there to entice them. 

But once they reach the coin, the floor below them collapses and they fall underground. I talked about this in my third blog. Depressed spaces, or spaces underground are generally not spaces that players would voluntarily enter, and therefore designers have to create a way that forces players to get into these spaces. This usually involves some sort of collapsing ground or accidental detour. 

As I reflect on this now, I need to give this collapsing floor a different colour to show to the player that this is no ordinary floor and that because they stepped on it on purpose, it collapsed, and not that it just randomly collapsed. I mentioned in blog 1 that the ground plane is usually a trusted plane, and if the designer break that trust, players become suspicious and loses trust in the game. The player might think, "if this floor, which looks like any other floor just collapsed...then any floor I step on could potentially collapse." In order to mediate this lost of trust, this collapsing floor should be a different colour so that the player feels that they are responsible in stepping onto a collapsing floor. 

The player drops down into this depressed space, in what appears to be a subway station, they notice a subway card parked and they go inside to check it out.

There are dead bodies! This is starting to get grim and the mood has changed, the player is now trapped underground and there's a menacing feeling. The overhead plane becomes much lower which creates a feeling of doom and claustrophobia. Something bad has clearly taken place here and they must find their way out. They get out of the subway car and they notice a potential path towards the end of this space.

When the player gets closer, they notice that there is a path that seems to open to a watery dungeon space, with an even lower overhead plane than the first space. This space is supposed to read as underground sewers but I wasn't quite able to achieve that. I intend on going back into this scene to make that more obvious but for now I created this to add more drama and intensity in the feeling of being trapped and the sense of danger that is looming ahead. 

Once the player finally finds their way out of the maze, they see steps out back to the ground above. 

What a sigh of relief, they have found their way out and back out in the open. 

As they go into this new outside space, they encounter a new district, this time it appears to be a factory, warehouse district. The player goes through a gate which acts as an edge into this new district.  

This is another maze I have created, this one is actually a bit difficult and I got lost in it myself many times as I was designing and play testing. I designed this space to be clearly non-hierarchical with many buildings looking similar but not all the same, this kind of design works well as a maze. 

Once the player finally finds their way out of the maze, they're outside again but in a dense forest/park space. I designed this to be a transitory space to give the player some time to breathe and recollect themselves before the final fight but I also designed it so that they wouldn't dwell in for too long since there is nothing to explore. This space still create a sense of pressure and a looming danger ahead because of the dense forest and low overhead plane. They don't spend much time here, because there's nothing to explore right now other than endless trees. In my next iteration I think this would be a good place to have some power ups or a new weapon. 

The player's final goal is finally in reachable sight, there is only one path and they start heading towards it. 

When they get to top, they see the treasure box at the very back and a battle arena that is blocking them from accessing that treasure. Once they pass the threshold the enemies appear, this time there are more of them and they are harder to defeat. 

Finally, the player defeats all the enemies and they reach the treasure, they have completed and the level! 

Reflections

In my final level that I designed, I tried to be conscious of all the concepts I learnt over the course of my study, but at the same time, not being too mathematical about it. This meant that I wasn't literally applying the rules to the level design process, such as the Arnheim structural skeleton. For example I did not lay a structural skeleton grid on top of my level layout to make sure whether certain things where on the structural skeleton or not. It is important to me that I understand these concepts so that when I am playtesting and editing, I have a better understanding of what I am looking for and at, instead of using these concepts and rules as a guide to how I design, which I think defeats the creative process. 

In this last level, I did however wanted to design all types of spaces: prospect, depressed, intimate and elevated. I also wanted to create multiple districts, with different types junctions/nodes such as reversal, divergence, continuation and dead ends. I wanted to play with the overhead plane, occlusion, different types of edges and more importantly my spatial compositions throughout the game. I also created two enemy battles as part of the core gameplay since action/adventure shooters is a genre I am most interested in making myself. In conclusion, I wanted to design a rich and full level experience, that showcased different types of spaces I studied. 

In my practice-led research, I am now competent in the basic fundamentals of level design, and I understand how the core concepts are used and applied. It started off with by reading theory, which then led me to play games with this new knowledge, which then led me to designing my own levels. Each week I tried to apply some of the information I was picking up on. I then had a friend who is a level designer playtest these levels to give me feedback; this process was extremely educational as it helped me in understanding how concepts are used and practiced. I remember in week 6 I made a western cowboy town that I thought was very successful but the level designer thought it was a complete mess! In my practice-led research, playtesting becomes a fundamental part of the learning and research process. 

Finally, reflecting on my original level design study proposal, I completed almost everything I intended to study in level design except for explorations in lighting. 

From my original proposal:

"In this independent study, I will learn how to research approaches and to creating 3D game levels from both a historical, theoretical and design perspective. I will explore the theories of game world design, spatial studies, architecture, shape composition and lighting."

I also completed every outcome and objective other than the final research paper and creating a multiplayer level.

Objectives:

• To develop a thorough understanding of the history and theory of level design
• To learn more about lighting and, spatial composition for games
• To develop iterative design skills in order to prototype levels rapidly

Expected Outcome:

• Multiple playable action blocks or rapid prototypes that are playable
• At least one final playable level design
• At least 4 blog posts
• Research paper

      Types of levels:

• Exploration
• Battleground
• Multiplayer
• Puzzle

Looking back at it now, I believe that lighting would have been another independent study. As I started my independent study, I realized pretty quickly that I didn't want to write a paper, and much preferred spending time putting the knowledge I was learning into practice. The only thing I regret is not being able to prototype a multiplayer level, although I do believe I have the basic understanding of what might go into a multiplayer level. Creating a multiplayer level would be executed from the programming side, which I had no time in exploring.

I believe that although I wasn't able to complete all of my goals, I have still achieved a lot in this period of time. I am extremely satisfied with what I was able to learn and put into practice and I feel confident in developing my final thesis game. In what is happening next, I want to experiment with where I can start playing with these rules and subvert the expectations in level design, especially in terms of what I hinted at in my previous blog with queering level design and game space through understanding space as characters or archetypes. Since my research questions are mostly spatial focus, level design was the perfect field within game development to focus on. This independent study has opened up many new threads for me and allowed me to home in on my research questions, specifically how to queer game design from a spatial perspective.

Thanks to this independent study, I now understand how I will approach practice-led research for my thesis. I want to conduct psychogeography and autoethnography in queer spaces such as popular cruising areas and bathhouses in order to dictate my level design process, which then cycles back to my writing process. If I hadn't done this independent study, I wouldn't have the basic fundamental understanding of level design in order to then break the rules or in my case, come up with tools to queer game design spatially.