Parasitic Sprint 1 Blog Post

Parasitic Level Design Post#1

The first sprints are usually, always focused on building the foundations of the game. As a level designer that would mean research, concept-ing, and collaborating with the team. The cards assigned to me or rather our fraction of level designers are: 

• "As a member of Parasitic Studios, I need a Unity account" 
• "As a level designer, I need to create a testing ground where we can test the most up to date mechanics" 
• "As a level designer, I need to research and annotate grid-based levels similar to that of XCOM 2" 

The cards that are completed are "As a member of Parasitic Studios, I need a Unity account" and "As a level designer, I need to research and annotate grid-based levels similar to that of XCOM 2". The first being the easiest since a Unity account is required in most CAGD classes. The next one was heavily concept-ing and researched. Collaboration was also a big part of this card as our level designers discussed and shared examples and guides of what strategy levels should feel like, how the grid-based levels would look like, and why certain concept levels work and others do not.

The one card that is still "In Progress" is the "As a level designer, I need to create a testing ground where we can test the most up to date mechanics". This card relied on components from other cards such as a collaborative Unity file where we could set up a testing ground and the grid-based systems and other scripts that our programmers were working on. Thus for this sprint, we focused more on concept-ing and making concept, grid maps of our level. 

Problems Encountered: 

There weren't any big problems aside from being blocked from working on the testing grounds. Problems in this sprint were mainly from developing my level's concept map. My first map was obviously a bit small and very linear. It was a basic block out of the level's terrain and it didn't include any of the enemies or any clear indication where the player would start. 

So to fix these issues my next map was more colorized and larger. This concept piece showed a larger level with more terrain and the enemies/player placements. However, the problem with this level is that it's not a grid, the shapes are hexagons and not squares. The level itself is still too linear and for a level that should that 20 minutes or so to complete this concept still falls short. 

The third concept map I made used pixels instead of hexagons. It's also considerably longer and larger. There are many more enemies and it's definitely less linear. The level starts on one path but splits into three different routes before leading the player into a larger field for a all-out brawl. But the downside of this level is that it's too large and there are way too many enemies, especially that last area which would overwhelm the player too much. Another concern was the fact that the design document described the first level as an open meadow and my map was more like a closed forest. 

My most recent map and final one of this sprint is designed to be more open and meadow-like. The path (yellow-ish) tiles show the player the intended routes but the openness of the level encourages exploration. There are fewer enemies and the length of the level looks good enough to last 20 or so minutes. The only problem with this level would be that it's not fleshed out enough and rather messy. I hope to fully realize this level when we get our testing ground set up and start building the level in Unity so I can test the level for accuracy of length and challenge.