#050 GAD BA6: Level Creation and Documentation

The level design is one of the more important aspects of the game, it needs to a balance of playable areas as well as obstacles and dangers. My initial plan (see below) gave a fairly large area of game play, with multiple environmental dangers that can be used to the players advantage or prove to be their downfall.

I started off with one of the powerup spawn points, using a cylinder to begin and extruding the faces to give it a lip. I then pulled in the face to give a secondary lip, then pushed it back down and up at a diagonal slope to create the hatch that opens and closes to spawn the powerup box.

I then used a cube, distorting and scaling it to create a sloped section, that is completely antithetic, to improve the look of the spawn point.

The spawn box is a simple shape of a box, I extruded each face in and then down so that it had a border edge as well as a face for the powerup icon.

I added in some rings, getting smaller at the top from the original size at the bottom. These rings are to give the visual that the boxes are floating, or being held up by some kind of force.

I then went on to create the pneumatic flipper. Starting off with a plane, I extruded it up to create a rim, then dropped it back down to it's original height.

I then used a cylinder for the curved section, cutting it away and merging it to the top half of the flipper.

For the top half of the drop pit I did exactly the same as I did for the flipper.

I then extruded the face down to create a hole.

For the fire pit, I used the drop pit but then added some bars going across the surface. I used only 2 faces per bar to keep the tri count down.

Using the same technique as I used got the drop pit and fire pit, I created a rectangular plane and extruded it to create part of the spikes asset.

I then added in a row of spikes, using only 5 sides cones to keep within my poly budget. I also deleted the bottom faces to save some faces too.

I recycled some of the bars from the fire pit for the spikes, giving them a bit more depth.

For the actual level I first started with the floor, tracing around the floor plan that I had made. I used the create polygon tool with snap to grid and snap to vertex on.

I then added in the buildings, extruding them from the floor and beveled the top area to create a indent for the roof.

As part of the wear and tear of the abandoned building, I cut out a section using the cut faces tool, then filled it in with the create polygon tool.

For the walls I again used the create polygon tool, then extruded them out and beveled the top edge. I also used the same technique as before to cut into some of the walls, as if they had been destroyed.

I then used the create polygon tool again, going around the whole level. I extruded it down a bit then added a lip, then continued to extrude it down further.

I added in all of the environment assets (fire pits, powerup spawns etc) to the level, positioning them into their corresponding areas by looking at the floor plan.

I began now adding some details to the environment here I created a pipe system by extruding and rotating a cylinder face, adding lips on all joins where pipes would be fixed to each other.

I added in a electrical box from a cube, cutting it in half and then scaling it. I then extruded the inside (with a plan to add in some electrical circuit board) and added a handle, which was created using a cylinder and distorting it.

I began to add in some power lines going around the top of the buildings that connect to the power box for the lights. I created some simple brackets, made from a distorted cube, and distributed them around the top of the roof.

For the lights I used the create polygon tool to draw around two side by side circles. I then extruded two faces on each sides and added divisions to create the bolt fittings (images taken from older save and not topologised).

I then used a cylinder to create the bolt heads, extruding them in the middle to add depth.

I created bars by cutting apart and merging a ring, as well as adding in a long section for the horizontal bar.

For the last section of the light fitting, I used a quarter of a sphere and extruded the edge. I then used another section of a sphere to add the other end, merging them all together.