Week 1
Assigning roles
Week 1 was when I got put in my group and was placed in the ‘Kinetic Panic’ game group which consistent of tasked to create a vertical slice of ‘Kinetic Panic’, Parker’s Games Design Document. My group consists of 5 different people including me, all with selected roles to make the games vertical slice. I was assigned to be a level designer which I was happy with.
- Sam: Technical Designer
- Esi: Character Artist
- Camilla: Mechanics Designer
- Guy: Level Designer
Deciding as a group on sprints for the following three weeks:
Esi
- Research artstyle,
- Create 3D models for ETA + first God (Gravity)
- Sketch
- Superflat / 00s Vectors
- Simple animation (God Floating)
Guy, me
- Blocking out level
- Sketching out level (inc. portals/checkpoints)
- Build the level
- Partly QA
- Narrative through design
Carter
- Sketch out modes for environment
- Create models
- Create 10 intractable objects (tables, lamp etc)
Camilla
- Make gravity mechanic (power up)
- Provisional (UI + Main menu)
- Assist mode (accessibility option)
Sam
- Code movement + rotation
- Code jumping + Character rolling inside of ball movement
Creating a hub world and a small about 2 min level
After the lectures I began experiment and sketching how the level could be and how I imagine the mechanic could work.
In the first lecture I created a mindmap to convey how the city could be interpreted and the key themes from Parker’s Games Design Document (GDD) says about it.
Initial mechanic concept:
The player could choose where to place the gravity sphere where objects would react and move towards that direction in a changeable amount of gravity strength, where the player would be looking is where the sphere would be shot.
The sphere could look like something like this:
However would push objects away or towards it with it’s changing gravity scale. Me thinking about how the mechanic could work could assist me in understanding how to revolve levels around it, after having several sessions and meetups with Sam I figured we both saw the gravity mechanic differently.
Week 2
A meetup with Carter for basic Unity skills and talking about what the project could entail and what exactly we’ll both need doing.
After talking with Carter about we could expect from the GDD I drew a draft sketch of how the level could work and talked about it with the team.
We decided to do the rooftop plaza from Parker’s GDD
The sketch I made illustrated the Rooftop Plazas, with new additions of housing car park and electricity generators which all fit the narrative theme, objects the player could use to get hidden gems and the middle not too sure but something like a green space with houses and gardens and the left side would be more an electricity generators and power turbines area with several floors.
Notes from the session:
Creating a sketch for ideas of how the level could work and the different stages.
Even though it was too ambitious to complete in four months, I believe this was overall meant to showcase what I had in mind for the game and try to implement it, the way I envisioned it carried a similar theme to the gameplay and world of ‘Super Mario Odyssey’ where puzzles where all around the each level for the player to find and be able to interact with them.
Getting a common ground vision of the game and asking whether we have a similar vision asking him how to make roads and to implement them into Unity.
GDD sketch of the hub world:
My addition to ideas of how the hub world may look like:
The hub world:
Could include l and a portal to transport the player to the level.
- the tutorial
- A door to transport the player to the level
Sketches of the potential layout.
The level and how would the mechanics interact with the environment
Sketches signifying how the player could mend physics to solve puzzles and hidden paths.