Week 8-12 | Development Log | FPS RPG

Level Design | Learning And Creating

Introduction

During weeks 8 to 12, the project transitioned to combining everyone's individual work into one cohesive project with a single level showing the game mechanics created. We split into two teams, one for level design and one for inventory, picking-up weapons and any other ancillary work such as enemy AI. I chose to be in the level design team and our team (consisting of three members) decided to approach the level design process by having three levels:

1. The first level created by a level design team member would be a movement tutorial where the player must escape a underground dungeon through various rooms to exit through the cave. 
2. The second level designated to me would be a open world western inspired desert with mountains around the level to contain the player with a village in the middle inside of a large rectangle castle wall. The level is a tutorial on picking up weapons and selecting quests. The player than has to climb the mountain to reach the third level.
3. The third level designated to another team member would be a arena level where the player has to use their weapons to fight AI enemies to win the game.

Goals

The following were the primary goals for me to learn and create a level in Unity.

• Research how to create levels in Unity effectively.
• Design a village layout for the open world level.
• Create the western inspired open world town level.

Personnel

The following is the primary author and any secondary authors who assisted in completing the set tasks given. 

• Primary - Jamie Pasnin
• Secondary - N/A

Technologies, Tools, and Resources Used

The following are the technologies, tools and resources used to assist in completing the set goals.

• Learning Pro-builder In Unity:
  • YouTube | Learn to Use Unity Pro-builder
• Learning How To Create A Level In Unity Using Pro-builder:
  • YouTube | MAKING YOUR FIRST LEVEL in Unity with ProBuilder!
• Learning How To Create Structures With Interior and Exterior Using Unity Pro-builder:
  • YouTube | ProBuilder Building Structures with Interior and Exterior
• Learning How To Use Poly-brush To Place Objects Across An Area Easier In Unity:
  • YouTube | Polybrush Intro and Tutorial

Key Tasks Undertaken

The following are the key tasks that were taken to help a developer/reader understand how the tasks were completed.

• To begin I started with designing a layout of a village in Adobe Illustrator (shown below):
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• Then created the base foundation and walls for all the building structures in Unity using simple geometry (shown below):
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• However, after two weeks of working on this with this workflow I discovered that this approach to level design was not effective and would take a long time to complete. I learned from the course coordinator that using Pro-Builder is a much better tool for building levels in Unity. Thus, I decided to scrap the level I created, reduced the buildings of the town level layout, did research on how to use Pro-builder, Pro-grids and Poly-brush to create a town level shown below:

  
  

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• Then did some tests to make sure it works and pushed my work onto SourceTree in Master branch.

What I Found Out

The following are particular lessons learned during the weeks.

• Learned how to use Pro-builder, Pro-grids and poly brush.
• Learned how to create interior and exterior buildings in Unity.

Open Issues/Risks

The following is a list of any issues or risks that were unable to be resolved that caused tasks to not be completed. 

• No issues or risks were presented that caused tasks to not be completed. 

Solution Justification

The following describes why I chose the solution that I did to complete the goals set. 

• I first started with designing the level in Adobe Illustrator because its obviously important to plan ahead and then I used the simple geometry creation and manipulation tools as I did not know their was a dedicated tool (Pro-builder) for creating levels. After discovering that my original workflow was not effective and would take a long time to complete, I decided to explore Pro-builder and create a new level from scratch using Pro-builder and Pro-grids because it would be overall easier starting from scratch instead of using the older design layout. Also, the original layout design had many housing which I wanted to reduce to help reduce scope so the level could be completed in time.