Level Design

A thread to discuss about the Level Design aspect, challenges + ideas regarding the MAP.

THIS IS NOT A 3D ENVIRONMENT THREAD.

We will not discuss about the look and aesthetics of assets here, but rather try to assemble the assets, codes, quest/dialogues etc that will be created into an OVERALL fun-ctional gameplay environment and make updates on what more might be needed to create a wonderful level! Even more, it could provide some modular/procedural solutions (like creating procedural roads) to make everyone’s life easier when making decisions and changes to reach the final outcome.

Level + game designers, architects, 3d + environmental artists, concept artists, technical artists, creating-worlds enthusiasts let’s see what we can do to help the Unity Team make their final decisions on this exciting journey.

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

Make sure you know everything about the world we are building! -> https://open.codecks.io/unity-open-project-1/decks/65

Always look at the game map updates! -> https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kkiU1T0=/

Always look at the roadmap! -> https://open.codecks.io/unity-open-project-1

IN GENERAL: Try to have an OVERVIEW of what is currently being implemented in the game in all the sections (assets, quests, codes, dialogues) as we should be talking on how to implement what is being made by others efficiently on the map + environment!


Sharpen your pencils and minds, do your research and start drawing/creating/discuss on references

 

What we know so far (this part will be updated after every live stream):

The game takes place in a tropical ISLAND (“completely covered by trees and palms”).

The ISLAND map consists of 6 parts:

1. BEACH part (Arrival - Tutorial level: the part where you meet the Bard Hare and learn about the upcoming catastrophe that the island locals fear.)

Gameplay:
1st stage: Movement tutorial – Attack tutorial – Phoenix tutorial – Burn canes with the Phoenix – Free roam in beach
2nd stage: the end of the game – leaving the island

2. GLADE part (Where you encounter the locals=Forest Eyes that want to keep our protagonist away of their island.)
Gameplay: Free roam – First encounter with Forest Eye (dialogue) – Defeat it

3. FOREST part (where you will fight with Critters and later on search for samples to make the recipe)
Gameplay: 1st stage: Free roam – Fight with local critters
2nd stage: Free roam – Search for ingredients A and B

4. TEMPLE FRONT part (where you encounter some Forest Eyes and you reach the Temple Door)
Gameplay: 1st stage: Meet Forest Eyes – Dialogue – Defeat them
2nd stage: Meet Forest Eye guard – Dialogue

5. TEMPLE ENTRANCE (that leads you to the inner chamber)
Gameplay: Free roam

6. INNER CHAMBER (where you meet the King Eye and the ritual will take place)
Gameplay: 1st stage: Dialogue with King – Take on main quest
2nd stage: Ritual – Goal achieved
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Each part has a clear setting – goal, so it would be nice to start discussions and give that ProBuilder Greyboxing card slowly a shape.

 

This looks like a great start for discussing level design. Thanks @itsLevi0sa!

These areas (Beach, Glade, Forest, Path, Temple Front, Temple Entrance, Inner Chamber) will each present its own unique opportunities.

While I'm also excited to get in-engine to start putting things together into a graybox environment (a featureless level created with simple gray shapes) Do we want to start working "on paper" with some of these things first? It would be faster to prepare text lists or sample images that we can share and discuss before building away. I'm by no means an artist, but it would be great to see if someone would volunteer to do some concept art as well so we can think about building in interesting visual areas.

I know there's a thread here about 3D Environment Art, and I suspect more than a few people will be in both channels to coordinate what assets we need to develop each scene.

While we give some time for concept artists to sketch some things out, we can either blue sky (a brainstorming session where nothing is turned down for being "not feasible") a list of level features here, or we could perhaps sketch out some rough level ideas taking another pass at the game maps linked above. After all, we'll be going through the level in several passes as we add detail, so we can practice as a team just working with the wireframe to add detail quickly.

I did a rough sketch using Google Drawings of a more detailed version of the beach scene. I'd love to get some thoughts around that!

