Bonnie had Clyde, peanut butter has jam, and our level has design. The team worked together on designing our first level as it would be played by the players whom play the game with gameplay. We had to determine how exactly the first level would look, feel and the various elements that would go into it. Another important consideration we needed to make was the various terrain levels and platforms the player would be able to jump onto, walk around and explore. This is Crucial (with a capital "C"), as it will help us - the coders - create hit boxes on where the player will be able to go as well as help our visual designer create the terrain. Our first level was agreed to include a house, forrest, caverns and a beach-y area that would lead into the second level. The team determined the design of the first level on pen and paper using sketches (as shown below).
The level design of the first level was the main task that all members of the team came together to work on. It is vital we lay out the different levels and their elements early on so we do not struggle will creating fixes during development. Another important discussion we had was determining the difference between a scene (in the Unity environment) and a level.
My contributions can be seen above with different sketches and notes. I aided the team in designing the level and creating various environmental pieces that would supplement the players experience to be enjoyable.
We will need to clarify where loading will take place, the scale of the level and its components and more. These issues all relate to level design, and as mentioned previously, it is important we tackle these early on to aide and simplify our processes during development.
