Project Resurgence: Blog 5

Progress from 11/7-12/7

Since the last blog post the game has come to the end but I'll catch everyone up to speed on what we did until then. 

First off we fixed some issues that we saw from the final playtest on 11/7. Many of these fixes were visual because the overall layout of the level was pretty concrete at that point. 

These fixes were:

• Fixing any snapping spacing issues
• Adjusting mechanics that would send you into environmental pieces
• Removing environment pieces to improve gameplay and flow throughout the level
• Changing the tiling of the floor to make it in the direction the hallway was going
• Took a look at the enemy sections because some players were having issues with them

One of the larger changes that we made was adding the mechanics onto environmental pieces to make them feel like they belonged better throughout the level. We added these all throughout the level to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

The other large change that our lead suggested was changing the floor tiling to match the direction of the hallways and rooms. So went through and changed all the sections that didn't match up correctly. We had to extend some hallways and do a couple of tweaks for certain sections to make it work but we got everything matched up correctly now. This made the level more aesthetically pleasing too.

I also took a look at the fighting areas initially to make sure the enemies we presented weren't too difficult for the players but we realized that the issue was more so that the player's hits weren't registering rather than the enemies being too difficult.

For the 11/7 playtest we also had to do runs of our levels for the new scoring system that was in place. So I did about 40 runs of our level and plotted out the scores for the different rankings within the level. This should promote the speedrunning aspect of the game and encourage players to combo the mechanics throughout the level a lot more.

Here is an example of what that looks like:

 

We also implemented a few small tweaks that the project lead recommended like adding a couple of level mechanics to specific routes and adding assets in particular places to make the level look and flow better overall or to slow the player down on the lower pathways. 

For example we added these gates to one of the lower paths to slow the player down while also making the environment overall more interesting. 

Other than those larger changes we just spent a lot of time polishing and tweaking the level. Our lead had us run through our level multiple times and had us fix z-fighting and gapping issues. We also adjusted some of the colliders on specific objects as well as fixed some problem areas where the player could get outside of the map.

We also reorganized our hierarchy a bunch and made sure that everything in our scene was a prefab to get it ready for sound in the game. 

There were a couple bumps along the way to the final product as well. Daniel and I ran into an issue where one of the other Level Designers pushed up an asset pack that overrode some of our current prefabs. So I had to go back and re-export our old prefabs from an older version of collab and re-import them. 

Another issue we ran into was someone in programming pushed up a fix, to optimize some lighting in level 1 and it messed up the lighting for levels 2, 3, and 4. We fixed this in our level by placing a directional light back in the scene and rebaking the lighting but for the other levels, this didn't fix the issue, unfortunately.

Lastly, Daniel and I updated the annotated map for our level so now it matches the current level and layout. 

Here is an image of the overall annotated map, although it's hard to see without being the PSD file:

Other than all those changes we have just done a lot of polish and tweaking of our level to make sure everything looks good and works. We fixed a lot of bugs that came with incoming pushes from collab and got our level in good working condition. I also tried to help out the other level designers with their levels when they were having issues, such as fixing lighting issues, playtesting, etc. 

But now the game has come to an end. The experience on this game has taught me a lot about cooperation and teamwork as well as what it takes to take a concept of a level from full start to finish. There were a lot of bumps in the road but overall I feel the class has taught me a lot and that I'm a better level designer because of it!