Project Blade, Day 4

As the second day of working from home comes to a close, it’s time to update this design blog.

Most of today has consisted of discussions regarding design of the levels as well as of the enemies we want in the game. The level design discussion in particular took quite some time, having bled over from late yesterday, and regarded the symetry of the rooms. Due to how the randomized system we are going to use for the game, we have chosen to make rooms square and with a door in the middle of each wall for simplicity’s sake. This due to needing the system early and not wanting the programmer to be stuck with making this one system work for the entirety of the project. However, our level- and environmental artists disliked the symmetry of the rooms and wanted them more asymmetrical, specifically the doors. But after a lot of discussion including weighing the opportunities versus the risks of an asymmetrical design, we managed to come to an understanding and will proceed with the current layouts. With some compromises to make the rooms feel less symmetrical than they actually are.

Apart from that, I have been doing some more research of level design. Today specifically I chose to watch a GDC about negative spaces and how it impacts the game. I’ve taken the negative spaces into consideration when designing a few more rooms during the day, as well as the ten principles I learned from yesterdays research. I have also been looking over some blueprints of office buildings and how they look from both symmetrical and asymmetrical angles to get a better idea of breaking the symmetry of the rooms a bit.

The level- and environmental artists have also been doing a lot of reasearch as well as begun making tilesets for us designers to test out in our geryboxed rooms. Though there has been some struggles due to lack of hardware, but it should all be sorted out very soon. The programmer asigned to making the level-generator has also finished an early version of it, allowing for testing once we have functional levels for it. Having it done early also allows for plenty of testing and bugfixing later on.

Meanwhile, the other teams have been working hard as well. The character artists have continued their work on the artguide and are concepting enemies after the choices of us designers. The gameplay designers have also been hard at work designing said characters as well as the upgrades we will be using later on. Our lead-designer has also been editing the GDD a lot to further reflect the vision of the game. The programmer responsible for the player character’s code has been hard at work and have managed to get a lot done so far.

With that ends the fourth day as well as second day of us being home due to the virus. There has been a few ups and downs, but we are progressing as planned and are slowly but surely getting there.