Kilan Larsen
3D Game Kit Level 2
For level 2 using the 3D Game Kit Lite, I decided to continue the story of my level 1 and explore the interior of a large industrial factory that is full of toxic waste/acid. This meant using Probuilder and the tools provided in the kit to design some custom assets to fit the theme, such as spinning gears, pipes, moving pistons, and a metal flooring. To add verticality and an interesting premise to the level, I designed it around the idea of switching off pipes lower the acid level and reveal new platforms as the player progresses. In order to get through the final door and into the boss arena, players must navigate the difficult platforming sections and shut down all the acid spewing pipes.
Level Start
The level begins very linear and enclosed, with a text display at the bottom. This quickly tells the player where they are and what their overall goal is, and shows them what kinds of obstacles they can expect from the level without overwhelming them with information.
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Universally, players got through this section with ease and shut off the acid to progress into the next area. The only trouble was with the timing of the pistons, which I'll talk about later.
Factory Center - Opening Section
Once the player enters the main factory area, they will see an obvious path of gears and pipes on the right side to arrive at the first switch. The section to the left cannot yet be accessed, as the acid level is too high and the pistons on the left cannot be jumped on until the acid is lowered.
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While players found the critical path here, executing it was quite challenging for some. The platforming on the gears is tricky, as the large gear spins fast and needs to be timed properly. Once the switch is pressed, players must backtrack to the start of the area and make tightly timed jumps on the pistons to get to the left side.
This section proved to be brutally difficult, and killed players more than expected. To make it easier, I will be adjusting the gear and piston platforms to make them a little more forgiving, as well as slowing down the speed of the giant gear and positioning it better with the pipe.
Gear Platforming - Problems and Solutions
One major issue I ran in to while designing the gears was how to have the player spin along with the gear while standing on it. The solution I came up with was to write a custom script which parents the player when they enter a trigger box above the gear. This works great, but the collider shapes proved problematic.
Box Collider: The flat top surface of the box collider works great to un-parent the player until just when landing on the gear, but it has wide corners that can grab the player from an adjacent platform and spin them off unexpectedly.
Sphere Collider: The roundness of this collider prevents unexpected parenting to the gear, but the added height of it means that when jumping, the player will continue to spin along with the gear. Not ideal, but better. This is what I used.
However, the sphere collider still caused play-testers to get confused and frustrated with the gears. For the next version of the level, I need to figure out how to make the equivalent of a cylinder collider since that shape isn't in Unity by default.
Pistons
The other big source of frustration for players was the pistons, which are small in surface area and are only in position to stand on in a ~2 second window. This tight restriction of timing made the piston jumps much harder than intended for some players, resulting in minutes of lost time in the level attempting the same jump over and over.
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My solution here is simple: widen the pistons to increase the safe area to land on, and slow down the cycles so that the timing is easier. This should make these jumps much more fair and less frustrating for the player.
Enemies
The enemies for this level had a few interesting design challenges based on the unique setup of the level. Firstly, the navigation mesh would not bake on my custom metal flooring with holes. To counter this I placed cubes or planes underneath the metal floor to build the mesh on. Secondly, I wanted enemies that were under the acid which got revealed as the acid was lowered, but they die in the acid. I couldn't easily edit this on their script, so I placed enemies on hidden platforms near the ceiling. These platforms disappear after certain switches are pressed and drop the enemies into the level, preventing them from dying in the acid.
This worked perfectly to get enemies wherever I wanted in the level. However, players noted that they were extremely easy to kill or avoid. So for the next version I plan on putting a smaller number of enemies with more health in the level, and position them in areas where it's harder to simply run past.
Level Flow - Switch Placement
One criticism I received from players was that while the critical path was good, the switches are placed too well along it and are too easy to get. In the image below you can see it is very obvious how to get to theses switches, and they lie right along the path the player would already take through the level.
For the next version of the level I will aim to hide these switches better throughout the level, and will create more platforming sections to make reaching each switch feel more challenging and rewarding.
All in all there was a lot that I did right, and a lot that I did wrong with this level design. I'm hoping to improve on the design quite a bit with my version 2, and make this the best level it can be given the asset and tool constraints!