Three Area Level - Red Riding Hood (work-in-progress)

For this assignment, we had to choose a game idea made by the artists and create a three room (or area) blockout around that prompt. The artists had to come up with an idea for a game using a popular IP and the idea I chose uses the Red Riding Hood IP, and the game play will be similar to Journey (meaning that it will be an open-world exploration game). While I am indifferent to Red Riding Hood as an IP, I really love exploration games which is why I chose this prompt. This assignment also has me collaborating with the artists, as after I finish my blockout, they will set dress it with their assets. So collaboration with the artists while creating the blockout is heavily encouraged.

I have some experience with these types of levels as I made multiple exploration levels for my undergraduate thesis project, and this project was even compared to Journey by my professor. I immediately knew I wanted the first area to be serene and calm and the second level to be scary and unsettling. Luckily, the story of Red Riding Hood made this easy as I decided I was going to make the first area a flower field and the second area a forest. I also knew that I wanted Grandma's House to be the third area. Luckily, when I met with the artists, they had the exact same vision for the level as I did so I was able to start working quickly.

For my blockout, the first area is a flower field and the starting village. It's very open the player can freely explore anywhere in the area. There are mysterious ruins in the area with a glowing orb, and I plan on turning those into teleporters. The first challenge the player will encounter is when they try to move onto the next area, the forest.

If the player follows the main path, they will discover that they need to cross a river to go to the forest, but the bridge is collapsed. There will be two ways for the player to get past this obstacle. One is by finding a path on one of the rock walls bordering the fields. This will take you above the river and put you down in the forest. The other path will be a cave that leads the player under the river. The forest will be very creepy, it will have thick fog and gigantic trees. There will also be teleporters in this area. Additionally, there will be a massive cavern under the forest that the player can explore.

After escaping the forest, the player will then finally arrive at Grandma's house. I haven't fully planned the layout for this house yet but it will likely be very large and labyrinth-like.

Work-in-progress images: 

Rapid Prototype Production 2 (Monster Meals)

For round 2 of Rapid Prototype Production (RPP 2), we were given almost no constraints. We just were not allowed to use prefabricated assets/art and we had to use Unity. However, this engine restriction was a massive challenge for me, as I will discuss later. Our game is Monster Meals. It's a 2D/3D cooking/stealth/hunting hybrid game. The premise of the game is that the player runs a restaurant in some kind of monster dimension or world, and the player of course has to cook food for the monsters. However, sometimes the monsters are hard to understand so the player has to "decode" what the monster is asking for. Sometimes they speak backwards and sometimes they are really vague on what they want. After taking an order, the player has to cook the meal. At the start of the game, the player won't have any ingredients so they have to go get some. The player does this by opening their book and opening a portal to the "human dimension". This is where the game becomes a 3D third person game. The player then has to sneak around and kill humans in the forest. If the player is spotted, the humans run away and the player has to catch them (which wastes a lot of time). After the player has gotten sufficient materials. they go back to their restaurant by jumping into the portal they opened. Then the player puts all of the necessary ingredients into an oven and cooks the meal, completing that order. If the player takes too long or you give a monster the wrong item, then you lose a life. After losing 3 lives you lose the run.

For my contributions, I designed the entirety of the 3D level in addition to contributing to the design of the mechanics of the 3D level, I created many of the particle effects, and I created some of the 2D and 3D art. I also contributed to the idea of the game heavily. Prior to this game, I had never used Unity, so this was a big struggle for me at first. In fact, I created the first blockout of the 3D level in Unreal Engine just so we could see what the level could look like, and doing this in Unity would have taken over 5 times as long (in fact it actually did when I created the Unity blockout). Since I was already very familiar with Unreal Engine, a lot of those skills transferred to Unity. The first week or so was rough but I quickly got the hang of Unity. I still would not consider myself "good" at Unity, but I know enough to get by.

Overall, I'm very proud of this game, and my teammates were also excellent.

Final images: 

Existing Level Recreation - Ash Lake from Dark Souls 1 (complete)

I have completed the Existing Level Recreation assignment. Since my last blog post, I polished up the level, created my alteration, and completed my level maps. 

As for the level maps, they were more time consuming that I initially thought. I think the main reasons for this are that I have never created a level map before and my level had a lot of organic elements. The organic dunes within my level made the map difficult because it was extremely difficult to color the differing elevations accurately. I think I spent too much time on this, because getting it as accurate as possible is not super important as long as the rough idea is there and the player understands what the map is trying to convey. However, I am very happy with my final maps, I think they are easy to understand and they are visually appealing (images below).

