Museum Level Design
Now from here, this is where the important part comes into play. THE LEVEL DESIGN
Hub World
At least for the Hub World, now I knew there were a couple of things that were necessary to make this type of thing possible and believable, so there was a list of things:
Need for a simple design that can incorporate other rooms and will allow intuitional movement
Needed a physical train platform as the main point of interest for the player as well as a representation of the theme, allowing players to understand this is where they need to travel around from
Within these rooms, they will have a present a visual form of progression that correlates to the theme of the ‘Artefact Rooms’ they will be entering throughout the VR Museum Experience.
The Level must also show themes of Transport (at least in this case)
The Museum Experience need to feel populated and life-like, so this would mean NPCs would be in the environment moving around as well as making noises. But importantly the positioning of these NPCs needs to validate the intended user journey.
Taking the approach of The National Gallery information can be presented next to big artefacts while the podium will be a button to execute and tell the player to look up meaningful choice to interacting with the environment
Artefact Rooms
For the rooms, if I was to make this type of product in general I would say all the rooms that the artefacts encompass have to be the same. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean all of the things and interactables in the rooms will be the same, just the layout would be to keep things identifiable for the players that go into multiples rooms, additionally it would be easy to implement for future endeavors. The key aspect here is to understand that the area should be open as the main purpose of the museum is to allow free exploration so the area would have to be as open as possible. With the idea that Big Artefacts, GIA’s and Game Artefacts will occupy the same pace, having the need for open space will also allow for these things to be occupied.
Finally, the idea would be how will the player know which artefact is which or where they are able to go. Platforms and People will provide this open space with more life and directions on where they can go and again allowing players to move from room to room or room to hub, there are two platforms on either side of these Artefacts rooms, though it might be initially disorientating, they can leave and come back where they want to. If anything the unique differences in each room will be determined by that rooms contents/theme.