God of War inspired Level - Blog post 02
Adding narrative and iterating on first area.
For my second post I am going to talk about some simple iterations I made to the first area of my God of War (2018) inspired level.
Firstly, a simple change I made was to seal off the edges of the map so the player can't just run anywhere. Looking at God of War when it outdoor areas they mostly do this by surrounding the playable space with large rocks and trees.
Something that is very simple to do but it allows me to push the level closer to a solid, playable space.
Making these super simple rock boundary meshes also allowed me to improve the framing of certain things within the level. By placing certain blockers I was able to show the player the way to the next area (ruins entrance to the left) and then a chest raised above the playable space to the right.
From this chest vantage point I wanted to further reward the player for exploring by highlighting another chest underneath the bridge incase they had missed that, encouraging the player to explore more of the area.
I wanted to also focus on improving the how the narrative is delivered to the player. Of course I want to add some narrative storytelling into the blockout but this will probably come when I go back and iterate on areas. In God of War the player has Mimir to deliver a lot of the lore so I wanted to create a system where he would talk to the player within this level.
I did this by creating a simple widget with a text box and then a blueprint with a collision box. Adding logic to put text on the screen whenever the player overlaps with this collision box, exposing the text variable so I can customise each individual instance.
Like I said I wanted to keep this super simple initally just to get this into a playable state as quickly as possible. It's like what Peter Field says in his talk about Spatial communication in Level Design, "Maximum information for minumum effort". That's something I am incorporating into this project.
This all culminates in an improved first area and some meshes and blueprints I can use in future areas of the level. Next time I intend to focus on the next area of the level, a ruin where you encounter your first enemy and learn more about what is happening here. See you in the next one, Howells out!
