Level Design
The focus of today’s lab is to continue the level design work that you did in the previous communication lab. In the previous lab, you identified building blocks (also known as design patterns) for your level design. Now it is time to put these together into a single lab.
While this is going on, the TAs will be circling the room and occassionally giving their own feedback on your discussion. If anything is unclear about this assignment, or the document in general, please ask them. They have been through this process before (some of the TAs have done this multiple times). While this is going on, the TAs will be present on Discord and occassionally giving their own feedback on your discussion. If anything is unclear about this assignment, or the document in general, please ask them. They have been through this process before (some of the TAs have done this multiple times).
Table of Contents
Level Design
If you are unhappy with your building blocks from the previous communication lab, feel free to spend the first part of the class coming up with a few more.
However, we want you to spend the majority of the class time creating an interesting level. You can do this by arranging your building blocks in a sequence. With that said, the best design takes place when you can combine building blocks together simultaneously. We gave several examples of this in commercial genres in the previous lab
That is all we have to say – make a level. Make sure that you level has a clear start position and end position. We also want to see two or three challenges in the level built from your design patterns.
Examples
Our instructions for this lab are admittedly somewhat vague. To give you a better idea of what to do, here are some examples from previous semesters.
Dash
Winner of Most Polished Game in the Spring 2014 Showcase, Dash has incredible level design. Look at how they put everything together in this document. This document also shows that you do not need fancy art for your level design, so a quick sketch during lab is very possible.
Ribbons
Winner of Most Innovative Game in the Spring 2014 Showcase (2014 was one of out best years ever), Ribbons is a platformer where the player controls both a character and a ribbon threaded throughout the level. The ribbon allows players to move platformers toward them instead of relying only on jumping challenges. The intermediate level here is very solid, and a good show of what this game was able to accomplish.
Beck & Chuck
Another popular game from the Spring 2014 Showcase, Beck & Chuck was an action platformer where the player could throw a returning ball. It had several standard platforming challenges like jumping and wall climbing. With that said, the level design was very smooth and it kept the action going at all times.
Critique
The lecture the lecture immediately following this lab is a critique session. We want you to present whatever you have done in the past two labs in class for feedback. There is no official document for level design, so this is the only time you will get any feedback from us outside of your milestone demonstrations.
Once again we will pair you in groups. As before you will present you material to the other group, this time showing a level instead of a building block. In response, the other group will try to improve your level, rearranging the challenges or replacing them with ones that are more interesting. When you are done with this process, the two groups will swap places.
You have a lot to do this week if you expect to finish alpha release in time. Therefore, we are not expecting you to do any work outside of lab. Finish what you can in lab today. On the day of critique, bring whatever you finished. If the level design is incomplete, that is okay. But please make an effort to complete as much as possible during class.