The 2D Maze in the Wild West

So, this was my first project that involved something digitally instead of the DnD maps that I have become accustomed to this semester, but it felt good to be progressing. For this project, I was assigned with making a maze using assets, mechanics, and goals given to me. All I had to do was make the level. I was able to garner around 4 different playtesters, who all gave me differing feedback.

To start, my level starts from the lower left of the map, and the maze goes around the church where a coin is stored. Then, they need to backtrack a little bit to "escape" through the farmer's fields. Out of the 4 playtesters that I garnered, 3 of them were able to complete the level successfully with the coin collected, while the other playtester finished the game without collecting the coin. I was particularly interested in what this 4th playtester had to say. However, I'll dive into it later. For the playtesters, they thought that it was a good challenge and they thought that the map really felt like a maze even though it didn't look like a maze at all, which they felt was a great part about the level design. All of the playtesters were able to complete the map all around 1-2 minutes time, with the shortest being under a minute (without collecting the coin).

One of the design choices that I made for this map had mixed thoughts, some playtesters thought it was cool and some thought it was just annoying, and that was the fact that I put the coin in sight of the player within the first few steps of the map. One of the playtesters I had thought it was such a funny and unique way of placing the coin since it shows you the prize that you so desperately want, yet you know you have to work to get it, which made some of my playtesters become more enticed in the level than when they originally came into it.

However, one of my playtesters wasn't too keen on that, or my map design almost entirely. My 4th playtester said that there were a few parts of the map where it was almost near impossible to get through, mostly due to broken game mechanics which isn't necessarily the designer's fault, but I definitely took what he said into consideration, as well as the other playtesters. The 4th playtester went down to the level completion zone without trying to go for the coin first, causing him to not be very intrigued with the game, which is what a lot of my other playtesters suggested too. They said that with that end goal placement, they would ask the question of "Why would I go all the way around for a coin when I could just finish the level right now?" which is something even I thought was something huge that needed to be changed within my level.

Now, my map included a so-called "mechanic" where once you went around the outside, you were able to "climb the fence unseen" (according to the immersion factor), but all my playtesters were a little confused about this factor, originally thinking that there wasn't actually a way of getting the coin until they tried to go through the fence. I wanted to make something out of much more simple mechanics, making it something that honestly didn't really fit with the level (especially since the actual player character would go under the fence and graves of the church asset), and they felt that it was a little immersion/game-breaking, even if the game isn't a super immersive game in itself. They felt that the level design overall was good, but maybe could use some widening (again because of the blockers being so big), as well as some more incentives. One playtester told me that they felt it was too tedious and too long of a task to get only one coin, making them feel a little bit ripped-off by the level. They felt that with some more coins, as well as some possible secrets, my level could be a lot better than it is now.

Overall though, they felt it was a good start, but with just a bit more polish and the immersion-breaking mechanic being thrown in the garbage, I feel this map could do a lot better than before.

Four Different Types of Lighting

For this smaller assignment, I was tasked with taking a few portraits with different kinds of lighting, allowing me to practice with different environments and experiment with different lighting angles and compositions. We were asked to take 4 different portraits, one with standard, natural lighting, one with only artificial lighting and no natural lighting at all, one with only artificial side lighting, also with no natural lighting, and lastly a silhouette-type portrait.

 We start off with the naturally-lit image, the one that I originally thought would be the easiest, but actually ended up being harder than I thought. For this image, since he was squatting down on the ground, I wanted to take the shot from a higher angle so it would make him appear a bit smaller, but not small enough to where it looks like he's cowering from something. I had rule of thirds in mind when I took this shot, keeping his face more on the top left dot that is given from the compositional element, but I also grabbed an added bonus of leading lines from both the ground line along the water and the bridge support that was behind him. I wanted this picture to be one of those pictures where the background could still be almost fully focused, but you're still attracted to the main subject, and I feel I was able to accomplish this well. I think the only problem I really had here was the lack of more light under the bridge, which made me have to use a tripod.

Next, we move on to the picture using only artificial lighting. When I first went out to take pictures, it was originally quite a task to find a good place to take pictures that had no natural lighting leaking in at all and no huge groups of people walking by every second, but I finally managed to find this hallway, which adds onto the picture itself. For this image, I wanted to follow the "on the edge" type of format, and I did so by trying to put my subject more onto the right side of the image. In most of my images, I always tend to look for any leading lines that could easily help my audience look towards my subject, and there was quite an abundance of these lines in this image, from the lights on the ceiling to the door frame in the very back, and none of these lines cut through my subject either, allowing for a more clean image. I think the lighting from this hallway allowed for some even lighting on my subject, and the lighting was a lot softer than the natural lighting outside at the time, allowing for a nice, calm image to look at. My main problem with this image was finding the right framing for my subject, causing me to take closeups, full-body shots, and mid shots like this one just to find something that could work.

