Level design

This week I have made a large amount of progress with the level space for my project. I have created a series of connected rooms that lead on from the initial Crypt of Refuge. These rooms will give the player space to explore and engage in combat. I also wanted to use the opportunity to include some light platforming and verticality too, as these are elements of Skyrim (2011) that are under-utilised in the main game.

In one room, the player must climb a set of stairs and make some small jumps across a broken bridge to reach the exit and advance (figs. 1 and 2). This act of traversing through the space is intended to subtly prepare the player for a later room that they will come across, in which they must engage in more complex platforming in order to progress (figs. 3 and 4). Currently these rooms are slightly confusing for the player, as there is no signposting employed to guide the player’s eye towards the exit, or the desired route to take. When I begin cluttering and decorating the rooms my goal will be to draw the player’s attention to these elements as soon as they enter the space through lighting choices and leading lines. I feel that these rooms will serve as a small break for the player from the core loop of combat and exploration.

Item removal

One of my goals for this week was to begin creating some of the functionality of my mod that will help it to stand out slightly more from other level design submissions. This was no simple task, as to get create the systems that I require, I would undoubtedly need to get involved with scripting. I am relatively comfortable using C# in Unity at a novice level, however the Creation Kit uses Papyrus, a purpose-built programming language only found in Bethesda titles. This meant that I would have to spend time learning the new syntax, and teach myself the fundamentals of Papyrus scripting. To do this, I followed along with some tutorials from YouTube channel Darkfox127 (2013), the same channel through which I was able to learn how to make my Crypt Chests. The tutorials began by teaching me how to do simple things such as creating message pop-ups and menus, before going on to make a shop system that takes gold off of the player and gave them a new item in return (something I imagine will be using when I eventually include the gear upgrade system.) After a couple of hours of scripting in the language I felt that I had a strong enough grasp to begin working with it.

As my mod is intended to be a self contained experience with its own progression, I needed a way to take items away from the player. Otherwise, a high-level player will have a very different play experience than a low-level player and may end up feeling that the project is unbalanced. As I thought this would be a simple task, I decided to make my first script handle this.

To start with, I added a large trigger to the mine, fully covering the entrance so that the player has no way of avoiding it (fig. 5).

Next I attached a new script to the trigger, naming it SJCRemoveItems, sticking with my naming convention which allows me to easily find any custom made elements of the mod. The script uses an OnTriggerEnter event to find the player reference and remove all items in their inventory. The player then receives a pop-up message that lets them know that their items and equipment have been removed (fig. 7). Eventually, I will make it so that the inventory items are sent to a chest at the end of the level, so that the player is able to retrieve them after completion of the level. I also made it so that the item removal only occurs if the Boolean variable ‘doOnce’ is false, meaning that the player is unable to trigger the it more than once.

Trap rooms

Another key addition to my mod this week has been the inclusion of ‘trap rooms’. These are optional challenge rooms that the player can enter to gain extra loot. Signposted by metal portcullis’, players can pull the chain to open the door and engage with this optional content. Once inside, the door will shut behind them and they will be ambushed by a variety of challenging enemies that wait inside. Once the room is cleared, the player can loot the chest inside for gold, then find the interior pull chain to re-open the portcullis and escape. These rooms were largely included in the project as a direct response to Dan Taylor’s level design talk that I watched in week two of this module (Taylor 2013). One of his principles for good level design stated that “good level design is easy, medium and hard”, meaning that effective levels allow the player to set their own difficulty by offering multiple options in how they engage with the level. These trap rooms are intended to give players the option to increase the difficulty of their experience, and get rewarded commensurately with gold that they can spend on gear upgrades when they reach the next Crypt of Refuge.

In order to create the desired feeling of risk vs. reward for these rooms, I knew I needed a certain level of investment from the player. In order to achieve this, I wanted to trap them in the room until they had cleared it of enemies, increasing the stakes of engaging with these areas. With my recently gained knowledge of Papyrus scripting, I felt well-equipped to write a simple script that could handle this functionality.

The functionality for the trap rooms works similarly to the item removal trigger and script. Once the player opens the portcullis and enters the room, they enter a trigger that covers the area in front of the doorway. This trigger has a script attached to it that then finds the opened door and sets it to close again (fig. 9). This trigger is also linked to two sarcophagi that will activate and spawn in enemies for the player to fight. This entire sequence creates an ambush situation in which the player is essentially locked in the room until they defeat the enemies and re-open the door. This script also uses a ‘doOnce’ Boolean variable to ensure that the player is only able to trigger this once, and the door will stay open once they have escaped.

Research

For this week’s research, I watched a GDC talk from an Arkane developer about ‘holistic level design’ (Lee 2017). It provided insightful information on looking at your game’s design in a wider context, in terms of how it effects the whole. Using Dishonored (2012) as an example, they discussed how to present affordances to the player so that they know where they can go within the level and what they can do. Within Dishonored, this meant creating a lot of verticality so that the player could afford a greater view of the levels, and the broader possibility space. This applies to my own project, as there are certain areas where I have noticed that players are not sure of what they must do or where to go. This is generally in areas where platforming is required, as the player does not instinctively know to look up. I feel that this is partly because verticality and jumping are not key parts of Skyrim‘s gameplay vocabulary, but also due to the fact that I have not signposted the desired path effectively enough. By rearranging the room and employing lighting techniques so that the player’s gaze is drawn upwards towards this section, I will be able to give the player a better idea of the affordances within the space.

References

Darkfox127. 2013. Creation Kit Scripting (Purchase System) #3 [YouTube tutorial series]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYNGK2vJ418 [accessed 2 March 2022].

Dishonored. 2012. Arkane Studios, Bethesda Softworks.

LEE, Steve. 2017. An Approach to Holistic Level Design [GDC talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpOoTAVeEcU [accessed 3 March 2022].

TAYLOR, Dan. 2013. Ten Principles for Good Level Design [GDC talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNEe3KhMvXM [accessed 8 February 2022].

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. 2011. Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks.