Level Design Blog Week 8 - Creating the second area/First Play Test

Underground Cave

During this week I began adding to more of the level. This included adding an underground area to my "Egypt" block out. Below is a screenshot of the first iteration of it. The player can move some obstacles out of the way, to find a hole in the ground, this will then lead the player down to this area, they will be rewarded with a shotgun. There are multiple AI within the underground cave, including a sniper. They all have their own patrol points which they will begin walking to once the player had triggered the AI-activation trigger box. To make it seem more man made, I added stairs in the form of cubes, this stops the player from walking up them and instead the player has to climb up them.

First Playtest

However, this I have gained feedback from Jonathan O'Reilly during playtesting, that this can be frustrating as sometimes the player character can find it hard to grab onto the edges of the cube, in the next iteration of the cave, I will replace these cubes with stairs from the block-out pack.

Cave Huts

As well as the underground cave, I needed a way for the player to get out of it, so around the map the player can find small grey huts (I made these using the cube-grid tool). These allow the player to go up and down from the underground cave. The original idea for the underground cave was that it would allow the player to find an alternate route to enter the Pyramid. Below is a screenshot of the huts.

Further Playtesting

This week I had Mathew playtest my game a bit, as I was having major problems with the AI working properly underground, Eoin also had some input. The general idea was that the ceiling was too low for the AI to find their cover, however I had already fixed this problem by following one of Brians videos. Mathew thought that the underground looked more like a carpark, so I need to adjust the area to make it look like its underground more, possibly by removing the pillars or adding sand. Overall the feedback was great and I need to keep my pace so that I don't fall behind, however I need something that has working AI. so that is priority.