 

Original level:

 

 Altered level:

 

 

For my alteration, I wanted to stay "true" to what Ash Lake represents in Dark Souls 1. Instead of being focused on exploration or combat, Ash Lake's strength is atmosphere, visuals, and story. Ash Lake is seemingly the only place untouched by the story events of Dark Souls 1. A place that still may have dragons (which were thought to be entirely wiped out). Ash Lake is unlike any other area in Dark Souls 1 both visually and mechanically. It exists in it's own world. The area is extremely hidden from the player, requiring finding two hidden paths, and then traversing an entire secret area before arriving there. While there are some enemies and mini-boss, the player is meant to walk and take in the surrealist landscape. I did not want to betray this aspect of the level, so my alteration changed the ending of the level to make it even more visually striking. Instead of walking into the giant tree to then find a dragon sitting on a perch, a giant log peeks up from the ground inviting the player to go inside. As they start walking, they start to see an orange glow, which sharply contrasts from the monochromatic blue that's present in the original Ash Lake level. Then, the player sees a bonfire peeking out from the bottom of the log. and then as the player keeps traveling down the log they see a giant pool of lava with a ginormous dragon skull sticking out of it. Despite the difference between a live dragon and dead dragon seeming large, it is actually insignificant to the story of Dark Souls 1. This world (Ash Lake) exists so separated from the main world and the player, that the things that occur there mean almost nothing. There being one dragon left or not does not matter, because it will die eventually. My alteration just shows that nothing, not even the alien world of Ash Lake, can escape the grasps of time. Which is also one of the core themes of the entire Dark Souls series.

 

 

Video walk-through of my level with commentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSzfQsfWMaI&t=1s 

 

 

Final Images of original level:

 

 

Final images of altered level:

 

 

  

Video walk-through of Ash Lake in-game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxeSbGs9JQ&t=120s 

 

 

Screenshots of Ash Lake in-game:

 

 

 

Existing Level Recreation - Ash Lake from Dark Souls 1 (work-in-progress)

For this assignment, I was tasked to create a blockmesh of an existing game level. I chose Ash Lake from Dark Souls 1, which I consider to be my favorite level from any game (at least aesthetically). Here are some images of the level including a top down map from an online guide.

 

 

While there are not many rooms or complex structures in this level, my work so far has been a little challenging. This mainly came from creating the ash dunes. The height of the ash dunes vary greatly at different parts of the level, and estimating how high certain parts were was difficult. As for the first couple of weeks, my main point of reference came from walking around the level in-game. Another reason the ash dunes were difficult is because of how organic there shapes are. Many game levels are flat with some ladders or stairs to change elevation. However the the bulk of Ash Lake's intractable areas are organic dunes with gradual elevation changes. I had a ton of trouble figuring out how to even start creating this floor. I started by overlaying the map of the level into Unreal Engine and lifting the ground slightly with the landscape tool in the shape of the map. However I quickly realized that the height of the terrain varies vastly and much of it is very tall relative to sea level, so lifting up the ground only slightly did not help me that much. What I ended up doing instead was lifting up the area a lot and then sculpting down to get the lower-level areas to an accurate height, which was significantly easier.

 

I also had difficulty creating the entrances into the smaller tree that's located in the middle of the level. For hours, I was trying to make it work with additive and subtractive brushes, but I was having a ton of issues getting the subtractive brushes to subtract properly. I eventually gave up on that method after almost getting everything to work, as I knew it could not get it exactly how I wanted. I then did some research and I discovered the boolean tool. After messing around with it for a few minutes I attempted to recreate the tunnels in the tree with that tool and I ended up finishing it in a matter of minutes (compared to the brushes which took me hours to not even finish it). 

 

Recently, I found a website that has a database of levels from old video games that lets you fly around to see every inch of the level (https://noclip.website/). This tool has helped a great deal as it made it very easy to see if the scale of everything in my level is correct and to see where every object/asset goes.

 

Part of this assignment is to create an alteration to the level after finishing the blockout. I currently have two ideas for the alteration. One is to create an underground cave leading from the small log at the beginning, and the other idea is to create a staircase made out of mushrooms that lead an upper level in the tree in the middle of the level.

 

The only things left to do are add more detail to the inside of the tree at the end, create the alteration to the level, and to finish my map of the level.

 

Work-in-progress images: