Level Design (Loc Part 6)

This video shows my workflow for Loc. Each level was created as a folded out cube within photoshop. For any designers out there, NEVER DO THIS. While the method worked, it was incredibly time consuming and prone to error. To go back and fix a level took required me to basically rebuild the entire thing.

Each level was created solved first, than each face was unsolved moving every tile individually in order to replicate in-game tile movement.

What we should have created was an in-engine level editor that would have allowed me to move the tiles around the actual space. In actuality after each was level was created in photoshop they were then transcribed into numbers. The picture to the right shows the master key of what every tile meant numerically. I would then go into the engine and plug all of these numbers in. Human error would often result a miss-translated number, which could render a level simply unplayable.

And because my view of each level was so radically different than the players, what may be easy from my folded out point of view, could have been exceedingly challenging for the player. The only way I was able to circumvent this issue was to continually play test the game with my every changing pool of QA testers. Over the course of Loc’s development we had over 400 hours of QA testing to ensure that the difficulty progression was perfect.

So why did we do it? Well, we didn't want Matt and Mike to switch gears from the task of actually creating the game to make a toolset for me, especially since we were not working on the game on a consistent basis.The Loc development was very touch and go, everyone working odd hours when we could squeeze it in. We deemed the difficulty of creating levels to be manageable. Sometimes hard decisions need to be made, that inconveniences some, to help others.