Martin Vilches

       The last project for this course was designing another 3D level, but this time our theme was Medieval, and we were given the Game Kit to have a base to build the level. I first thought of the Medieval theme: Castles, Towers, and Dungeons. The plan was to make a level where the player started in the middle of the forest and had to make their way through some rocks on a river because the bridge would be broken. After finishing the first part, there would be the castle, where the player would need to open the doors and kill enemies. There would also be destroyable objects with a crate texture, and some buttons may be hidden behind them. After the player explored the top part of the castle, they would advance into the next section, the dungeon of the castle. In the Dungeon, the player would jump across some rocks in lava, and the tone of the level would become dark and cold. After completing puzzles in the dungeon, the player would fight the final boss. With this ...

  After the second playtesting, there were a lot of comments about the new and edited level; my focus for the reworking of the level was trying to expand the player visuals and level scenery as well as fixing the bugs pointed out to me during the first playtesting of the level. Since the theme for the level was Sci-Fi jungle and my level had mostly a laboratory environment. I decided to add vines because that would give it somewhat of a post-apocalyptic feeling to it. Once I added the vines, I thought that they gave the level a good abandoned environment; however, a bit more green wouldn’t be bad for the level. For that I used the modeling tool inside Unity and made a low poly tree that gave the scene more of a alive feeling. With the playtest there were many good opinions about the level, the most notable being the change in the scenery for the level. The comments said that the green - environment gave a more natural feeling and achieved the sci-fi jungle theme for the level. Anot...

  For this project, we had the amazing opportunity to learn how to manipulate world build in Unity. We were given a small package of objects,  prefabs, characters, and other tools to design a level in a 3d environment. The theme for this project was sci-fi jungle. So some of the first things that came to my mind were a post-apocalyptic lab in which vines and other jungle themed nature broke into, and now there was this post-apocalyptic ecosystem in the lab. The assets that were already part of the unity package already had a lab feeling to them, so I used that to my advantage and designed a lab-looking environment. After having all my ideas for the level, I started building with shapes and other interactables like floating platforms, pressure plates, buttons, gates, and other handy objects that could enhance the player experience. I did a few playthroughs and found and fixed most bugs like walls without collision and other minor issues. The level itself was good, there is a ...

       For this project, we were assigned to continue making Megaman levels, but this time there was a change in the limitations. The theme for this project was Jungle/Forest, so the rain ideas started with trees and Jungle. Another thing that came to mind was the temples and the traps, which could have a vine/bushy decoration around them. Also, for this new Megaman level, I wanted the player to have more available paths so that the player feels like there are more options to choose from. We were allowed to use 3 weapon types for this project. The default weapon, the arrow/plunger, and the c.kick were ideal for my idea for the level. Next came the game concept; I designed it so there were a lot of death pits and ladders, and there needed to be paths and keys available to the player. After finishing designing the level, I brought it to Megaman maker, and then it was a moment for the level to be playtested. I had the chance to have many students playtest my level, and ...

  We were tasked to update our last Megaman level and improve it. We had to fix the problems presented in the previous playtest as well as improve it. During my last playtesting session, I was informed that the level had some inconsistencies with the instructions and did not need to include bosses. In addition, we were enabled to use doors and keys to enhance the player's gameplay experience. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I was able to fix many of the things pointed out to me. Using the feedback given during the last playtest, many changes were made to the level. Starting by removing the bosses, they were good and gave a better feeling of completion to the level; however, in the instructions, it was specified that they were not enabled. I decided to find strong enemies but not bosses, and the two chosen achieved the objective successfully. In the end, we were supposed to have an orb that will be a finish line, so that was also added to this updated version.  Another fi...

  For the Level Design Class, we were tasked to create a level with a program named Megaman Maker. This tool allowed us to use Megaman assets and create our own levels with them. The project was to create a level Western themed with a limited range of weapons, time and assets. Using the Wester Topic, the first thing that came to my mind was cowboys, miners, caverns, and many other things mostly related to the Gold Rush. When thinking of assets that would fit with the topic, I found a cowboy enemy with a revolver, a miner with a shield and throwable pickaxes, and little hidden insect-looking enemies. I decided that a mine setting would be the most suitable for my level, since I had found many useful assets related to mines and caverns. Having somewhat of an Idea of what I wanted the level to be and what assets I wanted it to have, I started constructing the level, with a rough sketch I made on paper, and waited for the next class for a group of classmates to play test the game. Duri...

  The assignment was to create a level with a theme of aliens and a prison break theme. My idea was to create a post-apocalyptic prison where two prisoners tried to escape. The prison would be filled with aliens and locked doors. The doors would be locked, and the players would need to collect the keys to escape the prison. In the level, there would be many doors and a couple of bosses, one at the middle of the playthrough and another at the end. This level is linear; there is only one way of finishing the level. Maybe a semi-linear design would have made it more interesting; however, there would be a chance for the player to get lost and not understand where to go when finishing the level. In my last project, there was an excess of detail in the level design. So in this assignment, I decided to make something more simple. I decided to put more thought into the mechanics and to balance the game to be playable instead of putting heavy detailing.  Playtesting: During the playtes...

  During this last week, we had the chance for the players to re-playtest our level, and I was able to receive more feedback from the playtesters. Most of it was positive feedback. However, there are also many things that can be improved.  There was a positive Reaction to the enemies being more balanced; however, now it turns out they were very weak. So now the players were able to have short fights with the enemies. I tried to solve the too-strong enemies problem by reducing the enemy's defense points to almost none, which made the players have ridiculous damage to the enemies and were able to kill most easy enemies with one turn. What could be improved here would be balancing the defense stat depending on how deep in the dungeon the players are, therefore making the enemies stronger. Another positive reaction was when there was a planned revealing for rooms; this time around I was aware when players were moving, and there weren’t any times in which a player rolled and walk...

This week, we were assigned a group to playtest our simple DND map with a basic rule sheet given to us. The map was meant to be simple and under 20 minutes. They chose the Mage and the Knight characters for their playthrough which was a good combination, both were very strong characters. The playtest went surprisingly well, and there was a lot of feedback given me about what I should change for the map to be more enjoyable. ● What Went Right: The playtesters seemed to really enjoy the map's theme; they were very involved in the choose your own path topic surrounding the map. There were many paths available for them to take and explore. The variety and attention to detail were something they noticed and appreciated, and that showed me that good level design was a pivotal concept to grab the player’s attention. Because there were many paths available for the player to choose from, the players decided to separate to cover more terrain. There were evenly distributed enemies and bosse...