Map design level 4
This is a document outlining the assets added to the game by Team 2, specifically relating to map design in level 4and creation both from a design and technical view.
To ensure a positive user experience, we wanted to ensure a consistent use of colour, textures, and overall design both throughout the map and overall game. We also need to make sure that users don’t feel overwhelmed when playing the fourth layer of games, which means that when designing to increase the difficulty of the map, we also need to consider that it will not bring users a high cognitive burden (this is very important because the game Fast-paced nature).
Early on, concept art was created to get an overall feel and idea for what the levels might look like. Given that the story of the game takes place in a computer, we wanted to draw inspiration for the level design from existing operating systems (OS) that would help the user feel as though this was the case. For the first level, our inspiration came from Microsoft's Windows 10, with the design of the textures and background elements (including colours) inspired by the design of the Windows 10 Desktop.
Windows 10 Desktop
Concept Art
Translating the look of platforms and background elements would be simple, but we also wanted to create a more unique look for other obstacles in the game. After finalizing what obstacles would be found in the level, we worked on designing the textures for these, wanting to create a look of being mechanical and electronic. We created unique textures for bridges, buttons, jump-pads, and doors. These obstacles are designed to provide more interaction between the user and the map, providing enough of a challenge to engage the user while not overwhelming them and making the game too difficult. In order to ensure the unity of the game interface, we did not make major changes when designing this layer of textures. Compared to the first layer of the game, we retained some textures, such as buttons, jump pads, and doors. But in order to highlight the difference in-game levels, the color of the platform is changed to dark blue and black.
The textures were all created using Adobe Illustrator before being exported to individual .png files and then being packed into SpriteSheets and .atlas files using the TexturePacker() class provided by libGDX libraries.
All textures as seen in Adobe Illustrator
#Texture Redesign While the Classic Black Lines where consistent they are bland and its repetition across the levels seemed to throw the audience off a little so it was decided that we have a different texture for the elements across each level. Given the different back ground, I wanted to create a texture which would be distinct from the background so that the players wouldn't be confused by perception and be able to differentiate the foreground and background. However an element to consider was the cohesion of the whole game so the texture couldn't be too vivid that it was alien to the background.
To Answer to first/second issue of distinguishing the texture We decided to utilse the less prominent colors form the color scheme defined for Level 4. This resulted in the consideration of #8A40AD and #C12227. Now the style I wanted to go with was corrupt/missing. In most games there is a texture pack for when an entities texture is missing. Its a checkered Purple and Black. Seen below.
This was quite inspiring for me and thus I adopted this checkered style into my design. I then proceed to compare how this re-design would suit the background.
After user testing it was found that the purple and black resonated with them a bit more, so we ultimately created the texture pack based on the two colors of #8A40AD and #34283A. Leading to whats below.
For the Future, a possibility on expanding on this texture pack to create unique to the level obstacles which would add a new mental challenge without complicating the game too far.