The Wall Postmortem
Introduction
For this level design project, we were tasked with developing an entire level in blockmesh along with a mechanic to teach the player using a version of the Adventure project. Creative vision stated that the player controls a treasure hunter, setting must take place on earth, present time or near future, and may include light sci-fi, but not science fantasy. The level should play no longer than 8 minutes on the golden path, but ideally within 3-6. We could not modify the player character at all, nor could we lose possession of the player character. There were other smaller restrictions, but most of the rest was up to creativity. We utilized Perforce to share our builds and obtain feedback on the design.
With this in mind, I wanted to set out to create a section of the Great Wall of China with the idea that there were secret rooms hidden under the wall. The player crash lands from a helicopter just outside and finds that a rival team has blown open the wall before the player arrives. The level then proceeds through multiple rooms to introduce the player to the mechanic of the level. The mechanic is lightly based on some puzzles from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and requires the player to rotate an object to match another object in the room to unlock the way to the next area.
What Went Right
The Wall: I am generally happy with the way that the wall was crafted. The rooms flow nicely as the player weaves through the main chamber. I utilized the main chamber as kind of an extended rest area between the rooms and as a familiar place the player can orient themselves in. The way I structured everything made it feel more natural and not too “back-tracky”. Each room felt like a secret area that wasn’t meant to be found, which supports my level narrative.
The Puzzle: My rotation mechanic worked as I had intended through each room. It was easy to understand and provided just enough challenge to make the player think about which way they should move. I added gears to the moving part to hint to the player which shape moved and which remained static. I feel this made a nice subtle contrast between the puzzle pieces.
The Mesh: As I continue to make projects, I feel that my ability to craft objects from blocks is improving. In this project, I was able to bring to life several aspects thanks to my attention to detail. I will continue to place extra effort on this stage to mitigate potential issues later in the design process.
The Efficiency: I took my organizational skills very seriously in this project and utilized the folder subsystems in the Outliner. This allowed for fast iteration of objects whilst remaining efficiently organized to find objects or pieces easily. This reproduction method saved a lot of searching for pieces of the mesh and helped my speed in a significant way.
What Went Wrong
The Puzzle Unlock: A bug I ran into about halfway through the project had me question whether my methods were efficient for what I needed from the level. I had the puzzle unlock the door whenever a specific cube in the shape overlapped a point in the box. This worked well enough and achieved the goal I wanted, however it also meant that any overlap would trigger the unlock function. Reflecting back, I believe I know the solution, but during the process, I had no clue how to address this.
The Puzzle, but the Bad Part: While the mechanic worked as I intended, the way it function had an unintentional side effect in that the player could make the shape move off axis if they pressed another button before the shape finished moving. To address this, I move the control boxes further away and on different platforms so that the player could not reach them in time to send the shape off-axis. For the final room, I oriented the two puzzle boxes to not face the player, which would cause the player to have to move between the two to confirm how the shape was oriented. These solutions helped eliminate the issue, however it is still something that I would address should the project see further development.
The Set Dressing: While I think the level has sufficient dressing to give the feel I wanted for the region, I don’t think I sufficiently portrayed the story aspect to the level. To address this, I would add some corpses from the previous team strewn throughout the various parts of the level. Additionally, I would add exploration equipment (dynamite, backpacks, maps) to give the impression that the player is not the first person to come across this area.
Conclusion
This project gave me a great joy to produce as I truly felt free to craft what I wanted to do. Making a unique mechanic from scratch was very rewarding and taught me ways to tackle problems that I hadn’t had previously. I leaned into my organizational skills to ensure tight and cohesive Outliner folders to enable fast reproduction and iteration. I appreciate how much care and attention it takes to make a level feel lived in pre-mesh application more than ever. It also taught careful consideration on how a level flows and how everything connects together as I chose to weave in and out of the level without making it feel repetitive. Level design continues to have a significant impact on my enthusiasm towards game design and feel confident that it will only increase from here.
