Month: October 2021

Final Major Project

LEVEL DESIGN * Playtesting * The Silent City

Much of the past week has been drafting levels and dividing each room according to the 8 rules detailed previously, as well as implementing them into the game itself. Alot of the level itself has been done with the intent to tutorialise the player into understanding the fundamental mechanics of the game:

  • Moving
  • Jumping
  • Crouching
  • Pushing objects around
  • Shooting the crossbow
  • Using ropes and rope arrows to maneuver through the level, etc.
  • First Tutorial area, teaches moving & jumping
  • Teaches push block mechanics
  • Find the crossbow, teaches how to use the crossbow
  • Stealth Section
  • Uses push block to hide from the golem sentries.
  • Teaches how to use ropes.
  • Use rope arrows to climb up the ledge and make your way back to the top.
  • Use rope arrows to cross the gap, make your way to the rest of the level.
  • Final entrance to the remainder of the level.

As of now, half the level has been drafted. Alongside the grayboxing, which is meant to have exploration as ready as possible, I have made a list of things that need to be added to increase a player’s understanding of what is happening across the world.

A corpse will be placed at the entrance of the stealth section. A corpse will be placed at the location of the crossbow. Wooden surfaces are found with rope arrows already embedded inside them, additionally, the sun gem will be available from this corpse, but nothing allows the player to head back up, forcing them to go through the small gauntlet to learn how to use ropes and then acquire the rope arrows.

After receiving feedback from tutors and playtesters, some areas have been changed, notably the rope arrow test room, which focuses more on learning how to properly climb up and down ropes, as well as understanding that one can only spawn ropes when shooting at wooden surfaces with rope arrows.

Rope arrows can only spawn ropes if the arrow strikes wooden surfaces.

The previous layout of this room section taught about ledge climbing more than it did about rope arrows, which needed to be changed. (I encountered a problem where the player did not inherit the velocity of the rope swing, which will have to be fixed soon).

Update: It has been fixed! Much of the movement is now perfected, all that needs to be looked into are walking animations and jumping animations. But I can finally move onto level design properly as well as enemy creation. Acquiring the crossbow early on means I will have to initiate the player to its utility, thus I’ve placed a placeholder enemy that will attack the player and is blocking the way forwards.

“Bright Green Circles” are dubbed Sentry Eye Golems, which will build up an attack against the player and shoot them if they do not hide or move out of the way quickly enough.

The player now jumps off of ledges and ropes, meaning it allows for a more fluid and less drastic transition from ledge hangs to jumping, all I require now is to establish a jumping animation and walking animation and the player character itself will be complete.

After which, I will have to establish health bars (likely 3 hits before dying), and HUD for the quiver of arrows. All of which is being worked on as we speak, apologies for the long, distant lack of diary logs beforehand.