Thirdly, we come to the side lighting image, which was one of my personal favorite images that I shot from that day of shooting. When I went out to shoot this, I had absolutely no idea how I would accomplish artificial side lighting without any portable light for me to carry around, so this was probably the hardest picture for me to take. However, I managed to take this, and along with the artificial side lighting, I was also able to tell a story through my image with the actual light source itself, so it was like a two-in-one deal. As usual, I went for my standard "OMG I need leading lines" treatment, which went well, with a lot of the leading lines coming from the different buttons on the "light source", and I tried to factor in rule of thirds, but I don't feel I was too successful with that. However, I managed to keep my subject off-center, as well as take the picture in a way where the audience would be more enticed to look at the subject's face rather than the buttons on the machine. I think this picture looks the best to me because of how soft the light is, yet how much contrast I was able to garner from the image, making it a perfect candidate for the black-and-white treatment.

Finally, we come to the silhouette image, which had to be my second favorite image that I took from that day. Rule of thirds actually played a pretty big role in how I shaped this picture since I wanted the head (which could be the most recognizable part of a human face for this type of picture) to be in a non-distracting and perfect position, which I managed to do well. At the time I took this, the sun was maybe an hour past noon, which I felt was actually a very good time to choose for a silhouette image since you want your subject to be as dark as possible, basically to a point where you can't make out any features. As well as rule of thirds, there were many leading lines coming from the tree to the left that lead to my subject, but I feel the lighting in this picture was one of it's best qualities. The sun being right behind my subject's head, it creates some sort of aurora around his head, making the audience more enticed in the subject itself and being drawn away from the more darker areas, which I feel fits this type of image perfectly. I think the hardest part about taking this image was figuring out the right settings to use, especially since you have to use the sun as a light source. After many failed attempts, I finally switched my camera to aperture priority mode, making my job 10 times easier and making the images look 10 times better.

Overall, I enjoyed this little mini assignment since it allowed me to practice more lighting skills and angles and experiment with different composition styles, which will definitely help me with my photography in the future.

The Tiered Map...A Beginning

For this project, we were given something a little different. We still were given the same theme of "post-apocalyptic alien invasion" and we had to do the same concept art and such, but what we weren't expecting was the formation of groups. For this map, or should I say maps, we were told to gather into groups of three to make three maps, one beginner, one intermediate, and one advanced, all connected together using the same story, items, and characters. I chose to do the beginner map since I felt like I could use my experiences from my last maps and incorporate them well to help the players understand what to do and how to do it very easily.

My map was an abandoned city that was desecrated by an alien attack, leaving behind mutants, ghouls, and raiders alike. When I first gave the players a very short backstory to the map, they were more intrigued and ready to get started on the map, which they came to enjoy. When I let them start, however, they felt that it was good, but it also needed some work. Since I'm not super informed when it comes to printing certain things, I was forced to try to fit this map onto a single piece of paper, which made gameplay very slow and hard as it was hard to see the tiles and items that could be collected. Also, I eventually had to inform them that the "cars" within the level were all able to be looted to find possible items, leading to them doing some backtracking and getting frustrated when they found out that some of their backtracking was for nothing. However, when given a pair of jumper cables that had no significance to gameplay, the playtesters actually used this in quite a creative way in battles, resulting in some cool action sequences that added to their gameplay experience.

Before going to far into the map though, the playtesters first noticed an alley to the bottom left close to where they started, which led them to another small portion of map that I made to allow for some slight branching paths. There were a few enemies in here, specifically one mutant and one ghoul, and they all felt like they were well balanced overall, but they also felt that the ghoul was just plain annoying (it has very low attack and very low hp, but it's able to dodge almost all attacks with ease). However, they felt huge satisfaction after they finally defeated the ghoul with a headlock backslam. They also liked the weapon given to them for their efforts (an iconic .44 magnum). They felt the weapon was properly balanced for this level alone, but when moving onto the next two levels, they felt the weapon didn't do too much for their attacks. The items still helped, but not as much, which I felt was a fault of most of my items. However, they did like the ways of using the items, such as certain dice rolls giving you certain outcomes.

