6 Lights of Enlightenment or How To Build Great Levels

trickstapriest · Post by **trickstapriest** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:55 pm

I've never seen Sethum before, but I wanted to point out his recent three levels. Once I got into it, I vastly enjoyed Death Spiral's design. It's so damn disorienting, it's like flying in the death star trenches, being in a perspective-skewed funhouse, and in some sort of rotating carnival ride all at once. It gets pretty unnerving when the rocket spheres rotate against/with the flow suddenly; it throws out my sense of inertia.

Death star trench... you know, I have a positively INSANE idea for a level. I think it'll kill the poor engine to try and make, and it might need a text editor layer to functionally edit properly... but... if it works...

Sethum · Post by **Sethum** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:12 am

trickstapriest, I'm glad you enjoyed Death Spiral (click)! I really like that level too. I have to say that once a boss design encircles your ship, a lot of possibilities open up. I hadn't intended/considered the perspective-skewing aspect you mentioned, but that is an interesting area to explore. My only goals for that level were to make it wildly disorienting (without being too difficult), and to incorporate functional switch-boxes. I'll try to build more like it - hopefully the game engine can keep up with the polygon count

Post by **swartzer** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:13 pm

That was definitely a good level! Kudos to you for a clever design, and I hope to see more.

trickstapriest · Post by **trickstapriest** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:45 pm

Sethum wrote:trickstapriest, I'm glad you enjoyed Death Spiral (click)! I really like that level too. I have to say that once a boss design encircles your ship, a lot of possibilities open up. I hadn't intended/considered the perspective-skewing aspect you mentioned, but that is an interesting area to explore. My only goals for that level were to make it wildly disorienting (without being too difficult), and to incorporate functional switch-boxes. I'll try to build more like it - hopefully the game engine can keep up with the polygon count

Well, let's just say, on that level, it starts off looking rather static, like an exploration type thing with a few 'battle nodes' circling around. Even the shape of the stuff in the corners seems to imply kind of an artistic design. Then when it begins to turn, it becomes more of a 'shoot debri and fly through the rotation' in one way or another (to avoid the rotating weapons).
It actually starts to perspective skew when the orbital guns begin to speed up or slow down while the square ring continues at the same pace. Or vice versa. Or when they reverse directions. It gets very stomach lurching to keep up with the shift in 'perspective' of the ring and ship relative to the other objects. Suddenly you aren't moving fast down the hall, you are moving slow. or in the wrong direction. etc... So you already have that in there, you know

Will like to see what variations you come up with that and some of your others.

Have to chew on some ideas for levels that encompass the player like that; maybe I can come up with something unique.