Howdy!
Yet another week has passed in developing our glorious game Samsara and I’m here to let you witness the sheer brilliance of my work.
Oh, thee Lord hath spoken! Please, enlighten us humble peasants.
Thine wish shall be granted.
This week I’ve once again indulged myself in the wonderful art of level design. This time around I’ve dived deeper into the intricacies of level design in comparison to last time. I’ve made a handful of improvements to the spawn patterns.
I’ve mainly experimented with the number of enemies, where they should spawn and at what intervals. To do this I’ve primarily used a nifty spawn tool set up by one of the team’s talented programmers. Below is a picture depicting the spawn tool and most of the values I’ve tweaked this week.
Enemy spawner.
Not to question thee Lord, but the fields don’t make any sense to me…
Oh fret not, I’ll sort this out. First of we have how many waves, or if you’d like, rounds of enemies that should spawn. Let’s use the picture as an example, in that I’ve set the spawn to 10waves. This means that predetermined enemy spawn patterns will be repeated 10 times before it ends. The number of enemy types the spawner can choose from is also displayed in the picture. The remaining values I’ve spent the most time on tweaking are those on the number of enemies the wave should contain and on how long the cool-downs between spawns should be. Finally, I’ve also experimented with the value where the spawner places the enemies (called “Spawn range”) on the Y-axis, that is vertically. All of these values combined, provide an experimental set-up perfect for enabling meaningful, enjoyable and challenging encounters.
Interesting, what more can Thee tell me?
In the game we’ve got five enemies excluding the final boss. As such, I’ve added spawn scripts for those five enemies. I’ve also made it so that the enemies are introduced one at a time so that the player gets to familiarize with the game and each enemy before they are mixed together. The enemies are set to first only appear together with the most basic enemy. This allows the player to get to know the enemy and its abilities. After approximately 30 seconds after a new enemy has been introduced the game will re-enable the other enemies to spawn. This means that the game will progressively introduce new enemies while still giving downtime for the player to learn the new enemy before it’s added to the steadily growing mix of enemies.
The enemy waves start after a set amount of time, for example, the bull is set to appear after 70 seconds of playtime. This makes it possible to provide the player with an even learning curve instead of throwing everything at once on him/her.
Ooh, how thankful we art for thine supreme guidance, everything makes more sense now. What kind of tribute do Thee desire as a token of our gratitude? A chocolate-chip cookie would be nice… But hang on to that tribute for the moment because there are some flaws to the spawner which has made me approach this the way I have. For example, one issue with the spawner is that it resets the number of enemy types to the value of one, after every launch. This is the reason why I’ve created a separate spawn script for every single enemy type, as I cannot have all in the same script. This is also the explanation for having used a timer between spawns to create a coherent and precise flow to the game.
It seems that Thee have solved this task appropriately. But haven’t Thine game already have a proper level?
No, up to this point we’ve only had a preliminary spawn set-up purely for test purposes, hence it’s a priority for me to get a functional and entertaining level ready for the final version of the game.
I see, but I do have to say that Thee seem to be on the right way! I am… Now, how about that cookie?
Sorry, I don’t want to anger Thee but I have no such tribute at this time. But I’ll requisition it; shall we say next Thursday? Splendid, we’ve reached an agreement.
Thank you all for reading and hopefully enjoying my latest escapade in the art of level design. See you all next Thursday. In the meantime, take care and enjoy life.
