This week I started designing my first level for this game. As I'm assigned the water, refrigerator and market level, I decided to start with the water level.
First of all, I plan to have unique mechanics or features in each different level map. Therefore, there will be ice areas in the water level where players' speed will be increased when they are running on the ice. At the same time, there are water areas that represent obstacles to the players (deep water means players can't go through).
The ice areas are where the players might have the more intense fighting as the only way to let the opponent's juice spill on the ground is to ram into them with a higher speed than they have. As a result, the ice area and the areas near the ice can be seen as choke points. It would be better for me to design the choke points first.
Originally, the water level is a sphere, I tried to use a sphere but there are some problems with that. Unlike a cube, a sphere can not be divided into a few faces which allows me to have a different design for each face. Another point is that it will take a longer time for people to jump from the centre to the higher side area, so most people might not choose to go to the centre area during the game. If I make the ground into a flat shape, then it starts to lose the feature of a sphere. Thus, I decided to change the shape into a cube for this level and maybe try to design a sphere level later after I get more experience.
There are a total of 6 faces for a cube so that would be perfect for me to create different experiences for the players in the game as the cube will randomly rotate 90 degrees each several minutes.
Combined with some architectural knowledge that I have and through some research, I summarized the face (faces of the cube) layouts into 'Centralised, Discrete and Linear', I designed 2 forms for each layout so which makes 6 faces in total (image below), the black solid areas are the ice. Due to players will spill their juices in the game, the initial ice areas can not be too large, a small area is enough for the beginning phase (this might be adjusted during the testing stage).
My drawing from Procreate
The Differences Between These 3 Forms
Centralised:
This type of design can lead the players to mostly fight at or near a specific area. By doing this, I'm guiding the players to gather in the centre and fight. In other words, this design can create chaos in the centre.
Centralised A: This is a basic form of centralised, where players might all want to step on the ice, get the acceleration and ram into others.
Centralised B: There is a normal ground area where no acceleration will gain. However, to make players step inside the ice-concentric circle, I will let more props spawn in the centre. In that way, players can choose to take risks and get powerful props.
Discrete:
This type of design will spread players around the map, in other words, spread the choke points. This map would not be as intense as the centralised one and the battle line is longer.
Discrete A: This design combined a little with the linear form by using short linear lines and separately arranged. So that fighting would more happen near those 4 areas, and linearly.
Discrete B: There are 4 small circle ice areas evenly distributed among the plane, which will create small fights.
Linear:
This type of design may cause linear choke points. For the 2 sides, I can make them a little higher so that they can attack players near the ice.
Linear A: allows players to fight near this long and thin ice area.
Linear B: This design combined a little with the discrete form, the ice areas are individually but are arranged in a linear form. This can lead to a few tense small fights during the game.
Then, I applied this initial plan to a grided system, I started with 10 x 10 grids. This grid system was brought up by me in one of the discussions we had and I think we can make the player's jump height into 1 unit, and then use this unit to design the platforms. In this way, we can make sure all the platforms are useful and not just a simple decoration that the players can't reach. The image below shows the rough planning of the 6 faces of the cube (this water level).
darker blue = ice area where the player's speed will increase
lighter blue = floor area
the level rough plan
Next step I will add more platforms for players to stand on and also add different types of platforms for them to jump and cover themselves.
Comments