#gamedev unity gamedesign leveldesign duck

[chrispydesign]

A Game Design Student’s Post Mortem - 2 Many Ducks

This gif may not make much sense right now, but trust me it will. These past 6 weeks have been insanely hectic. I’ve probably learned more in 6 weeks than I’ve learned more in these 6 weeks than all of high school, but this has also been the most fun I’ve ever had studying. 

Before I talk about ducks, I have to talk about some of the other cool stuff we’ve done. We’ve been focusing on level design, and specifically modularity in design. We’ve learned from game development giants like Bethesda how they designed their modular kits, which allowed them to save on development costs by making level generation an easier and more optimised process. In the spirit of this, we tried to design our own modular kits; I decided to do mine based on a mine. 

I never got to texture it or build anything with it, but it was a good exercise. I also learned about scoping: I initially had much more to the mine that would allow it to have modular height, but even with the fixed height it was still difficult and time-consuming to design and model. I would like to one day revisit this and make a level with it. 

Expanding on that idea of modularity, we examined another game that has a heavy focus on it, but for a different purpose: Borderlands is well known for its “87 bazillion guns”, and clearly they didn’t model each individual gun; rather, they divided a gun into different components (stock, barrel, scope, grip, magazine), designed some parts for each, and mixed and matched them in game. We also designed our own guns, and I went for a more... outlandish feel to mine. 

Yes, that is a trebuchet as a scope. I ran out of time before making the main of the body, so I learned a lesson there about time management. 

Last but not least, we have to talk about the meat of this unit: the 6 week long assignment, Mother Duck. For this assessment, we were given a competitive party game abotu chasing ducks, but we had to design a level based on a real environment in Melbourne, and my group chose the Arts Centre.

This was also the first time I’d every done on-site referencing for a project. As a group, we headed over to the Arts Centre and took a bunch of photos and sketches: I personally took 500 photos, which were a pain to sort through but provided ample references for our models and textures in the level. 

We didn’t know it at the time, but these references would be critical to the development of the level: having an image to make your model from is a million times easier than trying to model an object from memory. Very glad I spent a lot of time taking a ton of images.

As a team, we allocated tasks to each other and got to work. My particular beast to slay was the centrepiece of our level: when you think of the Arts Centre, the first thing that pops into most people’s minds is the Eiffel-Tower-esque spire perched atop it. 

Yep, I had to figure out how to model that. Good luck to me I guess. 

My process of modelling the Spire went through many iterations. I started by trying to create it using polygon primitives: 

Yea, it didn’t turn out looking so good. I soon scrapped that approach, and tried to figure out another way to do it. Thankfully, my teacher introduced me to a nifty tool called “Lattice” in 3DS Max. The tool would draw a cylinder around every line in your object, very useful for replicating the Spire’s mesh design. With that knoweldge in mind, I reworked my approach, and tried to make the spire out of planes and draw lines inside the planes which would later become cylinders.

STEP 2: 

After completing that, I exported it from Maya to 3DS to lattice it. 

STEP 3: ???

STEP 4: PROFIT

I think it turned out looking pretty good. 

Through trying to make this beast of a model, I learned a lot of tools that Maya had available to me, and was able to really broaden my knowledge of 3D Modelling. Though it took me longer to model the Spire than I would’ve liked, it ended up beign very worth it. 

But the Spire wasn’t the only thing in the level: when it comes to level design, there’s a lot more that goes into it than a hero model. Unfortunately, my team was one of many that suffered from production issues: namely, we started off as a 4-man team but ended up as a 3-man project within the first day, then a 2-man team halfway through the project. 

Things were not looking good. 

With only two of us remaining, we had to shift our game development into overdrive. We had to cut so much content from our level, reallocate all of our tasks, and ensure that we were both on top of our game in order to make our deadline. 

It was a stressful 6 weeks, not going to lie, but you know what? It was totally worth it in the end. We managed to put together a pretty killer level that I’m proud of, and also learned a lot about people: some you can rely on, and some you can’t. Our troubled production experience and how we made the most of a crappy situation is something I will keep with me for future projects. Experience is the best teacher after all. 

Here’s a GIF from our final level. Let me know what you think.

https://gph.is/2rqKvFc

Overall, this unit has been a stressful and tiring experience but super rewarding. I’ve had a lot of fun learning, and I’m definitely looking forward to more of it, but maybe a bit less hair-tearing and hopefully production goes smoothly next time (yea right).