BEACH: (image here: https://connect.unity.com/p/unity-open-project-level-design)

• Our little pig's BOAT has landed, knocking over a TREE and blocking the shoreline.
• We have a small sand area to get familiar with the controls.
• At the RED X, we get our first decision point - head towards the Hare we can see on the beach, or get lured deeper onto the woods towards the FALSE EXIT.
• We can go too far, and are blocked by the stream. However, there's a CAVE here that we can explore, but it's too narrow to go far.
• Finally, we can take the EXIT to the GLADE.

 

Hey, @GregoryLane
One of the pictures you posted is corrupted!

Also, great way to start the thread @itsLevi0sa. Really loved how you detailed it!

 

I know the story says pig chef is looking for recipe and tracked it down to this island, but how does the player know that? Is waiting to find out until encountering the bard hare set in stone, or should the player need to know where the pig chef came from sooner? Probably scope creep to add another location, but wanted to put it out there.

 

Maybe an intro 2D cutscene/image with dialogues?

 

@shuttle127, check out our Dialogue and Narrative post to help brainstorm how we can have causality within the story.

My initial hunch is this will be a story that is in medias res. Our protagonist, Pig Chef, already knows his goal. He tracked down the recipe to this specific island.

Ideally, we can visualize as much narrative as possible without resorting to an exposition dump of cut-scened backstory that takes our player out of... playing.

Pig Chef will want to prepare for his journey into the heart of The Island. We can probably skip the whole being on the boat and go straight to a scene in which Pig Chef has already set up camp on a vacant beach. Bard Hare soon arrives and guides Pig Chef, and thus the player, through completing the tutorial.

While learning the basic controls, the player is also given the main objectives through Pig Chef interacting with Bard Hare.

Who knows how it'll happen, but come add your input to our post.

 

Just wanted to float the idea out that this game could/should have a alternate way of "beating" the enemies with out fighting.

In my opinion sneaking past enemies to gather some extra cooking ingredients in each zone and being able to go into a small cooking mini-game to bake some food that makes each type of creature happy (go into a food coma), would be super cool.

For bosses you might be given the choice right up front, to fight or to have a cook off and then its a variation of the same cooking mini-game, except you are racing against the boss to make the best dish in the least time.

 

I think this story is conflicting or not interesting to play. Here's my proposal.

* The Pig Chef came to the island looking for the receipt
* Then he will meet the Bard Hare.
* Then the Pig find out that, it's a land of hares and they were overthrown by a set of critters.
* The Bard Hare will show you a receipt that wakes up a god who's at the center of the temple which will save there land
* That sounds like the receipt Pig Chef is looking for

* So, Pig Chef teamed up with Bard Hare to find individual items with fighting the critters.
* Bard Hare is our guide and we need to collect items while protecting him as well.
* Then he finally goes to the Temple and defeat the King and wake up the god.

* Shockingly, that god is the evil master of the "Bard Hare" & the bard hare's story is a fake one
* Then this god impression all these native critters & Pig Chef inside a cave
* Then we finish the game. So, we have an entry for the full game.

 

The question is, is the island the beginning of the full game?

 

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I think this might bee too small of an area, it might need some expansion... if the downed tree is not enough we could add some rocks/cliff area. Also isn't this supposed to have tutorials for all the controls, basic fight , how to use chick ?

 

We can absolutely work to scale this area as we see fit.

The idea of a tutorial on how to use the lantern is a brilliant idea.

• If so, we'd have to move the cave, add some other very dark forest canopy, start the level at night, or have Chef Pig go into the dark underdecks of the ship to collect something before going out.
• Perhaps he'd need to go back into the ship to get his knife to cut some vines that initially block his path?

This area is absolutely perfect to reshape to introduce all the mechanics.

 

That's a great question!

For now, We'll presume that it is, because in this vertical slice (a small complete section of a game for showing at expos or pitching for publishing) will be all that the player gets. We want to make sure our players have a good FTUE (First Time User Experience) and know what the mechanics are so they can see the maximum amount of fun we can provide.

