This week was full of iteration on the existing levels, as well as figuring out how many levels we will be able to fit into the game before Beta. My biggest focus was figuring out how to place the Glymyte collectibles into the levels. The trouble with this is that the player has the ability to come into the game space in a ridiculously huge range of ways, making strings of collectibles a tricky thing to tackle. They have to placed in a manner that supports the player coming in from just about any angle, but at the same time are able to guide the player down the golden path as well as make it to areas of increased challenges and student collectibles.
Playing the game in class was incredibly helpful for identifying areas that need work and to get a broader view on how other players engage the levels. Discussing aspects of the level with Wilhelm as well as talking about the process of iteration and implementation of the level pieces helped to discovery that us level designers really need to start coming to QA to see first-hand how the players are navigating the levels. I had gone to QA the day before and realized just how helpful this was in the limited time I spent by our game while testing other games.
J. Cody Winchester 