The Triangle Level

For this week, I've been hard at work on the next level for Goldblitz, which hopefully will be our first real level in the game. The idea came to mind with a triangle that's fairly symmetrical, with a lot of power ups that players will get to pick up along the way.

There are three gold nodes (marked with the black circles) in the corners of the triangle. Players start in the middle of the map, giving them an equal chance to get to each gold node in the map. Between each node are the power ups in a fairly straight path. They give players the chance to stock up between the nodes.

The level is also divided into tiers, two nodes are at the highest tier while the last node is at the lowest tier. The middle tier is where the players start and is the largest, offering the most power ups as well as some obstacles for players to smash into.

The level is very large and gives players a lot of room to explore. I took what I learned from the last few levels made about size and power up placement and put them into effect with this level. It's my hope that players in the QA lab this week enjoy this map.

Next week I'll be working on an updated King of the Hill style map with adds another tower and a bridge to connect them.

Week Two: Tower

After the first few rounds of QA last week, I think I've discovered the perfect balance for level designing in terms of the level size.

Many of the players claimed that they didn't know where to go or didn't enjoy the much larger levels. This probably didn't help with the fact that there weren't many structures overhead that could direct players for guidelines. That's when I was given the idea by our lead designer to create a king of the hill level.

The idea is to have a map where players know where to go instantly, and will fight each other once at their destination.

This level still needs to be tested, as there were some doubts from other team members about the placement of certain objects. I believe that this will be the most fun level yet.

New Semester

Here we are at the start of another semester and on a new team! For the Spring semester, I've been assigned to work on the game Goldblitz, a racing game based around combat and mining.

Specifically, I'm going to be the one working on the levels in the game. The leaders, Rob and Jesston, have said that the level particularly need a lot of work and they wish to have 3-4 by the end of the semester in 12 weeks.

This shouldn't be too hard to do, I'll have to work a lot with the environmental artist, but I'm confident in my abilities to complete this task.

Right now, they don't have much to go on for levels, including what size they should be. My first task this week is to set the standard for level sizes to ensure future levels won't seem too big or small. I'll be white-boxing out levels this weekend and testing them next week.