Me and another producer have spoken about the production lead roles and the creative lead roles. We will be splitting each role as we have worked equally on both for the last few weeks however I will be taking the title of creative lead.
In today’s development session, I started to mood board level designs for the tutorial level of the game. I grabbed reference images for surgery rooms in vets, waiting rooms and the main entrance area for zoo’s. I had old level designs for the prototype but they needed updating due to the fact we had split the level into three areas.
Each one of the areas are connected meaning if there are not any obstacles blocking your path back then you can travel through each of the areas.
Over the weekend I will be creating a UI mood board and mocking up a design. I will also be writing out a mechanics list for the game along with a list of tooltips for the tutorial.
First area – Surgery room
This is where the character spawns. This is area is going to show off the Red Fox and lock picking, included in the locking picking is a maze which the fox must find its way out to unlock the door. The mazes condition is going to be that you cannot touch any of the sides, doing so will result in the player alerting security and having to try again. I was considering having three lives before the player gets reset in that area. I will start blocking out a maze puzzle in the next development session.
Block out level design – Surgery room – Top down view / Side on View
Second Area – Waiting room / Reception
This area is where we first get introduced to the night vision fox and the stealth fox. As the game is set at night time this level is going to be completely dark and show of our enemy mechanic. You go into this level completely dark, a tooltip will appear suggesting you change to the Fennec fox, he has the ability of night vision. He will be able to show you the area. However, there is a receptionist sat at her desk finishing off some work. She has the only bit of light in the room which is coming from her monitor and she also has a desk lamp which she turns on when she senses the fox. This is where we are introduced to the Artic fox who has the ability to stealth, this fox will use the environment around them to hide in. Currently in this area the fox can hide behind the chairs in the room and move again (switching back to the fennec fox to see the way) once the light has been turned off.
Block out level design – Waiting Room – Top down view / Side on View
Third Area – Main Entrance / Zoo
This final area of the tutorial level is going to show off another way the Artic fox can stealth in the world. Using the middle ground, they will be able to jump into holes, between bins etc. to hide from the enemies. These holes later on in other areas won’t always be visible using the Artic fox you might need to use other foxes to help you find them like how the two foxes worked together in the second area. We are splitting this area in half, having both sides patrolled by guards and an obstacle in the world meaning you cannot just walk through the level using only the playground, you will need to move into the middle ground walk around the obstacle then come out on the other side, avoid this guard by going back into the middle ground again then completing the level and escaping the zoo.
Block out level design – Main Entrance – Top down view
Each of the designs has a colour scheme, Purple means non- playable areas this is mainly the middle ground and Pink means non-interactable objects, Green means the foreground (also used for leap points and doors) and Blue / Dark Blue means areas you can play and interactable objects.
In next week’s development session, I will finish a side view of the main entrance (or ask the junior designer to complete this) I will also merge all the top down views and side views so we can see the full level block out instead of the areas.
I will also start implementing assets into UE4 to test each level design, make sure each area is playable and there are no points in the level where the character gets stuck or doesn’t match the world.
A reminder : All the basic block outs for the levels are a work in progress, they are to help the art team get a feel for the assets they need to create and the design team when it comes to importing assets into UE4
Chronicles of Kitchie 