BLUE BODEN
GALAXY DIVIDED
Galaxy Divided is both the first game I served as a lead in the production and the first game I worked with open levels. The spaces in the game are linear in that the only way to complete a level is to clear a bounty placed in a randomly chosen area. However, the player has free reign to explore and fight enemies all across the map in order to get money and items acquired through shops and clearing enemies.
MAP DESIGN PROCESS
The map of Galaxy Divided went through several stages of production and ideation, before the general landscape was created by Environment Artist John Wolf before being further refined by myself. I grayboxed individual points of interest, places where the player would encounter enemies and find shops or money in order to acquire items, but the connecting tissue was taken directly from picture to model by him.
Seen above is the world map at different points of production, before arriving at the final product.
Seen below are the 2d maps and grayboxes made for individual points of interest, as well as a brief description of the intent when making them.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?
Galaxy Divided was an insightful foray into level design, although it did undergo quite a few hiccups in regards to levels being made before character movement and other ways they would be interacting with the scene. From this, I've learned many things that are good and that I should continue practicing in the future, and things that I should avoid. Most importantly, though, I made a great attempt to incorporate what I understood the player's movement capabilities to be in the initial production of these levels. In the future, I will work with mechanics designers and programmers to create levels that have more than the idea of a player's capabilities in mind, but truly make a level feel interactable.