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Level Design Blog 15

Blog 15: 2/5-2/11

This week, I made a ton of progress on my level, especially on the large structural elements and Blueprints. I didn't realize how much I had done in the last week until I checked my previous post and realized that a week ago, I didn't even have a building in my level!

The first thing I worked on was blocking out the footprints of the various buildings in the level. Almost immediately, I realized that the route I had planned from the smaller maintenance building at the beginning of the level to the main train station was much too long, so I shrunk everything down and tried again.


The first building I added in was the maintenance building. This is a small building that the player doesn't spend a huge amount of time in, so I left the details for later and stuck with a basic shape for the building and the train tunnel before moving on to the larger buildings.

 

The main section of the level takes place in and around a train station. The first things I added in were the two teenagers who initially give the player their task.  

The teenagers seemed pretty lonely without anything around, so I gave them a storage building to break into.

Next to the storage building, which is inaccessible to the player, I created a blockout of the train station using the CubeGrid tool. 

In my original LDD, I planned for the player to enter the building through the main entrance, on the large porch at the front of the building, but I realized upon trying to play the level that the player would walk straight past this entrance on the way to talk to the teens. I wanted to keep it this way, so that the player gets a chance to peek through the windows and see the building before actually entering it, but I didn't like having to double back, so I added another entrance to the building around the side, next to the storage building.

Once I had the main shape down, I added interior walls, created a simple bench for the main lobby, and added in the bear. 


I found that I had to cut down the speed of the bear by quite a bit from what I had in my metrics level. It was possible to easily outrun the bear at the faster speeds, but because of how the bear's pathfinding works, the bear was so fast that it was almost impossible for the player to hide from it--the bear followed so closely on the player's tail that it was nearly impossible to shake off.

From there, I branched out into the other rooms nearby. I wanted to add in the larger props before going in and placing smaller, more important items, like keys, so I worked on coming up with a theme for each of the rooms and then started adding items based on that theme: for example, a room of clock repair supplies for the clock tower and a room decorated for a retirement party.

From there, I moved to the clock tower, where the final scene of the game will take place. I realized that I'd completely forgotten to prototype the interactions in the clock tower in my metrics gym, so I took a long detour to figure out how to get the clock and pendulum working. 

I modified an existing Blueprint from the interaction pack I'm working with to work as the pendulum. It turned out that the Blueprint I was using inherited from several parent Blueprints, which I wasn't very used to working with; once I worked out which parts of the interaction were inherited from where, though, I was able to add in a few more custom events so that the player can drag the pendulum and clock hands. Once the pendulum hits the right point, it starts swinging by itself, and the clock hands can be snapped to the right spots. Once the pendulum and clock hands are set, the clock tower bell rings, and the bear is scared away from the station.

The Blueprints aren't perfect, but I'm happy with the state they're in and should be able to go back and tinker with them fairly easily if I have more time.

Finally, I moved back to the exterior of the station to add more details and wear and tear.
 



I've found that working on this level has been much easier and more enjoyable than the last one (probably because I actually know what I'm doing this time around). I'm looking forward to going back in and populating the level more. The biggest hurdle going forwards will be placing all of the interactable objects, like keys and notes, and testing the flow of the level. My two big worries are that the level will feel too simple and too linear, so I'm hoping to get the bulk of the interactable items placed in the next few days so that I have enough time to test and revise the level as needed.

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