During my academic career at DigiPen, I took particular interest in level design. In an advanced level design course, I studied topics of scene composition, player guidance, and environmental storytelling.

These are a few of the projects that I made in those studies.

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Solo Works - 1-3 Weeks Each - School Project (Year 4)

Bitesize Level Design

More Projects

I'm always learning. I was not as strong with level design before these projects as I am after. I learned vital pipeline tricks and skills to bring ideas to fruition, and each of these small projects, while imperfect, show that I'm always growing.

The scope of these bitesize projects, especially the second and third, was much too large for the amount of time given. If I could do them over, I would scope down to much more compact ideas. The mountain scene was small enough to get the level of polish and attention I was happy with, and it was easy to accomplish in one week. The other two definitely needed more time.

Besides the hard level design skills, that's my biggest takeaway from these projects. Scope is a powerful tool, and when misused or neglected it can bring the entire project's quality with it.

Synopsis

Composition - 1 Week

Made in Unity, this scene depicts a reveal frame of the end goal of some hypothetical level. The player has a long way to go.

Scene composition is important to me. As a level designer, it's my job to lay out a structural foundation to a given space, and it should serve to accomplish everything I want it to before the first art pass is made.

The biggest lesson I took away from this piece is that my greyboxes should be compositionally powerful. If it doesn't read well, I can't expect players to play it well. From concept to completion, I keep composition at the forefront of my designs.

Harmony of Parts

Motion, leading lines and a strong dominant working in harmony make this scene work well.

The motion of the snow, both in the air and flowing from the peaks, slide to the left from the right of the piece. I focused a lot of the motion near the dominant, both to draw attention to that area and to guide the eye from the overall goal (the dominant) to the immediate goal (the path ahead). The red flag does well to add to this effect as well as to catch the eye as one of the first things you notice in the scene.

Leading lines also play a role in supporting the dominant. They serve nicely to direct focus on the dominant, away from flatter parts of the composition. The lines on the left side of the screen, on the peak opposite the dominant, help to balance out the composition as a whole, which would otherwise be very right-heavy.

I put a lot of detail in the foreground of the composition, and a bit more detail on and near the dominant. This detail helps the player focus on what's important, as well as to give a better sense of scale to the piece. You may notice "climbable" objects leading to the dominant, which serve no mechanical purpose. These "climbables" are there to show the player where their path will lead eventually, to establish a flow to the space.

The Projects

Two Scenes - 2 Weeks

The natural evolution of scene composition is, of course, transitioning between scenes. Using Unity and a basic movement controller, I did my best to develop two scenes that flow together nicely.

The first scene sets up the intrigue. Why is the tree burning? Composition methods are maintained, using particle effects to show the intended direction of movement and using the set pieces to show the start of the intended path (the log) and the next point of interest (the bridge). The scene itself also has a gradual slope down towards the second scene, further emphasizing the "inevitability" of the sequence of events.

The Transition

I will be the first to admit that the transition sequence itself is quite boring. It's essentially a straight and relatively flat path directly to the second scene. If I were to do it again, I would add more of a winding path between the cliff and the burning tree, in order to evoke the feeling of traversing the woods rather than following a set trajectory.

However, I do like how the hills pop the castle in and out of view, betraying only that it's the objective (notice as well that the castle is the same color as the burning tree's leaves, further emphasizing its importance). The final composition isn't very strong either. I think it works for what I was trying to accomplish but it could have been polished a lot more.

For starters, I would add more detail to the foreground. As it is, it's just a flat bit of grass, which doesn't help establish scale or distance at all. Secondly, the entire midground is just a flat bit of geometry, broken up only by a couple rocks near the background. I'd either bring the castle much closer (such that the player arrives nearly at the doorstep of the village on the reveal) or make the terrain much more interesting (a ravine, lake, river, etc. to present some challenge or intrigue as to how the player will get to the village).

Storytelling - 3 Weeks

This project was my first exploration into storytelling from a level design perspective. I used some crutches, specifically dialogue and some gnarly scene transitions to stay within time constraints.

One thing I think I did well was present an unfolding story through the sequence of events and locations the player traverses. Some events change the world (like the model town being seen as a black pile of rubble from the tram) or make callbacks to other relevant events (the red note and gramophone on a chair at both the start and exit displaying some congruity between who might've set those up).

Given more time, I definitely would've polished out some of the scene transitions. The hallways in the facility are much too long and boring. The tram is a very rocky and unenjoyable ride. The hatch to escape the nuclear explosion was missed by multiple playtesters on their first time through. The general level of compositional and visual quality doesn't quite meet my standards. It's not perfect, but I think what it was meant to do it does well. For three DigiPen weeks, I'm happy with where it got.