Game Designer
Aldar
Background/Process
Transition into the Team
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Before I was accepted into the team, I had to prepare myself by reading their game design document and watching a few of the videos of what their game was like.
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I formulated some questions that were based on things that were unclear to me when I read their document or watch their videos.
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I also constantly talked with producers about my plan on what I wanted to do with the level and get their feedback on what I came up with at the moment.
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Below are pictures of my written knowledge of the game so far and questions as I was getting into knowing the project.
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The video next to the images is the game at the state of when I joined when they were still in production.
Planning on Level Changes
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The first image below is my action plan on what the player would be doing throughout the game and it also covered the idea of having optional encounters.
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The second image is my first draft of what the level would've looked like and it accounted for a golden path and having an upper floor to the map.
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I also did more notes, third image, on what to keep in mind about from previous made levels and the three part acts of the game.
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Fourth image is my higher planning on what the island is like to the player and where should players start on level.
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The first three was my thoughts on how to expand the level to give room for players to explore each mechanics and have room to find each encounters.
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I did initial implementation to gather the team's thoughts and one of the producer was concerned about the size while some of the other members started to think about filling the level.
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After meeting with the professor and teaching assistants (TA), both agreed that I should go and restructure it with the same pieces that the white-box had and so I tried to think of ways to make the structure better for player experience in the level.
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The last image is my final action plan before I actually went into implementing the level with the previous pieces of the white-box in mind.
Changing the Level in Engine
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Below are videos of the game with changes that I made through iterating the level with playtesters' and teammates' feedback.
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When I finished the planning phase of the level design, I had less than a month and a half left to change the level so I took the professor's and TA's feedback and immediately jumped into changing the level without paper layout.
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When working on the level in engine, I thought about moving the waterfall to the center as a point of reference for players when walking around the map.
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Throughout the level work in engine, I also used the artist's plant life that was available and placed them where I was able to either block players' view to certain things or to use them as platforms to get to a collectible.
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When the environmental artist saw what I had so far, the artist went into it and touched up on some of the parts and created islands as a way to detail the background of the world.
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I utilized the islands to create a side area which was also the tutorial island and I started the structure of the island but my producer wanted to work on the tutorial while I focus on the main island.
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Through playtests, players and my teammates really wanted an underwater cave so I went and made one since it made sense when people kept checking under the waterfall.
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To further entice players into the waterfall cave, I set one of the important main objective items in it.
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Throughout the structural changes, I organized the encounters of picking up collectibles and ingredients based on what kind of objects they were; an example is the air plants would belong to the platform leafs since you are encouraged to jump and climb to high places.
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For the platforming bits of the level, I constantly played through it to make sure it was achievable by most players.
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At a certain point, the team thought some of the areas were flat so I tried to raise and lower some of the landscape some more.
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The overall feel for the level was to create a sense of discovery throughout and it feels like someone is hiking on a small foresty island.
Development Background
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Before leaving my previous team, I wanted to find a team that used Unreal that didn't have enough work in their level design so that I can improve it and learn from working in a genre I hadn't worked on before.
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With the above point in mind, I found Viridian and I really wanted to improve their level after watching their video about the game and reading through their document.
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The team had troubles trying to assign the creative lead role for the game since the original creative lead couldn't continue with team due to external reasons.
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Though the team communicated throughout development, we didn't have enough talking points about the game's future.
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The team disbanded after most, if not all, artists on the team burned out on the project for working on it over the summer.
Challenges
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Trying to get on board of the team as quickly as possible so production can continue smoothly with a new member on team.
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Trying to make a complete level in less than two months of joining the team.
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Making sure that players understood what to do throughout the game based on level design.
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I had no prior experiences with open world level design and this game is very open in level.
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Some of the stuff I had available to work with like the game mechanics and some of the art was still being changed and it affected a lot of the level design stuff that I did.
Lessons Learned
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When trying to join a development team in production, it is best to do as much research on the project and also try to come up with enough questions to know what you are working with.
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Not every level needs to be expanded to be better and ways to improve it can be re-positioning pieces that already existed or placing encounters in the right places.
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Guiding players with many encounters in a small space is really tough when players get overwhelmed by many things to do in a small level.
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Open world level design is kind of tricky but it works well if there is enough room to see some of the encounters and trying to lead players through a certain path was interesting when working with open world.
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Whenever someone is working on something that may be changed at any time, always be prepared to reevaluate the level based on the change on either the art side or the tech side.