Process of Level Design

Week 1

The level design process sounds simple at first as it may just sound like all you have to do is create a level, but a lot can go into creating one that it may be a bit mind-boggling. This is my process of creation of making a game which may differ from designer to designer, but this is how I would create mine. The use of blogger over Tumblr and WordPress was because of my past experiences with it as I had used it in my old college course extensively. The game I am be studying would be Total War: Troy. This game is set during the Trojan War in Ancient Greece

I started with a proposal. This is to get to grasps of what I am making and what it would generally look like. you can't create a game from a whim as it will end up sloppy and rushed so it is best to get the general layout sorted before it becomes an issue with what I create and what I can create. My design will be based around that of a gate and wall in the background with forest in the foreground. There will be bodies on the floor with some blood and weapons as the focus is on the trojan war and the fighting that occurred. The focus of the environment will be about sound as that can speak volumes on what you see and do with what you make. Sound can set the scene better than any spoken dialogue as it is universal in its portrayal.

The next decision is an important one as well as this can tell you what you will be making it on. I am talking about the game engine as different engines can give you different benefits and downsides. 

Unity was my first option.

The Unity engine has some rather good upsides as it is very easy to use as they give you a lot of resources. The engine is amazing for beginners as well as professionals as it gives a wide range of options and capabilities to use. Unity is rather basic as it doesn't give nearly as many graphical options as any other game engine but what graphics it does give do look good on all devices. The source code is also nice and stable but it is difficult to fix any performance issues as the actual source code is unavailable. Overall, it is rather good for what it promotes but it struggles with what I really need so I won't be using it for now, this could change later in the lifecycle.

The next engine that I could use would be the Unreal Engine.

Unreal is a very good engine for visual fidelity and how good a map can look, under the right conditions. The pros and cons are fairly simple, the graphics are fully controllable and can be whatever you want. The lighting systems are also controllable as well as the wind, fog, and even smoke, all of which can be affected by each other. It is also easily accessible, if you don't mind a bit of C++. The problem is in the fact that expertise in the program is needed for the high quality content as it can take quite a while, especially if you need a lot of assets. The learning curve is steep and needs a lot of practice as well, this isn't a bad thing as becoming a level designer requires extensive knowledge in the engine as well as coding.

This week was all about figuring out what to do and how to do it. Finding which engine to use and for what reason was also needed and now that is done, I can start making designs for the level which will continue next week.

Week 2

This week, I have started a design called a blockout for my level.

The purpose of a blockout are the first step to building a level with it having not much substance in the way of art but makes up for it by having the objects used having all the proper clipping. It will look bland but that is because it is supposed to as it slowly gets more and more of the textures you need to make it look nicer. It is also used to set the stage of what it will look like and can be easily manipulated to either add or remove objects. My stage will be as I have already stated, as a battlefield, in front of a gate and wall, with some trees and piles of dead bodies. They won't look like much at first but as they are a placeholder, it doesn't have to.

The first thing I did was making a floor with some trees. The landscape that they were in would support the trees and how much access they had. After that, I added a couple of objects to make it look like that bodies would be there but other than that, it wasn't really in-depth. I then focuses on the walls, It was a few basic objects for the wall but it still looked fairly similar to wall, I won't be putting as much focus on the wall this week but next week I will be. Other than that, this is the only thing I have done so far and will update this blog further next week.

Week 3

This week will be a continuation of the blockout and what I will be focusing on in this session will be the wall as that is the main selling point. The wall was basically a bunch of objects that resembled a wall but didn't look like the wall I was aiming for. What I was aiming for was the wall to be reminiscent of what the city of Troy's wall looked like. As I don't have the best references to work off of, I decided to base it off a movie called, fittingly, Troy (2004). 

The first thing I worked on was the walls as they were very straight, contrary to the walls in the photo which are a slanted. They could be slanted to either help the defenders fight the attackers or to make sure that the walls don't fall during sieges or earthquakes. I made them slanted and also added a wall to help differentiate the slanted wall and the straight wall. I the focused on the tower as that was also slanted and not straight. The wall is also separated into two different sections, one was limestone and the other was potentially marble, given how smooth it looks. The bottom half looks like it is in more of a slant than the top so I represented that in my blockout. 

After the walls and towers were fixed, I focused on the top of the towers and making the teeth that appear on the top. All four towers end up having the spikes on the corners which is difficult to pull off if you don't know what you are doing, but, as I have prior knowledge, was fairly easy to figure out. The cylinders that appear outside the towers are also implemented as well but I currently do not know what they are for as not much documentation has went in to them. I can assume they are for hanging up flags of affiliation or for clans but that is only a guess for what they can be used for.

