Level Re-Design Week 6

Week 6, Group 12, Oscar Selstam

Background

This week our group has focused heavily on eliminating unnecessary elements and features that just won’t make the deadline. Amongst these were the level design. We had been developing the game after this image as it represented the rest of the design well.

The layout was designed using 45 degree slopes, circles and rectangles, simple shapes that would be relatively easy to implement whilst still keeping a interesting environment possible.

After major problems with the collision system, we first recently got rectangles working. There is just no more time to further develop the system, so the graphical artists will just have to work with the situation at hand

What

So we had to optimize the level layout to be smaller with a more compact gameplay space. Without the boss and environmental hazards making it in to the final we can remove the boss room and dead end pockets to avoid repetitive elements and empty spaces.

The new design utilizes rectangles solely where I try to accentuate all edges in the graphical overlay enough to inform the player of the boundary, whilst keeping the illusion of smoother walls.

How

I used out old concept and started cutting and moving the more remote parts closer to the center. The more important rooms would be semi incorporated but most babies were killed. I then simply scaled the entire image down using nearest neighbor sampling to achieve a high contrast pixellated result. I retraced the image with a pixel brush, smoothing and straightening certain parts to work better with the limitations of the resolution. Just like how Minecraft works better with square houses, our rectangular collision boxes work best in straight caves.

The layout of the level need some further touches to be more user friendly. Unlike the old design that had a lot of dead ends, I tried to make most rooms connect as to avoid the player accidentally taking the shortest route to the exit. I did this by simply drawing some connecting tunnels, with little to no detail to keep a contrast to the more complex rooms.

Why

The pixels are always going to be square, so as long as I use two colors we can use the image as a direct guide for the collision boxes. In a best case scenario we find a piece of software that can convert the level to symbols automatically. If this is the case, we can use a higher resolution of boxes.

To summarize, we simplified the design for the sake of easier programming, and will test the gameplay and appeal of the level before developing more visuals.

About Oscar Selstam

2015 Graphics

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