 

In addition to looking at each of the rooms, We'll need to keep in mind how all of the spaces across the island interact with each other.

Below, you can find an image of all of the "rooms" connect to one another in the initial documentation. While we certainly can do some backtracking (perhaps the Temple Entrance is locked and Chef Pig needs to get something from the Path to explore the Inner Chamber?) we may also want to consider some circular design.

Popular in many modern games, circular level design provides a different/unique exit to an area. This can help get the player back to their original point much quicker than backtracking, and can provide a different experience through spaces.

I'd love to know what you're all envisioning as well! Keep the ideas coming! We can also chat about what has or hasn't worked in the games you've played in the past. Everything still on the table!

 

This is a great question. If it does become scope creep (an expansion of work that grows during development) perhaps the narrative team would opt to add some exposition as a text introduction.

If we did add a space to the start of this, what did you have in mind?

 

For some reason that's exactly where my mind went too. Not sure why I want the Bard Hare to be using Pig Chef, but it adds some complexity.

This makes me think that Bard Hare would gift the Phoenix chick lantern to Pig Chef at the start. The old, "You're gonna need this" kind of plot device. Any advantage to Pig Chef bringing the Phoenix chick lantern with him in the first place?

Has it been established what the lantern does? Perhaps as an ability on a longer cooldown, the lantern can summon the Bard Hare to help Pig Chef in a fight. Then it can still have a much quicker regular ability.

Outside of a little assistance in fighting, and serving as a guide to new game mechanics and areas to explore; my instinct says we shouldn't see Bard Hare all the time. Especially if we end up making Bard Hare the primary antagonist, .

 

Could be as simple as where the chef first had the meal and the tutorial becomes figuring out the need to go to the island to track down the recipe.

Or the narrative team could do the thought bubble exposition I asked about in the Dialogue and Narrative thread, as we see chef sailing at sea before a storm. Taking that approach, maybe the storm is the first sign of the pending catastrophe and chef’s arrival is why the Forest Eye are afraid. Starting at night to do the chick tutorial could also lead into a whole “the one who comes in the night” thing.

 

Maybe make a "base" for you to go back save and heal at the beach so the path leads to the temple front instead? i guess it will be a short cut for you later on in the game to move back and forth?

 

I think this is a great idea. But I think we need an adverse to practice our skills so make the false exit full of "crabs"? We can use them as part of the beginning tutorial. Maybe help bard retrieve something from that general area. And for that, you get the Phoenix? Just an idea of course.

 

I thought Chick was just part of the Chef character, like they are a team. Chef needs it to cook: Knife, fire and a bag that contains ingredients/spices and a pan/pot is all that he needs. (Derived from concept art)

 

Yeah! I can agree with that.

 

bard hare having ulterior intentions is a good idea. or at the very least he needs to be featured a second time later on. maybe he just gives you hints if you get lost? like he's showing you to all these different places to find recipes and this is just the latest stop

 

@GregoryLane happy to see your response and embark on yet another journey after the beloved (and really missed) Create With Code Live sessions! Thank you for all your work, including your deliberate posts (nice to introduce and explain terms like greyboxing, bluesky, vertical slice etc and on creating a first map).

I think it’s interesting to bring the idea of having day/night cycles, and having our first experience happen at night in order to bring the focus on the use of the lantern.

Having read all the replies up to this point, and catching up from where Gregory was, I agree that the shoreline needs to get some boundaries so that the player will not wander across forever (which is what I understand from the fallen tree proposal). I replaced the fallen tree with a cliff instead because I think we needed a bigger obstacle. Agreeing with @invadererik I scaled the area up a bit as you will see on the map below, so that the player has the chance to free roam for a while on the shore and get familiar with the movement controls (objective 1 from the tutorial) and learn how to use the torch.


