Creating the Levels/Blockout

This week I want to show the implementation of my blockout/asset levels, the previous week, we touched the blockout and this week I have begun placing some assets inside the level to see the actual look of them all. This week is less about explaining the process and more just about what comes out of the previous designs that we came up with and how I am changing them to fit our game currently. 

When designing each of these levels in concept and then in the engine, one thing I realized was that the hallways were going to be tricky to "fill up" without causing player struggles while maneuvering through them. To figure out how to balance this, I went and looked at games like Alien Isolation and Dead Space to see how they like to make their hallways feel "full" without there being much there. And for the most part, I think that the way they handled it makes the environment truly feel lived in, which is what I was aiming for exactly. I think the hardest part for me with this approach especially is the difference in the way the game is played, not being first person or third person makes me have to approach it a different way than they did. I think it will still take a lot of messing with but currently, I think I am making the right steps towards making it feel that way. 

Another interesting challenge I had to take on this week was deciding on the enemy presence per level and the spawn rate. Our enemy spawns are not 100% guaranteed to spawn an enemy which again plays in the randomness we want our game to have. Because of this, I had to slightly overcompensate on the amount of spawners inside the level which means that some runs could be much harder than others which benefits our game since it is about managing your squad just as much as completing the mission and sometimes the player will realize that the current mission is not worth losing their good squad and abandon it. 

Tutorial Level

Here is the tutorial level, with the skybox finally swapped, it really pulls together the level and the sci-fi theme that we went for. This will soon be applied to the other levels as well once the different variations of skyboxes have been completed. You can also see that some of the content has been cut and that was just to ensure the time spent on this level is not too long or too much for the player since this is really only to learn the basics not to experience a full level yet. 

This level is set to be more staged as well, with UI pop-ups explaining to the player the way to play the game coming from the "old veteran" of the crew, which will have a staged death at the end of the tutorial which will then prompt the player on how to recruit new hires in the HQ level, teaching them all the basics they need for the current gameplay loop.

Level 1

These two pictures represent the original concept design compared to the real thing in engine, a few tweaks here and there but overall the same shape and design.  

This just one of the few examples that we have in place for some randomization, although this is not what the final product will look like. For this vertical slice we knew that going full randomization is way out of scope however we would want to showcase this as a feature and decided to have this shown here. Each level has a certain amount of variation currently and each one has a section of the level is closed or open to give a slight change to the level layout, but as mentioned in larger developments this would be more drastic with larger and more detailed levels. 

Level 2

Once again showing the jump from the concept design to the the real thing in engine.

Level 3

Level 3 was a different beast entirely, but in this screenshot I wanted to also showcase our navmesh, which shows where the player and the enemy can travel inside of the level. This is part of the reason I mentioned before that the placing of "lived in" assets around the hallways and rooms is difficult because every new asset is a bit less space for the player to move around in the level. Balancing this has been difficult and a constant learning process, something that our playtesters have been a big help with. 

HQ "Level"

This is less of a playable level and just more of demonstration of the space that you consider "HQ" in the game and have the UI elements to allow you to manage things such as missions select, manage your squad, or hire new recruits.