Level Design - Boss Level
DUNCAN & THE WISP: BOSS LEVEL DESIGN
Choosing to create a Boss Level meant a couple of things to me: it had to be exciting, challenging and rewarding. With these ideas in mind, I also felt that creating a tense environment with threatening music and atmosphere would also help in testing with Players who were familiar with the controls of our game and wanted to be challenged. Having all these ingredients in mind, the Boss level delivered a challenging experience for play testers, but not without it’s faults.
Before even starting the Boss Level, there was some iterations to our mechanics that needed further refinement. For instance, our Click To Move controller for our character was not as responsive or complete as I had liked it to be. Something with it was still missing so I conducted some further research on games like Diablo 3, Torchlight II, and Mages of Mystralia and was successfully able to conclude some interesting findings within their click to move mechanics that could be reverse-engineered for our usage. I borrowed how Diablo 3 handled their ‘dead-zone’ when clicking directly on the character’s location.
Clicking directly upon the character’s location moves the character toward the direction of the mouse cursor one unit.
When clicking on their location, the Player moves one unit away from their current location, toward the direction of where the mouse cursor is positioned. I was able to replicate this functionality and it has improved the overall control of our game. Additional refinements such as the length which the projectiles are fired from the Player have been adjusted, as well as the rotation speed of the Player when turning toward a direction.
After these refinements were completed. The overall block out of the Boss Level was able to begin. I created the Boss level to be a simple arena-style level, which funnels the Player into a larger room where the boss character awaits.
Player using their Alternate Attack/Projectile ability on an exploding Crystal.
Player using the exploding Crystals to damage the Boss
To make things more interesting, I created explosive crystals that the Player must use in order to deal damage to the boss character. I felt that designing a boss with a lot of health and strength wasn’t very interesting. The Player would end up constantly clicking on the boss to attack him for a long period of time which would get boring very quickly. Instead, these explosive crystals must be fired upon using their alternate attack ability that launches a projectile. Each hit increases the size of the crystal and eventually causes it to explode. The explosion deals no damage to the Player, but will damage the Boss character.
In order to introduce this to the Player, I used simple UI text that would appear on the ground when the player would near the first crystal. The player could then test this out on the crystal to see how it works. If the Player ignores this, I designed the level with a crystal that has to be triggered in order to blow apart a wall in order for the Player to advance into the den of the Boss. In play testing, Players seemed to pick up on this concept rather quickly and associate the glowing crystals with the idea that they could be shot at to trigger an explosion.
Some faults in this design though appears when some of the ‘dead’ crystals I used to decorate the level were misunderstood to be crystals that could be shot at. This frustrated some Players to feel like they were tricked as they received more damage from the boss trying to trigger an explosion.
Each time the Boss is damaged, he releases Mana and Health orbs to reward the Player for successfully causing damage which gives the Player more of a chance to survive the battle. The battle also appeared to take too long for some Players that were able to quickly grasp the strategy of out-running the Boss, destroying a crystal when he closes in and then repeating that process. The damage caused to the Boss seemed to be minimal and did not satisfy some Player’s enough to feel that their work in trying to damage the boss was appreciated.
Player mistakenly trying to use their projectile on a ‘dead’ crystal that does not explode.
Overall, the level was received as exciting and interesting with exceptions to the damage being caused to the Boss by crystals, the art direction of the level causing misconceptions with crystals that were/ weren’t intractable and the overall duration of the boss battle being too long.
KEY THINGS I WORKED ON:
Design and Block Out Boss Level
Player Movement Iteration/Refinement on Rotation Speed and Click to Move responsiveness
Scripted functionality that highlights the mesh outline of objects when the mouse cursor moves over them
Script functionality for the Boss character to drop EXP, Mana and Health Orbs whenever damaged
Script functionality for the Boss character to trigger it’s Run, Hurt and Roar animations whenever pursuing the Player or receiving damage
Created ParticleFX whenever the Player receives a Level Up
Created ParticleFX whenever the Player retrieves EXP, Health or Mana orbs
Added SoundFX when the Player or Boss is damaged, as well as when Crystals are destroyed, or when orbs are collected
Added Music to the level that has been scripted to begin playing when triggered by the Player. Music is scripted to loop while the Boss is alive and to stop when the Boss is defeated