Level Refined

Ah! It's been an exhausting night! I've been working since 4:00 this afternoon (it's 12:17 right now).  What I've been working on is the level mechanics and making it better.  The first thing I changed was to make the platforms that move at the beginning of the level faster.  Then I made the stairs up to the monkey bars further apart.  I then refined the triggers for the slides, extended the slides, and made it so all the slides work.  I also made a new "special shadow" which will give back 50% of your health. When Rielly got his cool jumping mechanics in I made that the final obstacle of my level.  You have to climb up two walls using the stickiness, in the amount of time before your sunscreen runs out.  I also put in a temporary ending ice-cream (hopefully Morgan has finished that part.  Finally, I made the terrain all pretty and put in three different kinds grass and changed some textures.

My first level

Over the break I have also been working on a level.  My level was influenced by a playground.  I found it really helpful to get ideas from pictures of playgrounds online.  Here is what I came up with.

The first part of the level was influenced by a part of this photo:

The part I used was the red part in the front that the kids climb up to get to the top.  It has those ridges that help the kids climb up.  This was my interpretation of it in the game:

So in the above picture the player has to follow along under the shadow but avoid the obstacles.  This is a very loose interpretation, but I thought it was fun.  There is also another way to do this part and that is just jump on top of the block and just make sure you stay on.  One thing that I found will need to be fixed is sometimes Alby gets stuck on the little obstacles.  If he runs into it he sticks there.


The next part of the level involved what everyone thinks of with a playground- Monkey Bars!  Here's how it works:

#1 The first part of this was get the sunscreen at the bottom of the stairs (which as already been picked up).   Then be able to climb up the stairs as fast as you can before the sunscreen runs out.

#2 Jump from monkey bar to monkey bar.  The player wants to do this because this is where the shadows are.  It's ok if they miss, but it could cause sun exposure.

The problem I had with this is jumping.  If you hit a wall first and then try to jump you don't jump. 

The last part of the level was influenced by this picture:

The thing that influenced me was the tube slides in the middle.  I thought this would be really fun to have in the game.  Here's how I put it in:

This picture shows the top of the slides.  The player must choose
the correct slide.  If they pick the right one they come out the other
end in a shadow, otherwise they come out in the sun.

Here is Alby at the end of the slide

I'm having a problem with a few things on this:
1) I don't know if I should have it pan across the slides as Alby goes down them.  This will require some clever work with triggers, but I think I can do it.
2) I'm having a problem right now that when Alby gets to the bottom of the slide he can't move.  I think it's a problem with the levels of depth.  I need to talk to Ryan about this on Tuesday.
3) It would be nice if we could make the levels wider.

*Please remember this is a rough draft (this is not the final slide or models)

What I've been working on. Spring Break edition

So over Spring Break I've been working on a few things:

1) We had a problem with the shadows reading that the player was in the sun if they thrashed beneath the shadow.  The problem was there because multiple shadows were overlapping.  Therefore, Alby would know he was in a shadow, but then he'd get the trigger that he just exited one (because another shadow had just passed by) so he would get a little bit of damage before he got the message that he was still in a shadow.  To fix this I put a shadow counter on Alby.  Every time he entered a shadow the counter would be incremented, and every time he exited a shadow the counter would be decremented.  The only time he starts taking damage again is if the counter is 0 (i.e. he's out of all shadows).

2) The next thing I worked on was something that Jordan discovered while making a level.  The sunscreen on the level can be picked up multiple times.  There are a few ways that we can fix this: a) not have the sunscreen disappear after you get it.  This means that you can get it as many times as you want, but you still have the same amount of time (it doesn't stack up) to get to the end of the level.  b) be able to pick up the sunscreen and have it disappear, but then we need to make sure that they reappear when the player dies.  I need to talk to my teammates to see what they think, but I made sure that both ideas can be done.

3) I talked a bit with Jordan about the level he made.  Apparently he was having troubles with the shadows.  I'm pretty sure I know why it's happening.  However, I was unable to look at it because it wasn't working on my computer.  So I will work on that when we get back from the break.

Andy's Lecture on level desgin

List functions and assets for the game in spreadsheet
- can start thinking about time for each thing and see if in scope

Level Design
1) consider level from user perspective
    - user doesn't recognize the level design when it's good
    - know what the user will experience, as early as possible
2) Don't under-utilize game mechanics
3) Tell a story if you want to
    - may not be narrative
    - place a seed in the users mind
4) Don't get too attached to your work
5) Keep in mind when to collaborate with other disciplines
6) Size matters
    - know when the content is enough
    - too small might not be utilizing all mechanics

Process in general:

one pager (game in general and level)
   - don't realize all the components of a game until you put it down on paper
   - sells ideas to others

level sketching
   - not good art
   - express function
   - work out problems graphically
   - failing cheap
   - explore

1) sketch
2) photoshop phase (put in grid)
    - break large maps into sections (zooming in and getting more detail)
    - bring back in sketch
    - communicate with others with sketch
3) white box and core mechanics
4) play the crap out of it
    - layout intriguing
    - make sense/ in context
    - is it fun?
    - metrics down
5) implement
    - things will change (mechanics, art, etc.), designer still involved

What I've been working on Part 4

So the first thing I worked on this sprint was to make a death box.  The death box is a collider under the world so if the player falls off the world they respawn back on the world.  I think eventually we will need to change it so the players can't fall off the world.
The next thing I worked on is to make it so our platform/shadow prefab were parented (so they were always together).  This was really easy, but it will have to change a little bit if we have elevator platforms.  The last thing I worked on took the longest amount of time and that was making it so you didn't have to always match up the shadow and the platform even if you raise or lower the platform.  I did this by casting a ray from the platform until it hits the ground and then putting the shadow that distance away from the platform.  It was hard to figure out how to just check if it hits the ground.  We will need to make a prefab of the ground and put it on layer 8 (named Ground).


Pictures:

original platforms

after moving just the platforms up