Game World Level Design

Now at this point, with all the refinement polished out and the game design finished it would now be time to understand how to put this into a Level. With some of the designs that I sketched up, I knew the just drawing them from a top-down view would make no sense, whilst others would need that view as the gameplay would help facilitate that.

Game 1 - Race of the Buses

The idea is that this would be a heavily populated street because you know, bus companies need customers. SO with the mind, the place would also be during Victorian times, having homes, a stall for shops and finally a pattern of movement for all of the NPCs to follow. Also having the Player standing on top of the bus to have a good vantage point of all the potential passengers.

Below will be a annotated look at the Level Design Sketches:

Game 2 - Steam Struggle

With this game, I knew it would be more significant as the game would have a small environment being railroaded on a train, the player only needs to consider throwing around the fuel rocks basically, additionally, to have a steam pressure valve would make sense, this would have to be something considered with the UI and not integrated on to the tube. Pretty much self-explanatory if looking at my annotated sketch below:

Game 3 - Wave The Flag

With this game the Level Design was detrimental as the game of SIMON is pretty easy to understand, but the method in which is can be introduced with this museum, now the idea came form Earl’s Court Station where there are installments of higher ledges, which can equally be used as a method to present the flag to oncoming Tube Drivers, but again with the platform for the Player being higher it also allows them to have a view of train moving in and out of the station making the place feel alive. But again with this higher platform so the player has an idea of how the big the station is and as the ‘new recruit’, it gives a suitable setting of the job role at least.

With the sketches I created, for this one I incorporate both a top-down and player perspective and here it is with annotations:

Game 4 - Cruise Control

Again as a Tube Driver, you are the one responsible to the Tube Train and where would the type of job take place? Inside the drivers section of the Tube Train, obviously, where else, so the player now has control over their movement albeit using the grab controls rather than the control sticks or locomotive teleportation. But again because of the player’s position, the vision from the player perspective is limited to a degree, so with that in mind all of the elements of when the player needs to stop and go needs to be evident so there would be signal to refer. Finally the boundary would have to be at the end of each station, making the player work for that perfect braking technique.

Again a top-down view and a player perspective were necessary to understand the game better and here are my annotated sketches:

Game 5 - Class Connections

As the Ticket Booth manager, you will be physically inside a station, inside a ticket booth where you will be protected from upcoming mad customers…. well not really they won’t be mad, but you know you still need protection so the idea would be to put the player physically inside a ticket booth which originally would’ve been manned by a person. Again it was important to understand these from a first person perspective and I believe my annotations pretty much make it self-explanatory:

Game 6 - No Bridge, No Problem

With the premise of the lanes, the importance was to capture both perspectives, top-down and player. Now with that in mind, seeing as we are going to be on a boat then we need a busy harbor and the boat the player will be on, has to be small enough and the ships also have to be big and daunting so the player knows they mean trouble. So below are my annotations: