Week 6 - First tutorials and blockout
My goal this week was to create one level that introduces an enemy type as well as making the block out the final level and this new tutorial. By the end of the week I had made two tutorial levels, each one introducing a different enemy. Also, I managed to blockout the final level and one of the tutorials.
First I started by making a tutorial to introduce the sleepy enemy. This enemy turns off and on their field of view (FoV) on intervals. The first part of the tutorial introduces the enemy in a safe way to the player by separating them both with a door the player can see through. This door requires a key that is right beside the door. The objective with this “lock & key” was only to make sure the player observes the behavior of the new enemy before engagin with them.
After that, the player engages with the enemy in a very simple interaction. The objective this time is to have the player actually get used to interacting with the enemy but in a safe way.
Next, the player is faced with a harder challenge. The objective here is to face them with a harder application of the knowledge they just acquire to reinforce it and keep them engaged.
Right after that, I present a challenge with an enemy the player knew from previous levels. The goal with this is to give a bit of difference in kind and also to present the player with a challenge they already feel masters of.
From that, the player encounters the final challenge of the level. This challenge is a harder version of the concept introduced in the second challenge.
Once that tutorial level was ready I started working on finishing the blockout of the final level and doing the whole block out of the new tutorial level. The block out of the tutorial level was the harder of the 2 due to the size of the level and the huge amount of elements in it. Each time I finished a section, I played it to make sure it worked from the player’s perspective. Sadly, each time I played it I realized that fixing this zone revealed issues in other zones visible from that one. This happened due to the interconnectedness of the level and the many systems that are interacting there. For this reason I had to go back and forward, sometimes even needing to revisit the paper prototype. This ended up taking more of my time than expected.
Once the block out was finished I started finding out some bugs that went under our radar before. Though we managed to fix most of them, one bug related to climbing very tall surfaces still persists. We will need to tackle this bug next week.
Also, now that the block out was ready I made my partner play the game to get outsider feedback. In general she had a lot of fun but also confirmed what I had been thinking for a long time, the game needed polish. Half of the bugs we found were during these play sessions. She made me realize as well that there were sections where the game was a bit too hard. This won’t need changes to the level, only to the enemy stats.
My partner also commented on how much she liked having multiple options of how to tackle the level. She told me each different possible solution feels different and that she liked having the freedom of discovering which solution she preferred to do. She even told me that despite the polish issues she had a lot of fun. That once the polish is made we would have a very cool level.
The one big issue that I still have with this level is the confusing paper prototype. I showed it to my mentor and he made me realize something terrible, the map was too complex. I need to create paper prototypes that can be understood without me needing to explain it. For this reason, once the rest of the levels are designed I will remake this map. Still, he did mention that my paper prototype of the sleepy enemies tutorial was very good. I’ll aim to make better maps from now onwards aiming to have the clarity of the tutorial level or better.
Now, with the final level ready I started working on the block out of the tutorial level. Because this level was more cohesive and linear I managed to block it out way faster than the final level. Some bugs were also found while testing this level, but these were far fewer. In general that level has a great feeling of progression and flow while playing it.
Somehow, even with all the issues I had with the final level, I managed to reach my goals before friday. For this reason I started working on the tutorial for the walking enemies. I took advantage of the mindstate and motivation I had after finishing the sleepy tutorial block out and finished the paper prototype by the end of friday.
Initially, for this new tutorial I had the idea of using long hallways with a walking enemy walking in circles around it. In the end I wasn’t able to create a good level based purely on this as it felt either too hard or too simple. Though the idea didn’t work out, it did gave me some insights on how the principles of facing the walking enemies in hallways could be done.
Next, I started playing with the idea of having a level divided in 2 floors. From the first floor the player will see the exit door and a walking enemy that passes in front of it at one point of its route. I iterated on this idea 3 times until I came up with a version I was happy with. This final version uses the same principles of the sleepy tutorial level.
The level is separated into 4 sections. The 1st section introduces the player to the walking enemies in a safe way. The player starts the level from a point where they will see the walking enemy before anything else. If the player stays in this starting position they can safely observe the walking enemy without any danger for as long as they want. Once they feel ready they can go past them which is in itself a very simple task as this enemy is slow and a staircase that gets the player to the next section safe from that enemy is close to the starting point. As a final detail of this section, the player can see the exit door from this section. This sets the player goal early in the level.
The 2nd section presents the player with a more intense but quick challenge. I also use this second challenge to show that the walking enemies can make stops in their routes and that the player can take advantage of these.
Next, in the 3rd section the player faces a familiar challenge with a previously known enemy and mechanics. In this section I introduce the final challenge of the player, how to get the key on the wall in front of them to then open the big lock in the door. The player will need to come back to this section to claim the key, to avoid getting annoyed with long backtracking I made the 3rd and 4th sections rather small. Also, I made it so going between section from different position present different challenges, which keeps the player engaged.
The lock in this section needs 3 identical keys to be open. Inside section 3 the player can find 2 keys.
Finally the player gets to the 4th section, this section has 2 walking enemies in parallel routes. There are 2 pairs of keys in this section to open the locks in section 3. One pair on the north part and one pair on the south part of the map. This means the player will have to deal with at least one of the enemies.
Once the player has the key to the exit door, they will need to get in between the 2 walking enemy routes to get to the door. This will be the last challenge, and though it can be done quite quickly, it requires very good timing and control from the player.