As the character moves towards the decision point maybe he comes across a small threat (potentially coming from a cave nearby? I think we shouldn’t introduce closed spaces/minimaps just yet though to not overcomplicate stuff) so that he gets acquainted with attack skills (objective 2 from the tutorial).

At the decision point: If the character goes right he reaches a False Exit. But no false exit should come in vein! Maybe the character gets the chance to gather some information, like stumble across a finding that foreshadows a character that he is about to meet (the Bard Hare!). So maybe he finds his home or sth, you name it. It would be nice to also introduce some cutting mechanics, or get the chance to collect some valuable items (like canes, as we are going to need them later to make a fire which could make that an objective 3 in this tutorial level), which of course should be items that can be collected if the player chooses to go left instead.

Since the Bard Hare is our Helper Guide, I think it would be much more rewarding for the players to be them who find him, rather than having him showing up out of nowhere. For this reason you might have some hints, like footsteps or some large tree roots that guide you towards a point of interest (which is where the Bard Hare is). Hopefully this will build some anticipation as well.

So we finally meet our hippie bard, hanging out on the beach by himself and his sitar under the tree, ready to tell some stories with his music. So what better atmosphere than to make a fire (objective 4 in tutorial) with our Phoenix chick and chill with the bard’s company having completed our tasks, while the sun slowly rises and we are getting ready for our next point in our adventure, in the broad daylight this time! (transition point)

 

Since this project is only a vertical slice of a game that should/would have multiple islands to traverse, I think it’d be cool to take some influence from the planet hopping in Ratchet and Clank (R&C). Maybe a world view that shows what islands to traverse between, and you can go back and forth building up cooking skills, or “leveling up” your chef utensils, sort of like what @itsLevi0sa just suggested with cutting mechanics and collecting valuable items. This could lend itself to the cooking mini-games @invadererik suggested earlier. That way sometimes you need to go to different islands to get different utensils maybe?

I see two pretty big challenges to this approach:

1. Multiple islands is out of scope for this vertical slice.
2. Bard hare being the antagonist for only one island doesn’t make sense, then who is the antagonist for the others?

They might be alleviated this way?

1. Do the chef’s home island as the starting point and do a little tutorial there for cooking mini-games, then you’ll get a map to find the island to go to for the recipe, which then shows off the world map mechanic.
2. Drop hints and clues, maybe through bard hare’s songs and poems, or in the temple after the ritual is completed, that there’s more to the bard hare than meets the eye. Could do something similar to the original R&C where players thought Captain Qwark was a good guy but in fact was being played/tricked by the actual villain, which would then allow the bard hare to show up at every island throughout the full game.

Thinking too much/too far ahead?

 

I love how we almost instantly made Bard Hare the true baddie. We'll see what Unity thinks of that.

The way Bard Hare could remain the antagonist is if Big Chef doesn't kill him at the end of our vertical slice. It seems like we're pulling away from the idea of death and towards being knocked out or otherwise incapacitated, so even after we defeat Bard Hare, he ultimately becomes like the Joker and will pop up another time, in another place, to give us all sorts of trouble.

That would then lead to the question of who would be our guide next time around. Either Pig Chef doesn't need a guide at that point since all the narrative and gameplay introductions have been made, or the Phoenix chick serves that role moving forward. Maybe it even outgrows that lantern?

If we go with the idea that Bard Hare gifted Pig Chef the Phoenix chick, eventually Chef might realize that there is a link between the Bard and the Phoenix chick and that's how Bard Hare has been tracking Pig Chef to all these different islands. Breaking that link could serve as a plot point down the road, but Pig Chef can't just get rid of Phoenix chick. They are like family now. Quite the dilemma.

In the interest of working within limits, this could all be visualized on the opening beach. Seems like we're leaning towards it being night to start, so Pig Chef finding the Bard and Phoenix chick will visually stand out.

This would present us with the first moment of the idea of choice to use aggression or persuasion. The player could be guided towards attacking Bard Hare in order to get the Bard's supplies, but that is a futile attempt as the Bard easily avoids or blocks Pig Chef's attacks. Even in failure, the player has learned the basic combat actions.

