Blockouts for level Sprint 2 ‘SystemError’ (15th Nov)

WorldofLevelDesign, 2018, Blocktober: Your Quick Start Guide to Blockouts for Level Design and Game Environment Art, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYyP3RMqkK0, Accessed at: Nov 2020

So with designing our level I started with a blockout, with this I decided to first go about sketching my level, thinking of elements such as the spacing between rooms and what each rooms function would be e.g. A space ship would have an engine room and beds on board, what sizes would these typically be. So I decided to quickly scetch this out. After this I got into Unity and started to make a rough block out with just the dimensions of the rooms and overall spacing.

After agreeing this format with the team, then was the process of adding in cover in which the player could hid behind so I quickly imported a first person asset, which had its own crouch system. Then jumped into designing the cover and scaling of the environment.

My blockout for the game System error

After conducting some test runs with the environment I was happy with the rough blockout I had made. Running this past the team we decided to make a couple of changes with the map layout by adding some alternative routes around the map so that the player wouldn’t get trapped in corners/dead ends.

Overall I think this process of block outs has been a really helpful push in my goal to be a level designer as it has really pushed me to think about all aspects of the game before simply just building something pretty. It has forced me to think in the mindset of the player and how they will be navigating my levels, along with the sense of scale within the map and proportion sizes. I have also come to realise the significance/importance that a blockout has when developing a game, Not only providing a sense of scale and flow but also allowing changes to be made easily. For instance in our game it is most likely that our blockout will change to compensate for the AI movement once we put them in, thus the blockout allowing us to easily make changes and not have to worry about detail at this point in time .

#SystemError