MONTH 3: GAME BALANCING
MILESTONE 1 - LEVEL DESIGN ITERATION
Much of the first week of this Milestone consisted of merging the two action blocks that we each had into one level, playtesting and bug fixing the action blocks that were merged. The majority of bugs were cosmetic in nature, such as certain SoundFXs/Music Loops weren’t coming through correctly. Scripts had to be altered, triggers re-positioned and the Music/SoundFX’s had to be edited so that a more seamless loop was created. Other bugs had to do with enemies doing infinite damage to the player and the player dying and healing at the same time and not respawning. These issues were addressed before we started iterating on the levels and adding a few more features to the game.
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After implementing all those fixes, testing, and re-testing again—we were satisfied with the results and I proceeded to move onto refining and iterating upon my teammate’s levels.
When merging my two action blocks, I wanted to make sure that it was challenging and fun to play through. This is the level in which the player gets introduced to the combat aspect of the game right after the tutorial so my goal was to make the level get progressively harder as they combat through the waves of enemies that stand between them and the next level. I used the second action block as a starting point because it offered the player two different paths to take which made it a lot more intriguing. It also allowed me to increase the difficulty as the player advanced through either path.
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In order to have a progressive increase of difficulty, I had to remove all the enemies and traps from the previous milestones so I could re-add them and place them where they needed to be. In order to keep things organized and consistent, I divided the whole level into three tiers with the T1 area being the easiest. The first tier, as you may guess, started off with very few enemies but then ramped it up when moving into T2 with a few hordes and rewards that would help the player get through it.
I was having difficulty finding a way to fill the void in the T2 area without it getting repetitive, so I had the idea to implement a spawning mechanic. I created a spawn machine that would spawn the ZomBots, and would only stop if destroyed by the player. On top of that, I added a gate that was created by one of my teammates, which would open after the spawn machine was destroyed. Not only did the machine spawn enemies, but it would also increase the spawn rate per the time that it was still active. This urged the player to get to it as soon as it activated so they could destroy it.
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The T3 area had all three enemy types mixed together guarding the spawn machine which made things very challenging. The final area of the level had a turret made my one of my teammates placed in the middle with three spawners around it, along with a few enemies guarding them. The player had to rush to the turret, destroy the spawners, and wipe out the remaining enemies in order to make it out alive into the next level of the game.
I proceeded to move into refining and iterating upon my teammate’s levels. There were a few things that were off on everyone's levels so I made sure to play their levels to reproduce such issues and fix them. Also, with a fully functional spawn machine, I went ahead and added it to all the levels required of it and made sure that the collision detection boxes were adjusted accordingly. After implementing all the fixes, testing, and level design iterations—we were satisfied with the results and I proceeded to move onto refining and iterating upon my teammate’s levels.
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KEY THINGS I WORKED ON THIS MILESTONE:
Rigorous play testing and bug fixing on the Level 2
Iterating upon the design with lighting, SoundFXs, and Music
Added enemy spawners throughout the level to refine pacing so the Player consistently is required to do something
Balanced the Health and Damage values of the enemies so the player is met with a fair challenge during these early stages