Level Plan and Whitebox

Level Planning

After discussions with Donny and the environment artists, it was decided I was to design the dungeon area/level for the game. I was informed today as well that this would be the primary focus for the demo so I have to be sure that it is looking as good as it can be in the time I have. 

Before I began designing the level, I started to research into other dungeon crawler games such as Legend of Grimrock and Path of Exile which have similar environments within them. I was looking for inspiration on how the level flows out and how the environment layout is. I also took a lot of inspiration of what assets could be included in the level. Any asset ideas were later passed onto Josh who got straight to creating the assets. 

Initial Dungeon level floor plan

After jotting down all my notes and gathering my ideas, I made a start at designing the Dungeon level. As seen above I, I took inspiration I learnt from other games and real life designs by going with some tight corridors which open up into wide open areas. The level shall be going through a feedback process over the next week before anything is finalised. 

Whitebox Level within the Unreal Engine 4

After I had finished the floor plan design, I went straight into the Unreal Engine 4 to create a whitebox level version. The purpose of this was to get a good look at the areas where game play will be taking place and to get the correct proportion sizes against the character. I began to include some assets which had been supplied by Josh, which were the prison gates and the prisoner beds. The screenshots below are the featured level viewed from different perspectives with the third screenshot showing off how close it was to the original plan. At this stage, they are are all shown off in unlit mode as we do not have a lighting rig set up yet. 

Thanks for reading

D. Farrell

My Final Year Project blog - http://dazfyp.blogspot.co.uk/

Pre-Production Design Work

Brainstorming

During the first couple of weeks, myself and the other designer within the group got straight to brainstorming ideas for the games project. Essentially building the foundations for the game design specification which will shall be completed at a later date. We went back and forth between different ideas we had for the game, covering areas such as the game overview, game mechanics, story and narrative and also areas of research which we could delve into. These discussions were kept documented with an Evernote document and then later presented to the rest of the group within a team meeting. 

Game Mechanics Priority Listing

After our brainstorming sessions had finished, and planning for the game was underway, we set ourselves a list of priorities for game mechanics. From top to bottom, we listed which game mechanics we would like to have in the game to mechanics would be just nice to haves. Again, these were documented within an Evernote document and saved for future use. 

Task Keeping

In order to ensure everyone knows where everyone is up to with their role in the project, we have enlisted the use of Trello. Trello is flexible and visual way to manage and organise projects. Each member of the group has signed up and has their own task cards. Members of the groups will have cards which will display what task they are currently undertaking and how far along they are progressing. There is also a pool of tasks which members are able to allocate to themselves or to someone else which is clearly visible due to everyone thanks to their notification system. With the use of Trello, it has made it extremely useful for me as a designer to see how far along assets are coming along and when they are ready to plug into the game and also to see how far along all the design side of things are going. Below is a screenshot to show so far how Trello is looking. 

Thanks for reading

D. Farrell

My Final Year Project blog - http://dazfyp.blogspot.co.uk/

Welcome to my Advanced Games Development Blog

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my Advanced Games Development blog. The purpose of this blog will be to document and keep track of the progression throughout my AGD module. I will start by describing who it is I am. I am a third year student at Teesside University studying on a BA Hons. Games Design course.  The AGD module primarily focuses on taking a unique piece of concept created by ourselves and then through group practices turning that into physical working product.

Within my AGD team, I take on the role as one of two designers. I have the responsibly alongside the other designer to come up with innovative and constructive ideas based on game mechanics, level flow and design and narrative. During the initial phase, we shall be putting our minds together to brainstorm ideas, whereas after we shall split off to work on our own sections of the demo and game.

After discussion amongst the group and high approval from each member, we decided the game will be creating will fall under the dungeon crawler genre. The game will incorporate some comedy values to it while breaking the fourth wall on some occasions. We will be taking influence from other games such as Wildstar [1] in regards to the humour sense. The game may feature RPG elements as well, but very simple stuff as three pieces of equipment to change on and off and some slightly generic stat progression. This all depends on the time we have and the skill level of the relevant members.

Interwire Entertainment

Interwire Entertainment is the name of our working group which features 10 members. We are set to create one epic game. Below is a list of names of the members involved with the project and their respective role:

Designers

Damian Farrell

Donny Evason 

Artists

Oliver Pitcher - http://riivington.blogspot.co.uk/

Josh Flowers - http://joshflowersagd.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Chris Rumsey - http://chrisrumseyagd.blogspot.co.uk/

Cory Bamford - http://www.corybamford.com/blog/cat/agd

Adam Higgins
JJ Behan

Animator 

Richard Desmond

Programmer

James Byrne

Thanks for reading

D. Farrell

My Final Year Project blog - http://dazfyp.blogspot.co.uk/

References

[1] NCSoft (2014) Available at: http://www.wildstar-online.com/uk/ .