We weren't sure what direction we really wanted to go in to begin with, so we started out by building our own individual block outs of the scene, then merging them together to see what we could create out of them. Which.. didn't exactly work in our favour. We mostly just got a giant mess out of it, but I suppose it served its purpose, which was to give us a starting point for ideas. After though, we took away the file and each tried to refine it to come up with a smoother idea. In the beginning I quite liked the idea of the player spawning in makeshift prison cells and escaping an enemy's stronghold.
Whilst we were still thinking about where we wanted to take this level, layout wise, we went on to mood boards to find some ideas of what we wanted the aesthetics of the level to be like.
I was very into the idea of a dystopian/post apocalyptic type level. That's just a personal thing I guess, I saw more room for manoeuvre and ideas with that, whereas I've never found Sci-Fi that interesting or inspiring. Personally. I mean, who knows, that may change in the future, but so far the derelict look, peeling paint and rusted metal is a much more inspiring thought to me.
Whilst making mood boards, I realised I really liked the idea of a barren desert wasteland, which later progressed to being made into a fortified city, protecting themselves from zombies. (Zombies yay!) I looked at a lot of pictures of abandoned factories or places that had fallen derelict, such as Pripyat, but I found looking at shanty towns the most useful, because apart from not generally being built out of shipping containers, they were very much a look I thought would be good to aim for. A civilisation of people, building a home out of simply what they can find.
Each of us then started to discuss the player's route in more detail, and Mark came up with some excellent solutions. We had to solve the problem of our level being frankly way too big, but at the same time make it interesting for the player to traverse.
As you can see from the blue arrows in the section above, some of the original idea's were way too overcomplicated and unnecessary.
This was our roundabout level appearance by the end of the first week. We have still been tweaking it from this stage, trying to get a more interesting play through.
We all started making a list of what assets needed making, and got a fair few made and unwrapped. I also tried to do a couple of paint overs to explore the idea of what the overall look of the level could be.
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