Brainstorming
As a Level Designer for Project SCRAPS I was able to learn the creative vision of the game creator work. By learning the creative vision, I had the idea to create a level that involved an apocalyptic environment with broken and damaged objects everywhere. During this time, I was able to put in my thoughts together to create a level design bubble diagram to have a idea on how to interactive objects and mechanics look like when the player proceeds forward. After the bubble diagram I created my first drift of my level design map showing how the level looks like in more detail then the bubble diagram and explaining the phases of my mechanics. However, in time I changed it for another level design map that I found better. My second drift was my final decision to create a level for project SCRAPS and this level had even more quality than the last one.
Testing scene
After all the brainstorming I was able to create IPM Progression for the core mechanics of SCRAPS from a scene called the toy box which was a scene that we used for testing mechanics before we added it our game. There we were also given jobs to play test other level designers level as well. During this time every level designer in the project was introduced to perforce version control software.
The mechanics played very well in the testing stages. However, there were some bugs that I later found during the later stages.
Block out phase
After the testing stage of my mechanics I was to create a block out for my level which showed my level in 3D with the mechanics and inter-actives.
During the block out stage of Project SCRAPS we were to become play testers again for other level designers and I had to reduce the amount of grass that I had because it was affecting performance. After the block out stage of the project we were all confident with our levels at this point because of the many play testers that played our levels.
Alpha phase
Then we started the alpha stage in this phase we all created videos of our level and joined together as level designers to create a team that we called Team Helioscope. We worked as a team to connect our scenes together then made it look realistic as possible to the environment. During the alpha phase we were also able to fix most of the problems with our project like bugs or things that affected performance and since we in a team we play tested our levels countless times.
Beta phase
In the next phase which was the beta phase we were to replace all our placeholders with final game assets and add final game materials to our game. During this phase, we play tested our levels once again to check for missing materials that didn’t get added to the perforce server and fix any bugs or problems that our game had then.
Gold and presentation
In the final phase which was the gold phase we were to already have our levels feature complete and ready. We polished our levels more and made our team world even more realistic to the player by fixing up terrains and adding buildings that can be seen from the distance. Then, again, we play tested our levels to check for any missing materials and objects missing from checking out the team folder from perforce. There we were able to finalize the game and create a presentation that showed the full game play of SCRAPS game from beginning to end. One thing that I learned during this phase is to have enough time to create the presentation video so we can have multi playthroughs so then we can pick the best one. Here is our final presentation video...
Postmortem
Introduction: Project SCRAP was a third person player game that we level designed as a team. SCRAPS was a game that took place in the future where society has crumbled. People fortified themselves in mega structures called the Bastions where people live in. The scrapper was the one that went out and look for resources to fuel or feed the Bastions for coin.
What Went Right:
(Play testing) – Play testing was one of the most important things that went right for project SCRAPS as it gave the level designers a lot of feedback on what was missing from their level from other people’s views.
(Brainstorming) – The brainstorming stage set the plan for the whole level design to become a block out. In planning how the level was going to be and what was going to be in it we were able to create a world that we call SCRAPS.
(Beta phase) – The beta phase was one of the most important things that went right. Almost everyone was bug free due to our play testers. The level went from full prototype to feature complete and asset complete.
What Went Wrong:
(Team Meetings) – Team meetings in Team Helioscope was a rare thing. Our communication was mostly text based on Discord or Trello. I believe if we were to have at least 1 meeting every two days with the full group we could have been a better team at organizing the project in total.
(Gold Presentation) – The final presentation video for SCRAPS could have been done better. Our video recorder frame rates we making the video appear as if the player was teleporting causing most of us to create our own videos to merge into the presentation. I believe if we were to have everything ready before the due date, we could have done more playthroughs together.
(Waiting on teammates) There was a teammate we were waiting on to complete alpha stage during gold stage which slowed us down on the presentation for gold. If we were to give him a due date maybe, we could have sped up his progress so we can plan the video play-through accordingly.
Conclusion: In level designing SCRAPS I was able to fortify my game design skills even more. I believe having a good team that does stand up meetings every day for a game project would help speed up the progress. Brainstorming was a important phase in the development progress because it helped plan the 3D build layout and its mechanics. As well as the play-testing for the project was also great.
Sierra Giovanni
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