This week was the final push before handing in my GAM140 assignments on Friday! Having spent a good amount of time on both projects over the Easter break, I was able to take the week at a relatively steady pace.
A Soft and Squishy Dungeon was fully finished last week and so no work was needed to be carried out on the project this week. I did spend some time playing through it multiple times, just in case anything had slipped by during playtesting. To my delight, there were no bugs found, however I did spot a couple of typing mistakes which I was able to rectify immediately. You can never be too careful when testing games, especially ones with branching portions, so I am glad that I took the time to do some final playthroughs.
As I finished the creation of my level design last week, I did not need to spend much time in Unity this week aside from making minor tweaks here and there. Instead, I spent a lot of time taking the appropriate screenshots and writing their accompanying annotations within the annotated document.
I went for a structure somewhat reminiscent of a game design document, initially spending time detailing the world and quest in order to contextualise my design decisions. I am glad that I dedicated some time to setting up the backdrop of the level as I think it helps to clarify my design decisions, as well as filling in the gaps in the readers imagination as the blocky aesthetic does not do a great job at conveying how I would like the finished level to look. I plan to improve my 3D modelling, and by extension ProBuilder, skills over the summer with a new Udemy course on Blender that I just picked up (Davidson and Abbit, 2021).
I then spent the rest of the document going over the level’s design. Starting with the overall topology of the level, I used an image with numbered areas to give the reader a broader idea of the layout (fig. 1), as well as where each space sits in relation to one another.
(Above) Figure 1: Annotated screenshot. The topology of the level with numbered areas.
I then went on to zoom in on the individual spaces that the player moves through, using both top-down (fig. 2) and perspective images to illustrate the level. Labels were made with the help of colour-coding (fig. 3) and in-depth annotations were written below each image. In an attempt to better convey my design decisions, I made good efforts to focus in on architectural principles and human instincts, as covered in previous lectures, when discussing these spaces.
(Above, left) Figure 2: Annotated screenshot. A zoomed-in look at the initial space that the player moves through, with more detailed annotations. (Above, right) Figure 3: Screenshot. The key for the annotations, to clarify for readers.
After finishing up this task, with the document sitting at about 2000 words, I had finished my GAM140 portfolio submissions. It has been a long road, and filled with a lot of learning and development, and I am proud of the finished products. I will make one last post next week as a ‘post-mortem’ to do a more in-depth reflection of the pieces.
References:
DAVIDSON, Rick and Grant ABBIT. ‘Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners’. Udemy [online]. Available at: https://www.udemy.com/course/blendertutorial/ [accessed 26 January 2021].