After finishing the water level initial design stage, I started designing the market level. As this market level is one of the levels outside the kitchen scene, so I thought I can change the mechanics of world rotation into another form of changing.
As a result, I quickly thought of the idea of using light and shadows (similar to the ice area at the water level). Players who are in the light zone will move faster while a slower speed will be gained in the shadow zone (speed can allow them to ram others). In order to make this light reasonable, I gave a stage set that the light is the flashlights from security who are patrolling the market.
Every 3 minutes, the light will change (randomly selected) so that the players need to quickly respond to the position of the next lighting zone. This also means the player might be standing inside the light zone but after the change of the light, he might be standing in a shadow zone and his opponent might be inside the lighting zone, so this gives a reversed situation for them.
The previous level is a cube so for this one I designed it based on the shape circle.
The Basic Lighting Mechanics:
Based on the previous design system from the water level, I decided to give these 4 situations for players:
Light zone on the side:
This design will make the players separated in the scene, instead of having chaotic fighting in the centre area, this can allow some individual fights or help some players to quickly leave the previous location and try to hide somewhere else.
Light zone in the middle:
Opposite of the side design, a centralised map may create tense fighting in the middle area. Although you might not need the specific fruit, when you see that player near you, you may want to shoot him or ram him. This way, a tense atmosphere can be formed.
Light zone linearly displayed:
This light zone split the battleground into 2 halves. This will allow players to fight linearly on the map and leave the 2 dark zones for players who like to shoot at a distance.
Light zone spread evenly:
Players will stand evenly on this map, by doing this, the centre fighting zone will be enlarged and this is not as tense as the light zone in the middle one.
The platforms & Obstacles:
After the basic lighting mechanics is designed, then I started to add the platforms. This is a quite difficult step because I need to come up with one map that can fit the 4 situations at the same time. Therefore, I overlapped these 4 diagrams and tried to draw some shapes that can fit them all (diagram shown below).
analyze diagram
My main design method is to follow the shape of the light zones and not disturb any of them. Dash line means the platform is above the normal height. Because this level is a 3D level, I can't design and draw in 2D all relying on my imagination, this will have a lot of limitations. So based on this initial rough plan, I started working with 3D.
During the 3D planning, I realized I can have some platforms above while some under the floor level, which can lead to a multi-layer design. The blocking is shown below.
By having a design like this, the 4 different lighting situations may all be supported. The next step of this market level would be to refine the platforms, add props and add NPC (people with carts, small animals...) routes.
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