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Level Design Blog 10

Blog 10: 11/12-11/18

This week, I continued work on our final RPP project. Once the level layouts were complete, I moved on to populating the levels with a combination of premade tiles and artist-made assets. I haven't worked with super stylized assets like this very much, so I enjoyed getting to work within such a strict theme.

 
 
Several of the levels, including the one above, changed somewhat both by necessity and for the sake of aesthetics. One thing I found difficult with such a limited set of assets was conveying the difference between the friction materials we had created within the context of the more nature-themed levels. I ended up using more winter-themed materials for the ice and summery materials for areas with more friction.In the future, I would want to put effort into defining the definitions of different materials before using them, and maybe even select assets with that intention.

I also added special pickup objects: three strawberries per level and the occasional cherry, which gives a jump boost. I wanted to play around with using cherries as special bonuses versus power-ups required to complete a level; I also wanted the strawberries to have varying levels of difficulty, with at least one strawberry in an easy to reach location and the rest getting progressively more difficult.

Working with the power-ups changed the levels significantly; the strawberries especially made the game feel much more satisfying. In the future, I would want to put placeholders in for achievement-based pickups earlier in the design, because working under those constraints actually created some unique new ideas for levels.

I also continued work on my FPS level. Once I had the main landscape and some of the basic ruins placed, I went in and created the large tower structure that would serve as the final challenge of the level. I built the rest of the level backwards from there, making sure that the tower would stay framed in the player's view for most of the level.

 
 
Once I had created the tower, I tweaked the lighting to give it a more intense blue-purple look to match Athenas, which the level was inspired by:

DanDi`s TwistedLand on X: "It was so relaxing, to watch the sunsets on # Athenas when I was playing #Borderlands3. Very beautiful #levelart. https://t.co/Kpgt7G6fyr" / X

I began to add more props, created in Maya, and trees created in Houdini, to develop the area, as well as atmospheric effects like a low-hanging fog in the valley beneath the level. Once the largest structures were blocked out, I went back in and began adding additional lighting, including along the main paths and inside the main building, which is the only inhabited location.


I struggled somewhat with making the placement of props feel natural with such a limited palette of assets, but I found that adding smaller details like retaining walls and the enemies themselves made the level feel much more alive. I plan to add additional detail items, like streetlights closer to the inhabited area of the map and archways further out to mimic structures found in the original map.




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