Bring Your Level to Life

The blockouts can feel very empty and without life, so a level designer can convey a better experience by adding some details:

Get Things Moving!

Find ways to bring motion to the scene, during the planning phase try to imagine what kind elements could be moving. Its possible to add some cloth blowing, some simple animations or even some particle systems are great to make the world live.

Imagine Statements:

You can place some title cards that describe the cinematic or qte help fill the gaps when we don’t have these implemented yet. They are an excellent way to establish the pacing and narrative flow of the level. It helps you plan out key moments of your level. Better than trying to explain it in words while playing through the level. It helps you plan out key moments, understand the timing, and ensure a smooth transition between gameplay and storytelling elements. This technique allows you to fine-tune the player’s experience and create a memorable and impactful moments within your level design

Additionally combining them with visual representations, such as concept art or story boards, can enhance their effectiveness and provide a more holistic understanding of the intended sequence. Doing this, ensures that the experience is effectively communicated and understood by the team and the important leads/directors. Example:

“As the player enters a dimly lit chamber, torchlight flickers, reveling ancient hieroglyphics carved into the walls. A crumbling stone slab slowly slides open, revealing a hidden passage”

Imagine Statements allow to level designers iterate quicker and sometimes don’t know what we want until we saw what we dislike.

By incorporating text descriptions early on, designers can create rapid prototypes or mock-ups of the intended sequences to test and evaluate their effectiveness
This iterative process helps identify potential issues, pacing inconsistencies, or opportunities for improvement before investing significant resources into full implementation

Skydome and Lighting:

By adding some background, sky and lighting its possible to pass the mood and atmosphere of the level being designed. Some examples of it: - Whether it’s a vibrant sunset, a dark and foreboding sky, or dynamic lighting changes, these visual aspects greatly enhance the player’s experience and add depth to your level design. - If visiting a different planet, we need to have hints so the players feels like they aren’t somewhere familiar. - You can test and prototype different lighting setups, this way its possible to explore various lighting styles, color palettes, and intensities to create the desired emotional impact.

UI Design:

While these UI elements in blockouts are temporary and serve as prototypes, they can be invaluable for testing and validating the design concepts. They allow Level Designers to evaluate the usability, functionality, and overall player experience before the final UI is implemented - For example, a tooltip or on-screen prompt can appear when the player hovers over an interactive object, providing information or instructions - UI elements like minimaps, compassess, or directional indicators can assist players in navigating the level. By incorporating these elements into the blockout, Level Designers can test the effectiveness of the navigation system and ensure that players can easily orient themselves within the level. - It can help unify the visual elements of your level and create a cohesive look. By applying consistent color grading or tone mapping across different areas, you can ensure a seamless transition between various parts of your level and maintain visual continuity

SFX / VFX:

VFX can be used to add atmospheric elements and environmental effects to the level. This includes effects like weather conditions, particle effects and dynamic lighting effects. These effects can bring the world to life and make it feel more realistic and immersive. For example impact effects can show the result of a player’s attack or collision of objects while indicators and highlights can draw attention to important objects or areas

Fake it Till you Make it

Whether it’s a vibrant sunset, a dark and foreboding sky, or dynamic lighting changes, these visual aspects greatly enhance the player’s experience and add depth to your level design

Week 08 - Assignment

For week 8 we had the opportunity to play with Scale, we should create a environment with a big scale to be explored by the player. It was suggested that we explored VFX/SFX. My personal goal this week was to befriend with Unreal. I got couple of bad weeks fighting with her, so I stepped back and took some time to learn more about her since not much of my Unity knowledge was passing. I took some time on the market place and got some packages from Humble Bundle. I got a package for procedural generate books piles and flags. On my last job I had to place all items manually on shelfs and this took me hours so you can imagine how happy I was with that! The map itself is very bland for gameplay, but the objective was to understand more about how to use/construct: materials, light, post processing. I did some alterations on the particles that I imported, it surprised me how much different the particle system are on Unreal compared to Unity. Also surprised me how little free particle packs are on the store.
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