Project Dream Weaver

For our main project in BA5, we were asked to simple "create something playable". We could work on our game design we created for our previous unit, or on a new game design. We also had the choice to work alone or in a group.

Wanting to develop a very specific set of skills I chose to work alone. I wanted to use a game idea I had been thinking about for a while now and use this project to explore that idea a little further. The idea was for a lone character, played through a first person perspective, to be chased through a dream-like world, made up of no more than a beach and a ruined town, by a Nightmare that grows increasingly faster and more powerful. The player would have to gain abilities to prevent being caught by the Nightmare. The town would be designed to be fairly small, but the player could unlock access to more of it by gaining afore mentioned abilities. One example is the ability to use the many set of stairs to switch the player's relative gravity to walk on walls and ceilings. This ability alone, inspired by MC Escher's "stairs" drawings, creates some very interesting level design opportunity I thought were perfect for this project.
For this project, I wanted to focus specifically on my level and gameplay design skills. So, I decided I was going to created a very roughly textured block out level in CryEngine. My hope was, by actually producing a block out of the level, I would be forced to think critically about how the gameplay works and how the level should fit together. I feel it is important to note that I have contributed much less artwork to this project than all previous because of the focus on the design.

first thing I wanted to sort out was the game mechanics themselves. If I could get, at least the barebones, on paper I could start designing the level. I took my usual initial approach to this which is to sit down with a notebook and the raw idea in my head and begin trying to figure out what mechanics I could use to create something as close to the image in my head as possible. This stage I often approach without too much research and try to just jot down as many ideas as possible, linking them where possible trying to create fun and functional gameplay systems. This didn't take more than a day or two to get an idea I thought was worth taking further. It was at this point I had the idea of having spirits you guide and help to get to shrines in order to get abilities. It was also at this point I worked out the Sand and Physical abilities in the game. I also knew I wanted the player to be able to get different types of ability by performing different tasks. With the very barebones worked out, I decided to work the rest out on a very large flowchart in order to make sure all my ideas worked. It was also important that many of the systems worked independently, as well as when linked to other systems. (Unfortunatly, the flowchart needs to be too high a resolution is be readable to post)

I felt satisfied with the results having worked out exactly how the Nightmare reacts in many situations, the system for gaining abilities and how to escape the Nightmare in most situations. With this, I decided to work out the architectural design as I knew this would have a major effect on how the game played due to the largely spatial and platforming design of the game. I struggled with this for quite some time, spending far longer than I should have on it. Eventually, I chose a middle eastern-esque style.

Not wanting to spend too much time on concept art and focus on design I drew some silhouette, mostly using random shapes mixed with those found in reference photos to create some interesting shapes. I then picked the shapes I like and combined them into more silhouettes. The silhouette I eventually chose doesn't look much like the final block out at all, but it helped me find peace of mind enough on this matter to move onto the map.

I chose the middle silhouette as my final design

 I decided, for the map, I would work out paths for the player to travel through using all of the abilities and then stitch the paths together into a map so that most of the map served a purpose of some sort. After very briefly sketching these paths and working out a very rough key for the map, I drew a rough map out in Photoshop.

Rough Map

The rough map served as a guide to creating a final map on graph paper. I wanted to use graph paper so I could easily and quickly make changes when needed and still make the map precise enough to use as a scale model when taking it into CryEngine. Whilst working on this final map, I worked out the final map key and added the ability to use sprinting and Sandman as ways to boosting jump distance and increase the pace of the game. I also decided here to only allow sand abilities to be used whilst standing on sand, the idea inspired by the boost pads in the racing game WipeOut.

Final Graph paper map

Final map key

 Once this was finished I created a cleaner digital version of the map.

Clean version of the final map

Once the map was complete I felt comfortable taking it into CryEngine. The first thing I did was create the height map. Not thinking to check the scale, I had to play around with the size of the height map a fair bit before I felt comfortable building the structures. It also took me a little while of fiddling with the height of the map and the slope of the beach. I did this by switching back and forth between CryEngine and Photoshop to repaint the map or edit the levels until I was satisfied. I used the Solids tool to make the structures, paying careful attention to the grid, wanting to be as faithful to the graph map as possible so that the distances for jumps and the sizes of obstacles would be right. Once I had all the basic structures in, I created rough shape templates for the fabric hooks and stairs that could be copied across the map to keep up consistency. The only problem with this step is that time it takes to do. This task was long and tedious and for the most part could be done with relative ease.
Once all the structures were built I started applying the textures. Running low on time I decided to use textures already in CryEngine and played around with the settings. I used two textures. One for terrain and one for the buildings. I just wanted to give an idea of colour but found my choices to be far too extreme. For this I had created a colour test painting.

The colour test

The colour test was created in Photoshop by painting two flat colors, one for the sky, one for the ground. When I found a colour combination that suited the dreamy landscape I was after, I would paint in some tone and variety to see how that work. I used some Salvador Dali landscapes for this, finding that he managed to make even a completely flat landscape look completely alien through colour and tone. I took note of the contrasts of colours in the sky and the ground and the way he often moved from very saturated deep colours in the foreground to the background. Although I drained a lot more colour from mine to give it a lighter feel, I believe I captured a similar surrealism. I then added the two suns and a block of off white rock to see how the light would play on the scene. Liking the result, I used this as reference for the textures. After some playing with the textures in CryEngine and the sun and sky settings, I found that I could not get the feel right. I decided not to play with the lighting and settled for the result. Overall, I am happy with the result in terms of block out and level design, although I do not think I gave myself enough time to work in CryEngine and way too much time to architecture research. I also think that I should have used more illustrations and artwork to demonstrate my designs. I feel like, despite my focus on design, I could have explained myself better with pictures.