Having exhausted the forceful option, the player can now use dialogue to advance. Chef can offer to cook dinner in exchange for information about The Island. If played right, this could be a bonding moment for them.

As Bard Hare mentions places to explore and places to avoid, Pig Chef's map can be marked with these locations.

Realistically I'm not going to be coding, and I'm just starting out in 3d modeling, so we'll see there. That said, thinking ahead is the most in depth creative contribution I can make.

Establishing deep motivations for Pig Chef and Bard Hare will help us be able to backtrack and make the little moments have meaning that pays off in ways that a cut-scene or information dump could never.

 

@itsLevi0sa I really like this setup. It's open and not to narrow and gives space for all tutorial sequences like moving, fighting a little creep and interaction.

I can also imagine to place collectables throughout the map. Items which are not necessary, but which will reward to explore the island. This could be something like healing potions or resources to start a fire etc.

 

This is somewhat adjacent to level design, but in my experience making hacknslash games its something that ends up affecting level design pretty drastically.
Is the camera going to be an orbit cam like it is now, or is it going to have a fixed rotation like Tunic/Hobb/2D Zelda? Orbit cam might allow for more complex level design but fixed rotation would allow us to ensure the level geometry/art is always visible where it needs to be, which could become an issue if we have ended up having interior environments ($12u)

 

This seems like a neat idea that's gained a little traction in this thread. Would someone like to suggest it in the Official Dialogue and Narrative thread to get their thoughts on it as well? @michaelgrilo - I think I'd seen you post there before - is this something you'd like to champion to the narrative group?

 

There should be a way to add images! Please let me know either here or through a message on Connect and I can add you as and editor contributor to the images here: https://connect.unity.com/p/unity-open-project-level-design.

Love the way this area was expanded @itsLevi0sa! You and @jrz813 both had a great callout of no dead-ends. We absolutely should put some sort of payoff (worldbuilding, collectible, combat, etc...) at the end of each path.

 

This is a really great question that we'll need to get from the engineering team. In addition to making sure each map looks good from every direction, a pivoting camera presents different things we can do with the island's elevation. (and something we'd have to consider with the player's line of sight!)

 

I'd like to jump into this discussion with two points that I was thinking about.

Will ingredient gathering be something that shows up on every level? Seems to me that since he is a chef on an island it would make sense for him to be gathering ingredients across his journey. Maybe each area has a unique ingredient and part of the goal is to gather it. These could be all part of the ritual (and maybe the Chef notices these ingredients when he first encounters them so the player won't need to backtrack)

Something else that I think it's adjacent to Level Design is that maybe it would be good for the player to be able to see the temple from the beach. On his first level he already sees his goal, then he moves on to darker areas (dense forest or a cavern) where the goal is hidden and when he emerges from those areas the goal is again visible and closer to the player (I'm imagining the temple like in a mountain... I'll try to photoshop some pictures together later in order to provide a crude concept)

 

That’s how I imagine it too, but maybe we need to elaborate more on that.
What kind of vertical slice are we cutting from what? What’s the bigger cake?
I liked how you mention planet hopping, this also reminded me of Kingdom Hearts, or the island hopping across the BlueSea in OnePiece (that anime show).

I agree with being able to have an idea of the bigger picture our game is part of. Even the possibility of hopping back and forth and experience the same places under different perspectives/with new abilities I think is cool. Thinking of Ori and Zelda that had that notion influence their level design (pretty sure we are going to reference them again in the future). I know these talks regard a macroscopic approach and for our game we need to limit down to microscopic talks, but one feeds from the other right?

Now, returning to micro-scope:
@gabriellcarpes your questions make sense, we will come eventually to an answer on that.

Solid point to have our goal stand out as a landmark to know where you need to head to, just like Half Life did with the Citadel (one example of many). Would love to see what you’ll come up with.

