10 Week Project – Week 1 – Level Design
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Ok, so I forgot to write a blog post about our new 10 week project where we get to choose another groups concept and develop a game around that. A quick recap: We chose the concept of the game Escape. Anyways, ever since we started the project I have, as the lead designer, written our game design document which probably won’t make for an exciting blog post. That blog post would basically be… our game design document. So I’m going to write about the research and thoughts I’ve had about level design, which I’m going to be officially handling next week. We have designed the game to by all about stealth, which we are trying to portrait with our GUI. This means that we are basically eliminating any pop ups of information, any health bars and ammo counters. Everything should be diegetic (seen within the level or as a part of the level) and a partly non-diegetic spatial interface. Example of a diegetic method of GUI. (Splinter Cell: Conviction) Posting clues on walls would be hard for us since it’s top down. Dammit. This means that we are trying remove any prompting the player into doing things by displaying information like “Press E to use”. We want the players to feel like they’ve figured it out by themselves and we want a clean GUI so that it doesn’t distract the players planning. So, how can I do that? I could just stand next to the players and tell them what buttons to press. But that seems like it would remove the fun for the player of figuring out the controls and how to traverse the level. And it would be weird for me to stand and breathe down your neck while you’re playing. I need to find a way of informing the players of the controls, telling them how to use them and help them understand the dynamics of the game (But without any obvious text on the screen). I compiled a list of what I need to show the player, in somewhat of an order of how they should be introduced:
I will divide these into different blog posts since I’m already about to reach 400 words. But let’s start with the introduction of the game world! As I’ve already mentioned, this game is all about sneaking around and being stealthy. This is the feeling the player must get as soon as the level loads. So what is “sneak”? Sneak or sneaking is to move in a quiet way and to move quietly you probably will need to move slowly. So I have to introduce the world in a slow and calm way to get the player into the mindset of a sneaky Pete. I started to think about my day to day routine and during what parts of the day am I the calmest. And it was pretty clear to me that I was calmest and most relaxed when waking up during a weekend morning. So what happens during those first seconds of waking up? I’m well rested and relaxed and I’m slowly opening my eyes fully for the first time since I feel a sleep. I’m basically being calmly introduced to a new day and my own world. And I’m not being hit with a sense of stress, just a nice waking up which makes me able to take my time and plan my morning without any distractions. I’m in control of my morning. So, with this in mind, we might be able to get the player in that mindset if the level is faded into view after the player hits “start”. Just like when we open our eyes when we wake up! This should get the player a calm start and give him/her a chance to survey the area before the avatar can fully move and while the level is faded in, even if the fade only lasts 2-3 seconds. If we don’t throw any tough challenges at the player right away, they will get comfortable quicker and feel like they are in control. If we were to just start the level as soon as the player hits start, it would be like being woken up by your stupid alarm and you would (probably) fly out of bed and the first feeling that hits you is “stressed”. We would send out a signal of: “TAADAAAH! Now MOOOOVE!!” We need to test the effect of this in the Beta. But I can imagine that it will work to a certain extent since we will have a calm introduction, a darkened level (which will force the player to stop and think before moving), high focus on sounds with both audible and visual feedback from the sources of the sounds and calm, suspenseful music. According to my cookbook, that will create success at 225 degrees for about 10 minutes. Sorry for the boring introduction of the project, next time I’ll hit the designing right away with introduction to the mission and maybe some of the mechanics. |
