With making my level I already have a basic 2D map to refer to just to give me an idea of how the map is laid out. With making the starting room I had already made a room with all my mechanics in it. The reason for this is to see if the mechanics work as sometimes when importing them over to my main game project they might break due to the player blueprint. But anyway, with the room I simply readjusted the size of the room and added a key card just, so the player understands what they are looking for throughout the game. Even then the room looks very empty which I could add more to it in the means of objects. With this in mind I might even add in some other collectibles into the room that could be used to unlock cosmetics and upgrade abilities.
With making the room it brought up a variety of questions my main being how could I light the rooms. As my game’s levels are mainly rooms so I need to find a way of lighting the rooms. With this my main ideas were to leave the roof off the rooms which lights them with the skylight however you won’t get that feeling of being stuck in a room trying to complete the tasks to escape. My other idea was to create a lighting system of a ceiling light. However, I haven’t really played around with the lighting in unreal. So, I researched for some tutorials which can get me up to speed with how lighting works and what’s ideal for my game. With this I found a range of tutorials which I found these two the most useful. As they both explain how they work and what they are ideal for in scene wise.
Level Design:
Getting back to making my level I start off with the second room which is going to be a parkour puzzle room where the player has to traverse the room to find the key card to escape the room. With this I started to play around with the size of the room and begun to place down some platforms. Which allowed me to play around with the level layout as I want to make the first level easy in a way so that the player can get to grips with the controls and experiment with the abilities they have to use. With this I want to have the first section a parkour level which has multiple routes allowing the player to play around with navigating the level. With the game play mainly being a parkour game, it allows me to work out the goal/target for the player to complete the game.
Thomas Morphew Games art 