 

I don't mind if you would like to upload any image that is posted here. I think it's great to keep a "gallery" of images all in one place showing the thought progression. If it's too much, maybe we can find a way for all of us to be contributors

 

What I'm hearing is we may need to build on this card still?

Apologies if this is stepping on toes to answer the question. This game flow card addresses that a bit, could it be as simple as during the pan up, some part of the temple (probably just the top above the trees) is visible? Would be a pretty big temple to be taller than the trees.

 

@shuttle127 nobody is stepping on anyones toes xD thanks for the cards reminder, I completely missed The Arrival card. And yeah, I was thinking that maybe we should just keep in mind that the Scope might need a bit more discussion at some point, probably on the narrative side but especially in the overall gameplay side, because it could affect this game. Not to overcomplicate things though!
By the way I am not discussing the possibility to consider any other island to hop back and forth other than the one we are making. It's just that if we would like to see something like that happen in the full game, maybe we should have "hints" in our initial game that some things we experience now, might be important for the Bigger Picture. Give the players some "To be Continued" moments.

 

@itsLevi0sa Oh yeah, I'm in the narrative thread all the time, along with the various gameplay and combat threads, thought we had some good ideas that could help us move forward until a different perspective was presented that caused us to re-evaluate and some of the cards to change a bit. Speculating now that once the game title is finally locked down we'll be able to move on with more concrete discussions and start paring down all the awesome suggestions into what is feasible in the time frame allotted.

 

How about the really tall temple is a thing, and part of traversal is to climb to the top for some reason? From that height, since the player can see over the trees, other islands in the distance are visible as well. Could even lead to discussion with the Eye King about neighboring islands and cultures.

 

So I photshop (poorly) some ideas, based on creating a certain verticality for the island. Since it will be a short game, but it is a "quest" I think it's good to hammer down the goal of the quest whenever possible. So here is one photoshop using the concept art in front and some other images that I either found on Google or took it myself just to draw out a general idea:

Also I tried to expand a little bit on the vertical slice based on this idea of verticality turning this small game into a "quest up the mountain". If it's a quest up a mountain I think it'd be cool to create a "window" to the beach halfway through the quest so the player can see how far he came.

 

We could decide to give Pig Chef a sort of diary, or a piece of paper where he keeps his to-do list. The world map with all the different places would be drawn there, as a "places I have to go to" map. Showing this drawn map to the player would also be a quick way to tell the player a part of our character's objective, visit all places. If this island is not the first part of the game but a later chapter, all the other places that Pig Chef has already visited could be crossed out.

I'm sorry if someone already said something similar to this, I didn't read the later posts :|

 

Both these ideas are great I think, as others have already stated before me. And if we really decide to make the game start at night we could light it up in some cool way so it has even more of a visual impact

 

The story has changed pretty significantly, so not sure if there is even a temple to see any more. We also have so many ideas that some things have to hit the cutting room floor unfortunately. Hopefully today's live stream gives a good idea of where we are and what's still to come.

 

I just read some of the posts in the narrative thread, so yeah, no temple to be seen. But I liked the idea to have a visual landmark for the player, so we could keep the mountain and put the village on the side of it, with houses on multiple levels. Whenever I travel and see things like that I alsways thing that it's quite cool to see, even if I really wouldn't want to live there.
(Obviously smaller than this, but you get the idea)

 

Hey guys I am kinda lost here. Are we planning like the general level layout according to the game narrative or is it something else?

 

Hello there! Yes, it's a general discussion for all the levels (Beach, Town etc) that are going to make our final game, to potentially contribute to some decisions that the Unity's Team is going to make. Level Design should follow the Dialogue and Narrative thread as well as the Cooking - Gameplay thread as it should provide a meaningful common ground between the two through the map and environment. After today's livestream there is now a new Whiteboxing Thread where we could put these discussions into practise. Keep in mind that the story is undergoing refinements and there are still gameplay discussions going on, so Level Design seems to have been put a bit on hold waiting for updates. Hope this helps!

 

Very helpful indeed, Thank you!