Entry 4

 Fall Week 3 Worklog: Game Mechanics and Levels (Take 2)

9/16/2024 - One! More!! Time!!!

So! After doing my informal project proposal and getting feedback, I've decided to rework what I had going from the last entry on this topic. Most of this week has been spent refining my to-do list/production schedule for each of the levels as well as preparing my actual pitch to the class on the 25th. A lot of this is gonna be repeated from the last entry, just better refined (though I did trash some things for now. whoops).

General Gameplay Mechanics

• Basic 3D environment movement, jumping, and a dash.
• Player HP - Three hit system, HP will recover when the player successfully completes a level
• The camera will be 3rd person, controlled by mouse movement.
• Camera will remain static unless moved via left click + mouse
• The basic gameplay loop is as follows:
• Player starts out on the subway
• The subway stops, player exits
• Player enters a random level, subway leaves
• Player explores the level and finds the subway car door once again
• Player enters the subway, loop

Levels

Level Hub - Subway Car

• Not a full-on explorable level but more of a load screen in-between the levels
• Player fully heals when they re-enter the subway
• During these intermissions, theres a chance that Doc can meet other subway passengers and have a convo with them.
• Passengers appear at random, however some of them will only board after the player completes certain conditions.

Exploration Level 1 - Half Floor

• Level based on the weird floor that was in between the 14th and 15th floor of my old school (dubbed the 14th 1/2)
• There's an NPC on this floor, Sloppy Joe, you can chat with him and after completing his quest on this floor there's a chance he can appear in the subway.
• Level objective is as follows
• Talk to Sloppy Joe
• He'll ask you to find an item hidden somewhere on this floor. Somewhere in the vents.
• Enter the vent maze, find the item, give it to Sloppy Joe
• Objective Complete, re-enter subway car from level entrance
• The subway does not leave when the player enters this level, so they could just re-enter if they don't feel like doing it (but why would you wanna do that when you can meet sloppy joe lets be real here)

Exploration Level 2 - The Gallery

• A level that's purely exploration based, it's an art museum. You look at art and explore. Yippee!
• The subway does not leave so you can exit the level whenever, there's no death-state unless you manage to clip out of bounds or something (now why would you do that, that's mean)
• The player can walk around the museum and look at the art placed there
• Maybe the player can interact to view the art in better quality? or rotate it if its a 3D model? still figuring that out.
• There's one NPC on this floor the player can talk to, a character to represent myself and talk about my work with the player.
• Honestly I also personally enjoy looking through virtual galleries in games.

Minigame 1 - Chase

• A small platforming segment where the player has to escape a monster that's constantly chasing them. Vanishes when the player reaches the safe zone at the end of the level (which is also where the subway is!)
• Still trying to think of what I want the environment to look like for this one but…
• Takes place in sort of a void, so the player has to avoid falling off the platforms
• Platforms themselves are mostly going to be static, though I think it'd be evil fun to maybe play around and add some physics based stuff or falling/disappearing platforms perhaps………

Minigame 2 - Press 'N Hold!

• A minigame level where the player enters a circular arena and is tasked with needing to hold down a button for 30 seconds total while avoiding getting hit by canon balls (being shot from the walls of the arena).
• I want to theme this after a character of mine, Offiz, who is a clown that like to travel on/occasionally attack with smiley-faced bouncy balls. Last semester I made this mini undertale-like "boss fight" game against them and one of their attacks was a canon that shot these at the player.
• I imagine the button would be in the center of a circular circus tent, canons on the wall that shoot bouncy balls at random
• I'm toying with the idea of this level being timed or not, I think I'll get a better idea once I get into it and can actually get a feel for the gameplay, but I definitely think it would add to the already frantic nature of this level. My professor also had a really good idea that when you step off the button the progress bar slowly drains, pushing the player to get back on the button asap. Again I'll need to play with these things because the last thing I'd want to do is make this level annoying to play or, on the other hand, stupidly long if there's not much consequence to not being on the button aside from the meter not filling (though maybe that is enough?)

Anyways with these… mostly, better refined level ideas and such I have a better idea as to how I'm going to be tackling these production schedule-wise. The Gallery and Press 'N Hold will be the levels I work on during the fall semester and The Half Floor and Chase will be done in the spring. Work on the subway car intermissions will also be started in the fall but I'm mainly focused on the playable levels. So with that I'm going to continue working on my class pitch presentation for the 25th and get greyboxing/concepting.