Overview
IMO is a strategy tower defense where the objective is to eliminate the errant shapes before the enigmatic monuments deteriorate
To develop this project, my 3 friends and I had exactly 28 days to create this game. With that in mind, to have a nice variety of levels in the time we had, we thought about creating 3 levels, each with its own basic difficulty. (easy, medium and hard)
Chaos is the hardest level in the game, so we needed a level that was challenging for the player, that we could extract as many ideas as possible for the layout and that it had great strategic gameplay too.
LEVEL NAME: Chaos
DURATION: 8 Days
SOFTWARES USED: Maya & Unity
Paper Designs
This is the paper design I initially sketched to determine the layout. Unfortunately I only have the base design that I created for the level, without its variations, but I will explain the variations here below as well.
An important point is that all levels in the game have 3 variations, which appear depending on how the player progresses during the level.
If the player lets some enemies pass through the portal, it is still possible to defeat them in the next stages of the level, but with some variations of the scenario that will help the player... or harm him.
We can see in the image that we have a slightly more complex level. My idea was to have 2 enemy spawns and just 1 portal that would be in the middle of the level. The 2 spawns are in two high parts of the level and the enemies' final point would be in the middle of the map, that is, the enemies are born and need to walk around the map going down until they enter the portal.
Variation 02: In this variation of the map, 3 obelisks would disappear from the map to make the player's life a little more difficult.
Variation 03: In this latest variation of the map, 1 more obelisk will disappear from the map and 2 dynamic bridges will appear to help the player eliminate enemies.
This idea of changing the height and making a more "circular" level with the end point being in the middle, fit exactly with the reference I took from the game Monument Valley. My idea was exactly to force the player to keep rotating the level all the time, as there are many blind spots in the level, so it is necessary to move the map to find the best position to position your towers and eliminate enemies smoothly.
Modeling
After finishing my initial layout design, it was time to assemble this level directly in 3D. In our game, we used a shader that helped us create the entire artistic style we wanted to implement for the game. With this in mind, the 3D models that I modeled did not need any texture, it was just necessary to make the 3D models.
To start modeling I used the Autodesk Maya, which is a software that I have good knowledge. Using the Blueprint (Paper Design) image as a basis for the design.
Setting up square by square, I was able to have an exact layout of the level in the final game, having good spacing of the player's towers and nice framing for the enemies that would walk through the level. This exact layout can be seen in the last image on the right, where we have a print of the top view of the level that is very faithful to the Blueprint. (paper design)
During the production of the game, we discovered that to make the enemies walk over the level I created, it was necessary to create a NavMesh, which would serve as a "guide" space so that the AIs could understand the floor of the level where they can to walk.
At that time, we weren't sure how to do this directly in Unity in an easy way, so I had an idea, I modeled a plan that covered the entire length of the level only where the enemies can walk and then exported it for Unity to configure the enemies on that specific plane.
In this specific level, I managed to add a reference that I took from the game Monument Valley, giving the player a feeling of illusion when he sees the map for the first time.
Just like in Monument Valley, when entering this level the player must move around the level in different ways, to find the best "spot" to view the middle of the level and prevent enemies from getting there.
Monument Valley Reference (internet image)
Variations
After finishing the base modeling of the level, it was necessary to make its variations. The idea we had was to make the levels get weaker as each variation appeared to the player.
With this in mind, my idea was to create small fractures that would fly through the air, with these pieces coming out of the structure of the level itself, as if the level was collapsing.
This part was easier, I created several blocks of different shapes, placed them in random locations on the level and used Booleans > Difference, so that the level's mesh was cut exactly in the shape of the piece I created.
After making the cuts in the level layout, I just needed to make the pieces fly around the map to give the appearance that the pieces are floating after being disconnected from the level.
The coolest idea I had thought of was to make it so that we could make an animation when we went from one variation to another in the level, showing these small pieces disconnecting from the main structure of the level. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to do this.
Conclusion
This is my favorite level of the 3 I made for the game, as I believe I was able to carry out a very effective level design so that the level was bigger, more challenging and more in line with the aesthetics of the game and the reference we took from Monument Valley too.
This was a level that I had to quickly advance to the 3D side to save time, especially since it is a much larger level compared to the first. Therefore, even following a faster process, I was able to demonstrate a very effective execution of the production of a level. The level was very interesting and fun at the same time to do it.
