Communication Lab 11
Level Design (Assembling)

Due: Friday, March 29th at 10:10 am

The focus of today's lab is to continue the level design work that you did in the previous communication lab. In the previous lab, you identified building blocks (also known as design patterns) for your level design. Now it is time to put these together into a single lab.

While this is going on, the TAs will be circling the room and occassionally giving their own feedback on your discussion. If anything is unclear about this assignment, or the document in general, please ask them. They have been through this process before (some of the TAs have done this multiple times).

Lab Format

If you are unhappy with your building blocks from the previous communication lab, feel free to spend the first part of the class coming up with a few more.

However, we want you to spend the majority of the class time creating an interesting level. You can do this by arranging your building blocks in a sequence. With that said, the best design takes place when you can combine building blocks together simultaneously. We gave several examples of this in commercial genres in the previous lab.

That is all we have to say -- make a level. To give you some idea of what to do, here are some examples from previous semesters.

Dash

Winner of Most Polished Game in the Spring 2014 Showcase, Dash has incredible level design. Look at how they put everything together in this document. This document also shows that you do not need fancy art for your level design, so a quick sketch during lab is very possible.

Ribbons

Winner of Most Innovative Game in the Spring 2014 Showcase, Ribbons is a platformer where the player controls both a character and a ribbon threaded throughout the level. The ribbon allows players to move platformers toward them instead of relying only on jumping challenges. The intermediate level here is very solid, and a good show of what this game was able to accomplish.

Beck & Chuck

Another popular game from the Spring 2014 Showcase, Beck & Chuck was an action platformer where the player could throw a returning ball. It had several standard platforming challenges like jumping and wall climbing. With that said, the level design was very smooth and it kept the action going at all times.

Critique

Due: Friday, March 29th at 10:10 am

The lecture the lecture immediately following this lab is a critique session. We want you to present whatever you have done in the past two labs in class for feedback. There is no official document for level design, so this is the only time you will get any feedback from us outside of your milestone demonstrations.

You have a lot to do this week if you expect to finish alpha before leaving for Spring Break. Therefore, we are not expecting you to do any work outside of lab. Finish what you can in lab today. On the day of critique, bring whatever you finished. If the blocks as incomplete, that is okay. But please make an effort to complete as much as possible during class.