XB2001-Assignment 3 Level Design - Fisher Island
In the first two images the water is being shown for its two effects, the first is how it causes a foam to appear at the edge of each object that collides with the material and the second is the height variation it achieves when it moves over time, on the next two images I show the original water material that I designed that worked but gave a single colour toned water texture that I wasn’t happy with because it didn’t give the effect I wanted to the atmosphere of the game and the second which is in the image is the one that gave the atmosphere and blended with the rest of the textures of the map.
Going into depth about how the texture works, they both do the same thing but differently, I create a tessellation to the materials so that they break off their object component and after they’ve done that they are being ordered to move in a stationary form. The main node that helps achieve this is the chaos node which I had found in the developers folder, after the maths was developed for the material for the chaos node it gets linked up to the route for the world displacement node.
As you can see from the image above it shows the clear difference between the two materials and explains why I want with the newer material over this one. To break it down, this material doesn’t show depth, lacks a thickness to the water, doesn’t move like water and isn’t aesthetically pleasing to the eye, additionally it consumes a lot more shader time so it was inefficient to use if I were to focus on the optimisation of the game file.
So that the island wasn’t made as a singularity I created a miniature island and gave up a large amount of foliage just to overwhelm the space as a visual eye for the player nothing more, it would be better if it was included for a more practical reason but there wasn’t anything it could relate to
With the area that was a beach I wanted to have something that I wasn’t able to produce for it to make it even more efficient towards guiding the player to where they needed to go. What I wanted was to create either a texture to apply onto the landscape or a particle system that would show footprints along the beach towards the shovel as a visual aid to show that the children with the shovel were here before and to enforce the player they're in the right location.
Since my game was simple, I was focusing on the subtle elements in the game to assist the player with level design. Like this image showing the use of the tiles guiding the player into a cave.
In this area on the image above, I wanted to go with the idea where the player had to put two and two together, I had placed down floor tiles beneath the grass so that the player is able to see them but not to the full extent of exploring them initially. With the path in mind I wanted the player to approach the large amount of foliage and walk through it, originally there was only the foliage and tiles, but after feedback I made use of another asset, which was the lampposts, using the lamp posts as a guide of pathing as well made it more insightful to where the player can go, this is because it gives the player a sense of direction, but because it cuts off at a point the then have to find out the reason why by looking around the area.
Following from the initial theme for the game, I selected the harbour so I broke it down to simpler analogies to make it easier to design into a level, when I think of a harbour the first thing I relate to it is a dock or ship port, so I went and used that theme but built around an island to fit the image of the level.
To add a visual aid to the player other than an objective screen the player would walk up the stairs and then be linked to a new camera in the perspective of the birds for a few seconds, this is to show the location of the lighthouse in a pleasing view.
To start the initial game flow, I went with the approach of starting with a letter on a widget, this introduces a little about who the player is playing as, which in this case is a doctor treating the light keeper as his patient, as well as giving insight to the player on where they’re supposed to go, taking into account what the player can and cannot do, I thought of the text in the letter as a burden in the initial text, and from recently viewing game footage of Resident evil 7, they used a method which I have taken from them where the player can change their text to be the default style, I do this because I want the letter to have a little bit of character from how it is written in the first style but if the player is unable to read it then they can move over to the alternate version and read it from there. Additionally when I start with the letter it prevents the player from avoiding the information.
Building a high detailed building or structure tends to grab a players eye and interest due to it standing out above the rest of the details. So when I create a high detailed model as well as texture the player is likely to show interest, this leads to exploring the house to find out more about the game flow, when the player enters the building they are introduced to a NPC which gives them information about where to find the missing key.
When I was doing one area of finding the key I made the game so that the player would explore everything the island had to offer, so to gain information on what to do or to locate everything it was best if they talked to the NPC or follow the story, in this next image the player would speak with the child “Chad” and would be told that the key has been buried somewhere but to get to the key you were requiring a shovel. To make it so the player had some form of understanding of where the key is I add a particle system to make it stand out a little more, but to make it more advantageous, the player can pass it or stumble upon it when they are speaking with the NPC.
For the caves if I could redo them I would’ve made the full cave system but it would take a lot more time than I could’ve given to it. So I had to go with the form of teleporting the player from one location to the other. I wanted to add a form of depth to the cave even though they are sealed at the back, so I added a light in the end of the tunnel to make it seem as though there’s another side. This method isn’t as effective as creating the tunnel but it saved time.
The Clouds in the level were used as to means, one as a form of aesthetics to draw the players eye whilst hiding the sun from time to time, as well as to be used to both change their material when the game changes from good weather to bad weather, adding practicality to the storm showing where the lightning is coming from.
Adding barrels into the game was more a space holder as well as a background giver, since the area is a harbor one of the main sources of retail to a harbour island is their trading capabilities, they have access to ship in and out different varieties of food and other supplies.
To get the rain to activate I needed to create a scale parameter which when I first used wasn’t clear what it meant but afterwards made me believe that its role it to just activate a setting that was used to change the effect of a material. In the sense of the rain the parameter was the dampness to the terrain. Additionally towards making the rain particle system it was best to attach it to the first person character this is to reduce the processing data of rain being located on the entire island and because of the scale parameter the dampness happens to the whole area rather than a selected chunk of the terrain.
Most of these blueprints used the same structure for how to interact with them. They were essentially a line trace to detect if the player hit the designated object and then do the given program; in the first case it is to open the letter. The other few were used to trace towards either characters to get their chat log recognised and display to the face of the player in the form of text renders or additional objects to be picked up like the shove or key.
For clarity to myself I used coloured comments to help me when I was coding blueprints as well as labelling them, anything that was in the act of a players interaction with an object or asset was in blue whereas green was used to link to player and the mechanic objects setting a Boolean from true to false and vice versa.
A Largely used trace system was inputted to most of the interactions the the blueprints if I wanted to make things cleaner I could’ve made them into the state of a function and left it there to make the blueprints look tidier.
Especially when I have states like this going one just to allow the player to talk to one of the NPC’s where it would turn off and on each line of work after the other is finished, but to have improved this it would’ve been better to have a Boolean condition at the start to say if talking it cannot be talked to until it has finished.
When I was designing the layout of the level I took into account where I wanted the player to be at the start and where I wanted objectives to be like the lighthouse and the dock. But to create a subconscious link for the player was that when the player arrives to the top of the stairs at the start they are able to see their end goal, this was a means that I thought would be used both efficient in design as well as play.