That is all of what I have done for this week, next week I will be focusing on the last of the block out by expanding the amount of trees I have and making them shorter as they are currently half the size of my walls and also making more of them to make the forest seem a lot more plentiful rather than having a handful of trees.

Week 4

This week was simpler as the goal was easier to reach. The wall, after further examination, saw that the wall was not as close as I would like as it was to the movie inspiration. I took most of the time in configuring the model to be as accurate as I could make it. The side towers on the tower were too high up and needed to be lowered but this would affect the teeth of the wall which would affect the corner pieces.

From that point on I focused on giving the walls some TLC by giving the proper rotation and dimensions as well. This took some time as it wouldn't properly work as the two textures would jumble and look like a mess so I made the bottom wall ever so slightly bigger to help with the clipping issue. The teeth of the walls also had the same issue but instead of making them bigger, I merely made the the correct size to what they are meant to be.

After I had done that, I focused on the trees. The trees were too few and far between and needed more of them to feel like a forest, I summarily made the trees thinner as they were also as wide as two people. I fiddled with the sound FX to see if it would broadcast the sound from a certain distance which worked so I will be attaching this to an actual tree model. The blockout lays out where I am putting the model and what it will be, like if it was on fire or not.

That was the last of the blockout with some changes being made to the wall and trees but the next step would be adding detail to the map, I will start with the wall and gate and make my way to the trees until I ended up making even more small improvements like the lighting and atmosphere. 

Week 5

This week was less about the blockout and more of about finding the appropriate materials, skeleton meshes and textures for the map. I first started out with finding some trees, the trees I was aiming for would be Fir and Oak as they appeared the most often in the Greek terrain. This was easier said than done as I was aiming for something that was fairly cheap, which was difficult, given that the unreal engine store charges fairly high for tree skeleton meshes and textures. I eventually found one on Gumroad that works fantastically as they not only have five different types of the same tree but also has much more than just the Fir and Oak tree as they have 6 other different tree types.

After discovering the trees and testing them in my map to see if they work. I tried to find two different types of materials for the wall, it started with looking in the wall section of the unreal store, I found one good material for the lower wall but the top wall was not there. The top wall was a bit trickier to find but I instead found a website that can create walls for you with some that looked really good. The Marseille wall that was front and centre on the page was good enough for what I needed as it was ancient but not in the same place as the Ancient Greeks walls. They needed to loom like marble as that was what the structure would have been made of which this one looked like.

That was the last of what I did this week, it may not of seemed like much but it was all good enough for what was needed to accomplish. The next week, I will be looking for the gate materials as well as implementing what I have found into the map. If that is completed quickly and with not much delay. I will be moving onto some ground textures as well to make it seem more realistic.

Week 6

This week is a big week as it involves the end of the texture faze and the entering of the refinement phase. As I have found some ground textures to use in the troy map, I put two distinct but similar textures to tell them apart. I have also redesigned the gate as well and as a lot of looking didn't give me any decent designs for a gate I need so I made it instead. This took a bit of time to make but, never-the less happened and looks better than I expected. i have also given some more trees some flames as well as not going too far with the noises may make people go deaf. I have also added more trees to  make it feel more like a forest. After some more twiddling, I have created the map with little to no issues with conflicting assets. So here it is with the Troy map to its side.

Week 7

This week is all about the recording part of the map with some recording being done on both the blockout and the finished map. This is what I have done which may not seem like much but is what I could do with it being a new experience and all.

After the recordings have been completed, I will be compiling them with a little voice recording as well to show what it is as well as how long it took to make. The next week will be finishing the recordings and creating it in a premiere video.

Week 8

The video is nearly complete, after some difficulty with adobe premiere not liking the drivers I use on my PC, I have fully constructed what the video should look like, It will be a retrospective of the evolution of the map with it going from blockout phase to fully complete with the use of images and recordings to better portray the change in the blockout and fully done map. The voiceover will come at a later date as I make a script and will even have the finished product hopefully next week. For now here is a couple recordings of what will be used.

Week 9

This week was different from the other weeks. I actually went back on my recording and instead changed it up a little. It will no longer be entirely 50/50 with the images and recordings and will instead be mainly recordings and such. The last of the recordings have been done with the script complete and the voice over finished, the video is complete and will now even be shown here. 

Next week will be the final post and will have the report of the entire experience being completed.

Week 10

The report has gone rather well with quite a lot of information been talked about here being reflected in this blog. It covers what I have created, where the idea came from and what I have learned during this endeavour. This report will encompass the journey from start to finish about what I did and what compromises needed to be made for the project to succeed. It will end with an overall to how I feel the project has went and where I feel I can take what I have learned to the next level.

This is the end of the blog, it will not be the end of the journey as I feel it will be used more in the future.