Level 7 & Tools
During last week my partner fixed an issue we had with the rotating enemies’s movement and implemented some tools to facilitate the placement of environment art. Meanwhile, I focused on making the 7th level of the game, where we introduce the rotating enemies.
The issue my partner fixed was the fact that the rotating enemies sometimes made really weird rotations to get to an angle. This made it hard to understand their movement patterns, which made challenges that should be easier much harder.
Now, the tool she implemented for art placement gives me the ability to select what asset I want to use and define how much space, in any direction, I want them to fill. For example, if I need a 5x5 wall I only need to place the blueprint, select the mesh, the color and the dimensions in x,y and z and a single large mesh will be created that fills those requirements. This made my job much simpler and also helps us in the optimization front.
For level 7 I made a long level that has a short optional path that introduces the rotating enemies. The level maintains the philosophy of teaching the mechanic by dividing itself in 4 parts: the introduction, the first challenge, the breathing room and the final challenge. For the introduction I made the player start in a short hallway where they can see that there is an enemy behaving differently from the others. From the hallway they enter the room where the enemy is rotating. This room is wide enough for the player to avoid the enemy completely if they want to and proceed to the rest of the level. Here the only objective is to give the player the space to get acquainted with the new enemy type.
The first challenge is composed of 3 encounters, the first one the players have to pass through while for the next two the players only need to pass through one of them. The point in this section is for the player to use the understanding they got from the first section and apply it into simple challenges to start fixing that knowledge into the player's memory.
For the “breathing room” I made a long-ish and wide area with a short optional path that uses the patrolling enemy. The objective here is to give the player a space to take in what they have just done while keeping them engaged. That’s why the challenge here is simple and uses the enemy type the player is already used to.
In the final challenge I created four encounters. For the first two, the player only needs to to overcome one of them, whichever they choose. The second challenge uses the proximity between enemies to increase pressure while being actually easier than the first two. The last challenge is composed of 2 enemies close together forcing the player to coordinate their movement with that of the two enemies.
Until we are able to test with users I will leave the 7th level as is and in the meantime I will proceed to work on the 8 and final level of the demo.
