For me, personalized imitation is the concept, design and working application of something, based on something already present. And with this I've been racking my brains, trying to establish a level design-based narrative, that would appease the concepts and designs of SpaceBoy throughout this and last year's work, and reflect on my best work aesthetically and technically.
I've considered modular asset-construction, as I did with LIMA, and indeed of which is practiced in a lot of video games; it saves memory usage and can be easily replicated (copied and pasted) throughout environments with alternate textures:
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| Tiles used with Sonic 2 for the Sega Megadrive. Blocks such as this can be replicated or alternately textured to fit with the level's surroundings. |
I've, however, always considered SpaceBoy's level design to be quite organic, in it's shape, thus having a completely random style; unique to specific situations.
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| This representation of design, and it's process, shows the workings, rough and in-game layouts, but all based around large, odd/uniquely-shaped platforms. |
Though, as the developer suggests, the trials and tribulations of such design incur slow frame-rate and heavy use of memory, of which had to be constantly and consistently tampered with to fix.
'After getting the graphics and adding them to levels, we found that the game ran at about 1FPS. Which was a slight issue. This brought us to the stage of optimizing, refactoring, and rebuilding all of the levels to work with graphics. In the end all of the level graphics are pre-cached as tiles of bitmaps (starting as vector to save download), as the level might be up to 20,000 x 20,000 pixel in some cases.'
Thus, with construction of modular-based level design began - based around a mockup background grid showing 512x512 each in an 4096x2048 file - I discovered that even a rough design wasn't enough.
So I resorted back to paper.
Not with design, but with words.
I quickly devised a rough 'Level Design Method' of individual design styles to see and discuss which one would be most beneficial for SpaceBoy, yet also incorporating the essential additional charming and medial elements.
My write-up:
ZELDA STYLE
- Open areas, small sections throughout, surrounding puzzle-based cave areas.
- New areas unlocked when power ups/items are found; thus can access the previously inaccessible through rock-smashing, or wall climbing.
RETRO SONIC/MARIO STYLE
- Level to level; each level is unique, the same narratives/design aesthetic within one zone/world until the next is unlocked - level selection (specifically Mario) accessible throughout, for repeated plays.
METROID STYLE
- Like Zelda, but entire game plays like the player is in the Zelda-esque cave.
- Sections unlocked also through power ups, but the entire world plays out as one big level/maze.
LIMBO STYLE
- Puzzle-based areas are connected together with atmospheric, aesthetic areas - areas which serve the purpose of running through perfectly placed environmental pieces and scenery, opening up the next puzzle.
- Game plays out as one large level; surrounded by and discovery-based narrative and wonder.
SUPER MEAT BOY STYLE
- Quick arcade/pick-up-and-play design; often displays the player's start and goal of a level within one screen, as opposed to the traditional scrolling of the camera.
SWORD & SWORCERY STYLE
- RPG platforming, where environments are the narrative, and are explored and unlocked through interaction.
CURRENT INDIE GAME STYLE
With that title I'm not stating all independent games follow this process, it's a mere title that I've used - as I've used with the other ones - to easier understand the principles of each, or as a rough guideline.
- Style, charm and use of design techniques over technical level design; aesthetics over gameplay.
I discussed the latter 'style' with some friends and determined that by that I meant it not as a negative, but as an alternate current style used to show of unique and wonderful design styles, over basic level design. With this, however, I noticed that playing games like this actually quenched my thirst for exceptional level design with it's artistic approach. Instead of 'style over substance', the style almost in fact BECOMES the substance, at least from a sharing of experience point of view.
And with these fresh in my head I began randomly creating alternate non-essential scenarios - comedic and/or charming elements, if you will, to heighten the sense of uniqueness and creativity, instead just another platformer.
Scenarios of which, that include interactive characters - one of which I sketched originally as a super computer, based around the old-style PC's, that would act as a sort of mission-briefing, but also engage in talks with the character, as though it had itself formed an almost human personality - I was thinking HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and of course GLaDOS from the Portal series; of which, the character's portrayal is that of mystery, it's seemingly helpful and curiously clumsy - giving the player an uncertainty of if it's on your side, or has alternate agendas.
Although this is only a small asset, ideas are then spawned from them, and thus designs evolve and the entire game's narrative and plot-development become something more than just mysterious or generic.
Almost forgot.
The Guide To Implementing 2D Platformers
(The website based around the introduction of this post. Still reading.)
