William Baran - Week 9 Devlog

Total Time: ~5 hours

Level Design:

Level 2:

I continued my work on Levels 2 and 3 for this week. For Level 2, I went back and decided to do a resketch of room 3 so that it would be easier to grasp the flow of the room. After beginning the resketch I decided to remove a section from each room as I felt that it was adding unnecessary elements that were prolonging the already long runtime of the room. I might change my mind based on feedback and reworks, but right now, I feel it was the best decision not to make the level feel bloated. I felt that both the rooms were right-side focused so to help ease that I flipped the body's room to avoid this feeling. Some gadgets didn't need to be their own thing so to make Sarah's coding life easier, we decided to remove the vent gadget and just make it a normal moving wall that ultimately functions the same. I also spent time cutting out tiny figures for players and gizmos so that I could better playtest my levels to more easily find soft locks or impossible puzzles.

For room 2 of Level 2, I changed up the body's room slightly. I wasn't a super big fan of it as it felt a little boring at the start so added some new elements with the fan and turbine, as well as removing some things. I felt this also helped with showing off the turbine gadget that would be used later on in the next room. I also adjusted some things such as the moving platform in the center to avoid potential softlocks.

Level 3:

As for Level 3, I spent time sketching out the body's side of room 2/3. We are still playing around with what ideas we want to use so depending on what we decide this room with either be room 2 or 3. Grayson and I had agreed to work on our side independently and then come together to adjust and make it function together. In the final room, the brain will be adjusting the water level for the body's room a lot so we felt that having it be vice versa in this room would each give the players a chance at doing it. Since the goal was to have this room be the body's turn to be the water level adjuster, I designed the room to be centered around traversal and getting to each level. This is done by dropping a waterfall and using it to jump to higher positions in the room. Then, the final exit is a moveable water chunk that needs to be put in the right spot to make it to the end. I got into a call with Grayson to show what I did and he enjoyed what I made. He took my room and made the necessary adjustments in order to make it function well with his room. I still need to go back and remove the vent gadget from the room though since this was made before we decided to remove that from the gadget list.