Wednesday, September 15, 2010

5 in 5: "Dalloway Floorplan" (digital)


"5 projects in 5 days" is part of my coursework at Parsons. The complete rules are here, but my own additional design constraints are (a) gotta be a game, (b) gotta be made in less than 3 hours.

The next volume of Radiator ("Next? You haven't even finished the first!") will be an experiment of sorts in production: I'm going to use essentially the same level for all three episodes. This is great in that I only have to design and build and detail a single map!... And this sucks because I have to account for 3 different kinds of gameplay in the same space -- a heist, a mass murder, and a party. (If you want to spoil the gist of these ideas for yourself, see: heist, mass murder and party.)

I know a lot of people who build levels one room at a time. That makes NO SENSE to me. I need to plan. Fleshing out a floorplan in the engine helped me realized a lot of constraints and how this is going to be harder than I thought:
  • Single floor, only slight changes in elevation, < 32 units (the heist mode)
  • Relatively simple floorplan that's mostly linear, not too many entrances to each room (heist)
  • Rooms must all be close together (heist)
  • Rooms must be kind of small (heist)
  • Only short and medium sightlines (murderfest)
  • Nonlinear floorplan with several entrances to each room (murderfest) [conflicts with #2]
  • Large atrium in the middle (murderfest)
  • ??? (party)
  • Make it function roughly like a real museum
... So basically, this prototype was useful in convincing me that I'm going to have to think about this a lot more.