Escape – Group 4 – Week 7 – Level Editing

After a few delays, the lead programmer gave the “ok” to start using his level editor for the project. As per the SCRUM-meeting for the week, I took on the task of using the editor to build all planned levels. Little did I know what lied in wait for me.

Using the editor and building the levels (or “sectors”, as we call them for this project), goes like this:

1. A mockup of the level done by the graphics designers is loaded as a template.
2. Walls and outside boundaries are placed by setting coordinates for upper left and lower right corners of rectangles.
3. Props like furniture and other environmental objects are placed by setting middle point coordinates, angle in degrees and setting full, half or no light transparency for the games lighting engine.
4. Setting up the guards (NPC’s) spawn points and waypoint patrol patterns.
5. Placing key-items.
6. Setting player spawn point and level exit.

After almost a week, I’m still working on one level and I’m still on the second phase. There’s no undo-, move- or delete-function for the objects placed in the editor. The saved data is in shape of TXT-files, so every misstep has to be fixed manually by editing the TXT’s.

In order to get the most accurate coordinates, I open the mockup pictures in Photoshop. I place the the objects as layers, read the coordinates and angle degrees. Then I switch back to the level editor and place the objects using the data from Photoshop.
The level sizes varies from 7000×7000 to 10’000×10’000. Following the mockups close to pixel-perfect is a very time consuming process and it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to finish this task by myself. Therefore, one of the graphics designers was appointed to help editing the other levels.

There are two reasons why we chose to build our levels like this:

• We wanted to avoid using a tile-system. We didn’t want the levels to have a readable and blocky pattern, but to have a more irregular and interesting feel and design.
• In order to make our lighting engine work as well as possible, the walls and boundaries needed to be set into side by side squares. When setting the corner coordinates for the walls, the editor divides the set rectangles into a number of differently sized squares.

It’s monotone and very time consuming work. But in order to give the player an experience as good as possible, I’m willing to put up with it.