Another day, another level and some tips aswell

Hello

Today I finished the first dungeon of the game, it still dont have it’s enemies, but everything else’s already there.

This level was made in 7 days, I like to divide the tasks by day, using a LDD (level design document)

So what does this LDD have?

First it has an Schedule of the days until the deadline (This is really important since it makes you focus only on the level (a.k.a work like crazy until its finished)

then we have the map creating guidelines that are divided in various subsections.

Game type (Genre / how many players / platform)

Story (a brief story of the map (ex: “It’s an old battlefield were long-lost vehicles from an ancient civilization rust in peace” … rust in peace.. err megadeth? -.-” )

Map objective (the main Objective to complete the level (not goal since thats the player objective) of the map (ex: get safe to the other side, destroy the enemy generator, etc)

Top ~ Down sketch (a very rustic image of the topology of the map, like those old maps from geography books were you can see water and land..)

Gameplay of the level (how it will be played, what the player can and will (you don’t have much control here),  do during his stay on the level)

The Audience (what are the “specs” of your user? (you can’t find more doing an analyse centered on the user))

Wich elements you will focus? (you can’t make everything perfect, but you can make it pretty good if you focus on the core elements of the level (what makes it really good, the graphics? places to explore?)

the third part, the visuals of the map

The concept of the map (how it looks?, it’s a canyon? a forest?, get some images on google or something like that to get an idea of the environment you are planning to do)

The time of the day, Season, colors. (its night? Day?, its raining ? there’s a sandstorm outside your house?!)

How I will direct my player? (will I use sounds? lights? a sign? or a giant mutant monster that wants to eat you?)

Feel and atmosphere (which feelings I want to pass to my player?, does the level is a scary and dark mine?, it’s a colorful and happy garden full of bunnies?, It’s a desolate place of a very cheerful merchant city? )

And finally your own touch (what makes it really unique XD).

All this planning is made in the first day in the schedule, the other ones are divided by the tasks we need to finish, I like to make the basic geometry of the map and put some textures on the terrain on the second day so I will know where’s the cliffs and where the player can walk for example)

alright now let me talk more about this map I made, it’s the first dungeon of our game “Ucronia”, first I was thinking of a simple junkyard but it wasn’t really cool, so I remembered an old game called Brave Fencer Musashi, it had some obstacles like barriers of steam etc, and since our game style is Steampunk, I had an idea of changing the junkyard to an abandoned factory with steam machines and triggers to be activated.

the environment chosen was a cove by the sea (searched like crazy for various images of coves, and seashores then finally had an idea for the top down sketch (I wont post the drawings since I will be sued by stealing a kindergarten student drawing (yeah it’s really bad, I need to train my drawing skills)

Finally the level, Have fun playing it (still i cant find a good way to change from first person / third person, maybe on the next level! lol )

The Controls: W A S D (move) Shift (run) Mouse (move camera) Left Mouse Button (shoot)

The Level Link >> The Junkyard

Thanks, and give some comments of the level.

Carlos.

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yay! the mighty webplayer XD

Hello, and good news, I have uploaded the 3 day challenge game on the web so you can play in this link : 3 Days Challenge

controls are the basics of an FPS game but w/o the guns lol

W A S D / Space / Mouse to move the camera.

Also have a look at one of the cities of our game, finished making the animations / scripting the base of our hero controls, so you can have fun jumping and exploring the city, it still don’t have its inhabitants but soon will be, also I will start making the first dungeon of the game the junkyard (*¬*), more updates soon.

The City of Dalia (our little steampunk small village with toony looks x.x)

Controls: W A S D / space Jump/ left shift Run / mouse rotates the camera around the player

(yeah the ocean water suck, I will make a custom one later T.T)

(also he has a badass gun that shoot barrels, but it’s not enabled in this player, It’s pretty hard to implement FPS / Thirdperson controllers on the same guys and make it change on the fly, im still having a hard time, and I must finish another task before this)

note – You have to install Unity’s web player plugin its a small plugin that enables you to play unity made games, its like a flash plugin so its alright 😮

Cya, Carlos.

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3 Day level design challenge

I made this challenge to myself in 28 dec until 31, to make a level (a very simple level)

The reason it was made in 3 days was because of an article from a community called “worldofleveldesign dot com”, about the same challenge the creator of the community made to himself, it was a great read and for everyone who wana  be a level designer you should go there, they have a great community and that’s what really inspired me to make this level.

The other reason was to learn the tools of the game engine our team was going to make our game for university, the engine of choice was Unity, and the more I use it the more I love it, I wont talk anymore about it, see for yourselves, it’s a great engine with a great community and helpful staff XD.

//off topic

so I wanted to put the game here using the web player but i need first make an wordpress.org blog, so this blog will be moved someday (not duke nukem forever “someday” really x.x)

off topic// XD

And now, pictures of my first tryout on unity, for me it was very productive, also im planning to make some detailed worklogs from the levels of our game that must have interaction and objectives for the player instead of just a terrain with a camera moving XD

ps: forgot to say something important, the inspiration of this map was from an random anime wallpaper i saw, and it was pretty cool, so i made this landscape based on it and i dont remember anything more to post, my caffeine levels on blood are too low, i need to recharge *¬*

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Yay first post… *¬*

Hello, my name is Carlos, im a game dev student.

my main focus is in level design and gameplay, but i will be posting anything related to game development that come to my head.

making the long story short: I decided to make this blog to show, and get opinions about the games me and my team are developing, also discuss about my experience and thoughts when developing a game and what makes it fun to play, currently we are using Unity as our game engine (and our first game on it will be this semester, I will be posting tips, etc about using Unity and aswell showing the scenarios and parts of the games we make.

I think that’s all for now, time organize other things on the blog, and post some levels XD

See ya.

Carlos.

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