God of War inspired Level - Blog post 10
Collating and implementing feedback
It's been a little while since I've worked on my God of War (2018) inspired level, but after uploading the first playable iteration, I asked people to give it a go and share their feedback.
First of all, a massive thank you to everyone who took the time to play the level and provide feedback! I've since collated everyone's thoughts alongside my own and started working through the changes I felt would have the biggest impact.
I've put all the feedback into a document, which I have linked below. I've already started actioning some of the points.
The biggest thing I noticed when watching other people play was just how different their experience was from what I intended. Because I'd spent so much time building the level, I already knew where to go and how each area was supposed to work. New players didn't have that knowledge, and it quickly became clear that some of my intended routes weren't as clear as I'd thought.
Players were wandering into areas that were supposed to be out of bounds, while others were using the jump function to skip sections of the designed route entirely. God of War doesn't have a traditional jump function, so having one in my project was allowing players to bypass obstacles and encounters that I'd designed intentionally to not be skipped.
Before making any major layout or narrative changes, I decided to focus on fixing these issues and making sure the level played as intended.
To solidify the player experience I focused on three things:
Blocking players going where they shouldn't
Removing the jump function
Improving the out of bounds areas so players weren't just staring into the void
To prevent players from wandering into areas they weren't supposed to access, I created a simple Blueprint that uses a spline to generate collision meshes at regular intervals of 200 Unreal units.
This meant I could quickly draw a spline around an area and have the Blueprint automatically generate an invisible barrier, rather than manually placing individual collision meshes throughout the level. I then set up the collision so that the player couldn't pass through it, while keeping the barrier hidden during gameplay.
There was one problem, the axe was colliding with the invisible walls as well! I needed players to be blocked by the barriers without affecting the axe, so I adjusted the collision settings to allow the axe to pass through while keeping the player out.
Once I had solved that, I could quickly place these barriers throughout the level wherever they were needed.
Invisible collision wasn't the only solution. In some areas, I could use the environment itself to guide the player and prevent them from wandering off the intended route.
For example, in the first area, I added more rocks and rubble to restrict access to parts of the level that weren't meant to be explored. This allowed me to keep players within the intended space while making the boundaries feel more natural, rather than relying entirely on invisible walls.
I also added rails to some of the bridges to prevent players from accidentally falling off. These were relatively small changes, but together they helped make the level feel more controlled and consistent.
Although the collision barriers and environmental changes helped, players could still jump over many of the obstacles I'd introduced. To address this, I went into the Game Animation Sample's player Blueprint and disabled the jump function.
This was a simple fix, but it introduced another problem: my existing vault interactions no longer worked!
To get around this, I added collision boxes around the interactable vaults. When the player enters one of these boxes, jumping is enabled so they can perform the intended vault interaction. Once they leave the area, jumping is disabled again.
This allowed me to remove the ability to jump freely around the level without breaking the traversal mechanics I'd already built. Of all the changes in this iteration, this was probably the most impactful in making the level feel closer to the God of War experience I was trying to recreate.
The final thing I wanted to focus on in this round of iteration was improving what players could see outside the playable space. Previously, I used a simple piece of text saying "Nice Vista" as a placeholder for an area I wanted to develop further. Rather than leaving it there, I decided to build an actual vista for the player to look out at.
It's nothing particularly crazy, but it's a definite improvement over the placeholder and helps the surrounding world feel more complete.
Interestingly, one person who played the level pointed out that the player sees this vista from several different angles throughout the level. They suggested using those repeated viewpoints to show how the Witch is corrupting the surrounding environment as the player progresses.
I really liked this idea! It would give the player a visual reminder of the Witch's influence on the world, while also making an area they revisit feel different as the story progresses. That's something I would like to explore in my next round of iteration.
For this first round of iteration, my main goal was to improve the player experience and address the issues that came up during playtesting. Too often, players were falling out of the map, wandering into areas they shouldn't have been able to access, or being left with very little to look at outside the playable space.
I am happy with the changes I've made so far, and I think they've created a much stronger foundation for the next stage of development.
Now that I've addressed these initial issues, I can start focusing on the feedback around the level layout, pacing and narrative. I'm particularly looking forward to getting the same people to play the level again to see how these changes have affected their experience.
Thanks again to everyone who played and provided feedback!
See you in the next one, Howells out!
