Hello again everyone,

Wait a minute! I don’t believe I properly introduced myself to you in my previous blog. For that reason, here is an introduction about myself.

Introduction

My name is Emanuel Holm, 27 years old, level designer and the one responsible for the game project itself, Her name is Luna.

My career to become a game developer started about 2 years ago. At that moment I felt unsure if I really wanted to work with game development. But one day in 2015, I played a game that was released on Steam, which brought my ambition back. That game was Undertale. This is the game that inspires me the most in game creation.

Now! In this blog, I will explain how the work is going for me. The game engine that I am using for level design is Unity Engine 2017.2.

To the drawing board!

To make the levels look as I planned, I had to make lots of blueprint-layouts and research. Now I have drawn 4 levels and 2 of them are the Park and Luna’s hideout. These are the ones that I am currently working on.

-Park- level

This is the level where David meets Luna for the first time. The whole level is symmetric. The park has two mirrored sides containing the same objects. Because of this, the player won’t get lost in the area. The 3D models I want to decorate the level with are benches, trash pins, trees and other things that you would normally find in a park.

The only changes I have already made in this blueprint is in the outside area. Instead of having the area surrounded by a forest, the area is supposed to be placed between 2 roads and dense forests on both sides. This is to make the level feel more lively during daylight, when people(NPCs) can use the park as a shortcut to their school or work.

-Luna’s hideout- level

This level is where David meets Luna again and where David discovers that Luna lives in a cave hidden among the trees.

The area constitutes of a small hill with high grass, and thick trees are surrounding the area of her hideout. The plan is to create moonlight that will improve the visibility. In addition, the moonlight should lead to pretty visual effects of the grass during night time. The level is supposed to have cinematic events where David tries to converse with Luna.

The reason for why I chose this environment, is not just because of its ideal area of nature, but because it is a forest with many hideouts that makes it perfect for a certain character, Luna.

My work so far

The level I am currently working on is the Park level.

The first thing I started with was to add tiled floor as 3D objects to the level. But I soon learned that it took too much data which caused bad performance for the player. So I removed all floor objects and added a terrain to use floor textures instead.

While I waited for Christopher to make low-poly 3D models for the Park, I was looking for floor-textures of old bricks with warm colors. The point of this is to make the park look that it was built long ago. The walls around the park is meant to look like they were built in a different era of time.

When I was placing the 3D assets on the level, I noticed something at the open area between the gates. I looked at the ground and thought:

“If the people have been walking in this park for many years, wouldn’t the bricks on the ground look a bit worn out after years of being stepped on?”

I then believed that it could be logical in this world to replace the old bricks with modern sidewalk bricks. Now it looks like a combination of history and modern structure.

And here I am now, working on the lights in the park.

Encountered issues

I had a hard time making the terrain to look like a grass field. It didn’t look good when I tried to increase the height, to separate the brick floor from the grass. For that, I had to temporarily put in 3D objects as grass ground to make it look like a grass section.

After putting in most of the assets and textures in the park, I still haven’t figured out how to handle the light components on the light poles. The problem is that most of light poles are lit, while the others are not. I know that Point light won’t work properly if all lights are set on Real-time, so I have an idea of replacing the light components with emissive materials as light source instead. This is how far I have come with regards to this level.

Conclusion

Most of the park is nearly done and I can soon begin working on the next level, Luna’s hideout. As a level design student, I still have much to learn to become better at level design. I hope that I can find improvement areas for the levels when starting to get feedback from game testers.

Finally, I would like to thank you for reading my second blog, and hopefully I will see you on my next blog as well!