Game Level Planning

Solar Chin
Mar 15, 2024
5 min read

Updated: May 28, 2024

First I started doing research on sidescroller games:

-1 Planet of Lana

I bought the game to try out a 2D side scroller with a similar theme with environmental protection and scenery.

Planet of Lana is about a young girl who embarks on a journey with a cat-type alien, fighting against robots and the sort to free their captured friends and family.

The game is visually aesthetically pleasing and offers a good range of layers in the painterly artstyle that can make the 2D aspects seem 3D at times. The mood is well conveyed and the puzzle gameplay is mentally stimulating. The level themselves are about learning how to use the tools provided to move around.

-2 Metroid

Metroid is a game series offered on Switch, made by Nintendo that I played for a short time.

Players control bounty hunter Samus Aran and fight against plastic alien monsters and other malevolent space creatures. The genre is vastly different from the first game as this one is more action and shooter based. The colour scheme is dull and dark and the soundtrack is fastpaced and suspenseful. It's 3D which makes the graphics a lot more realistic (Metroid Dread 2021) and fitting for the sci-fi genre with horrific death cutscenes. The levels are made with parkour and movement in mind for pastpaced gameplay.

Game Worlds Research:

New Born World

The new born world is an archetype that plays into a new universe trope. There has been no history and nothing has yet been discovered.

An example of this would be the game 'The Sims', where you as the player can design any character and any building in the game as well as the NPC stories and manipulate any item to your liking.

This game type isn't typically used in a lot of games as a lot of history like storyline and lore have to be pre-created for a lot of games and usually are the selling point. A new world archetype usually falls within games like 'The Sims' where character customisation is the main focal point and is the niche selling point. The 2D side scroller we're creating may not be suitable for this game world type as the lore and storyline will work alongside the game play and the game genre itself will be difficult to fit in with such potentally spontaneous game play.

2. Ending World

The ending world archetype is a game world that usually involves a long history of events that have already happened. The destruction of this world is inevitable, even if the Hero can save some of its inhabitatants.

An example of this would be the game 'The Last Of Us' where the world is thrown into a zombie apocolypse and humans are being controlled by 'Cordyceps' fungi. The player can save a couple of people but inevitably, the people will grow old and be unable to stop the incoming spread of the fungi. In the end, the fungi turn into the dominant species on Earth.

This world archetype is the best for survival games where the genre is horror or action as it creates a more suspense storyline and uncertainty for the future of a world where everything will soon come to an end. The world type may not be the best fit for our 2D side scroller game as they tend to be repetative with the levels and gameplay, so an ending world cannot fit with the storyline, unless the side scroller storyline can only be played once.

3. Perfect-Utopia World A perfect-utopia world is an archetype that depicts a world where all events have ended with the best possible solution and therefore conflict must be created to disrupt the peace so the storyline can begin.

An example of this would be the game 'Minecraft' as the world is in general peace and everything coexists harmoniously. The player themselves are the conflict that happen and disrupt the world peace by killing animals, other players, building structures etc.

The world archetype is especially good for games like Minecraft (open-world sandbox) and similar genres as it allows for controlled conflict and further immersion to the game as the player themselves feel like they have created a change into the game world. This type of world type might be suitable for our game project as the 2D side scroller is quite a passive repeatative type of game that is mostly already utopic to go with the theme of nature and environment sustainment.

First we created an ideas sheet:

Afterwards some more ideas about the game type and genre:

Lastly, a study on different 2D scroller games and how they could mix to potentially create a new game.

Next I created an ideal layout for how all my levels should go:

LUCID CHART :

This was my gameplay run through chart created for the entire game interface.

It was created on lucidchart.com

Next we worked on material block ideas on each level using photoshop:

(first row = desert sand tiles)

(second row = ice tiles)

(third row = forest tiles)

Next, I created a level mock up on dotted paper with different control ideas.

This would form the mechanics for an example level showcasing the movement keys and enemies and powerups.

After, we made a level mock up using the intended tile files on Photoshop:

Determining that using varied heights looked more visually appealing and gameplay more fun and also makes use of more of the space.

And the background:

I started by looking at examples of arctic environments:

Then I did a pencil drawing of the idea, I decided to combine mountains and water together to create my scene:

Beside is some colour examples I experimented with on watercolour and paper.

The water I made a teal blue with mountains, blue shadows and yellow highlights.

Lastly on Photoshop I created the background using oil brush textures and watercolour smudging effects:

(3840 x 1080p)

Before going into Unreal Engine, we practiced coding on Code Academy and Swift:

Swift Playgrounds is an educational coding software developed by Apple Inc. that corrects your mistakes as you learn to code. In the beginner course, we learnt how to use 'moveforward{}' 'turnLeft{}' and 'collectGem{}'. Later we found out how to create the command 'turnRight{}' by using x3 'turnLeft{}'s which taught us one of the primary rules of coding.

Function

A function is a block of code designed to perform a specific task. It can be called multiple times within a program to execute the task whenever needed.

Condition

A condition is a statement that evaluates to true or false. It is often used in control flow statements like if-else to decide which code block should execute based on whether the condition is met.

Event

An event is an action or occurrence recognized by software, such as a user clicking a button, which can trigger a response or a series of actions within a program.

Loop

A loop is a sequence of instructions that repeats until a certain condition is met. Common types of loops are 'for' and 'while' loops, which are used to execute a block of code multiple times.

Variable

A variable is a storage location identified by a name that holds data which can be modified during program execution. Variables are used to store information that can be referenced and manipulated