fredag 24 februari 2017

5sd064 Thomas Härdin Designing Level Progression

I am back for another update. This time covering our take on level progression. 

Since our, Fenrir's game contain multiple levels in form of hacking doorpads as a spy doing industrial espionage we pretty early in development realised that this means we may very well need to create multiple levels. The follow-up concern for me became the fact that we needed a system for progressing after finishing a level, the player of course would want to move to the next area if they have completed the prior.

The way we dealt with this at an early stage and kept for considerable amount of time was through having a script that triggers when pressing the key "E" on the position where we visually put doors. This launches the player into a new scene tied to the door and you have to destroy all enemy spawners on the other side (right side) of the screen. When you accomplish this task another script tied to the current scene will trigger and launch you to the next room. This repeating itself again and again with new scenes over the course of the game.

Personally i thought this did not really capture the feel of moving from room to room in an office building, nor did it allow the player to move back to earlier rooms to look for things they might have skipped. I wanted the player to have that freedom to roam back and search around, also being able to see the next room in line would be way better to motivate the player to keep moving forward.

How did i solve this? Well to be honest it is not solved quite yet. I had the idea for some time that we put all the rooms you roam in the same scene with doors that opens or gets deleted when you finish the level that door was tied to. My programmers are currently working on it and it looks like this is doable which itself is a success for the player experience in this game. 

I will take it with me that if you make a system that you are not pleased with, dont hesitate to try out changes or you will risk keeping an unsatisfactory model of your game. Until next time!

2 kommentarer:

  1. Hi Thomas.

    I am your commenter of the week, and I hope that you will appreciate my comment.


    I can see that you seem to have a problem fixing the level progression. But, since I did not have the pleasure to test your game at the latest playtesting session, I do not know if you have any real gameplay other than the hacking. I read your other blogposts, and still I am not sure if there is. Then why even the “progression” sequence if the only thing the player can do is roam around?

    What I would have done in that scenario is either add some kind of gameplay or make the progression part to a cutscene. Some examples for said gameplay could be dodging cameras and workers for the company. If you make it like that, you could use the system of progression you use at the moment and do not need to change it to one scene as you wanted now (but you can still do that as well if you would want to).

    Either way, I hope you solve your problems and make a good game.

    /TUK

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. Good feedback Tuk, the issue i was describing was the fact that we have gameplay for hacking doors but not much to do when roaming the office areas and the transition to get further into the game is the level progression i was trying to work with. Thanks for the ideas, will certainly think about the camera system you mentioned.

      Radera