Level Design
FPS
This is something I did off my own back. As a once avid and competitive Call of Duty player, I became very familiar with the strengths and flaws of multiplayer maps and decided that I’d like to design my own. Having learned the basics of Maya, I figured I could now actually do just that… and so I did. I combined areas that I had discovered in real life with aspects of some of Call of Duty's own strongest maps, and even areas from other games such as a reimagined city area from Shenmue 2. Using principles I’d learned about and expanded upon from a GDC video with my own gaming experience (written about in my article titled FPS LEVEL DESIGN), I spent about 40 hours from start to perfection and completed the design.
Game In a Frame (GIAF)
A single-image depiction of the core workings of a game. Being useful for pitches, I was taught how to make these in my first semester at university. I created 4 for existing games (Pong, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros), one for a game I came up with myself (Hetris – a 3D alternative to Tetris), and another for a game that I designed and built with a team of people from my class (Magno – a 2D platformer). My tutor was most impressed by my GIAF of Space Invaders, commenting that the lines were beautiful and simplistic, the awkward enemy movement was clearly demonstrated, the enemy variance of colour representing their variance of form, the effective use of speech bubbles over a key, and the UFO movement being the cherry on the cake.
Platformer
These are the level designs for the group project ‘Magno’ on which I was both the sole designer and producer. This was my first time designing elaborate levels for a video game, which I created using learningplayground.co.uk/mosaic. We were taught during this module to design levels both from the micro and macro perspectives simultaneously. That being: to make sure every single block or item in the level had purpose, and to consider the general flow of difficulty and complexity, researching the similarities between the first Super Mario Level and professional music composition as reference.
Racetrack
Push 2 Torque is a project that I both designed and coded myself. My undergraduate level design module required me to create a racing game. Whilst the car models were provided, I created everything else myself, including the: • Track and terrain • Racer AIs • Crash respawns • Lap time counter • Rear view mirror • And speedometer The game has 3 racetracks – two I designed myself, and one that is a rough remake of the track “Crash Cove” from Crash Bandicoot CTR. The two that I designed are called Bootleg and Berserk, named as such for their shapes. Bootleg being roughly the shape of a high heeled boot, and Berserk having a section similar in shape to the ‘Brand of Sacrifice’ scar from the manga ‘Berserk.