Next to the small trader building towards the end of the map, one building is actually enter-able from the outside, but they didn't pick that up until I showed them. Since I printed the map out so small, they weren't able to see the entrance or the contrast of the entrance at all, causing them to completely waltz over it. However, once they were told about the area, they enjoyed it a good amount. I added in a medium difficulty enemy to the building (a robot to be exact) which was guarding a box of grenades, which was a very good item that was better than most of my other items. They thought this enemy was well balanced as well, but they also thought he was a tad too challenging. However, they were happy with the item given.

Due to time restraints with each map, I wasn't able to go fully into how the trader system works in our tiered maps, forcing me to choose between two items that the playtesters could choose from to take for free (we originally had currency in mind for our maps, but decided to scrap it due to time restraint). Overall, they enjoyed my map, but they felt that with more tweaking, it could work a lot better.

It was a cool experience being able to work with a team of three as it allowed us to bounce ideas off of each other for what could be good and bad for each of our levels, and it allowed us to dive into an overarching story to tell over the course of the three maps, making in much more enjoyable for the playtesters. I also feel like it made us think about balancing and level design much more than previous maps as we had to make it balanced for each map iteration (and also because the enemies and the playtesters rank up each time a new level starts). My team was a great one and I feel we all worked together very well. My only complaint was the matter of figuring out time constraints, but that wasn't the team I was in or anything, but more about the instructions of the assignment. Overall, I'm looking forward to doing more group projects like this in the future and I hope to perfect this map in the near future.

The Prison Break

For our next assignment, we were tasked with making another simple DnD map, but this time, we had to follow a certain theme. Our theme was a prison break, and we had to set this in some sort of post-apocalyptic, alien invasion type of scenario, which I absolutely loved. I decided to have my aliens within my map be a robotic species that is super intelligent and way more technological than the human species, but I also wanted it to be quite a gritty, worn down setting (you know, since it was post-apocalyptic).

 My map first started out within the cells in the worn out, dungeon-like room, with one character spawning in the middle "torture room". The playtesters that played my map thought this was a cool concept as it kind of had a "last man standing" feel and it added tension to the gameplay right at the start, making for compelling gameplay if they got into a fight. That player would then have to unlock the other character's cells using a key that they find on a guard that they beat down (or possibly even one just lying around). I also incorporated darkness to this first room as it gave the starting players more tension and it made the really want to get through it. 
I also incorporated a "camera system" that could alert more enemies to their location if they are within it's proximity for a certain length of time or if they fail to destroy it (it's basically a mini battle). The people that playtested thought that this was a good idea, but they felt there might've been too many cameras, leading to the map being a bit too hard and with the small supply of items found on the map, it was hard to counteract a bunch of attacks. They feel that if I took away some cameras and worked on their stats a bit that it would be a much more enjoyable mechanic. Along with cameras, there are also alarms that can be disabled and there are also rooms on both floors that allow the players to disable the cameras on that floor, making it much easier for them to maneuver through the map. They also felt that my checkpoints were well placed and that they didn't need to be moved.

One huge thing that they felt definitely needed to be addressed was the time it took to play through the map. With a 20 minute time limit, it's very hard to make a map that can be both enjoyable and challenging at the same time. However, my map probably took at least over 30 minutes to complete because I had different enemy types, a mini boss, and a main boss at the very end, making the map a very combat-oriented map, which the playtesters thought was a good way to go after my last map involved too much walking. This time, however, I had to ditch making a complex story and choices like my last map because this map had more parts to it than my last one, and my playtesters were sad to see that dropped. They felt it was one of the key components to my last map and they think that this map could be much more enjoyable and intriguing with a backstory to go along with their travels. Also, they felt that some of my enemies were a bit too hard, especially for the first room. With the mechanic of "one guy saves the others", they felt that the enemies inside the dungeon needed a rework so that they were easier to defeat for that initial player.

They also recommended that I make the items that could be acquired within the map more prominent. Most of the items that were in the map weren't found, and they felt that there was quite a lack of items, making it very hard for them to get all the way through the map in one piece. On top of that, they also felt like it needed a tad bit more structure since both them and I were confused when there was an enemy and when there was not, as well as whether or not an enemy spotted them and/or attacked them.

Overall, they felt that this map had a lot of potential. They loved the design of the map much more than my last map since my last map was solely just one path. They liked having the choice of going down different paths to reach the exit, but with the camera system being so OP and the enemies being pretty hefty, they felt like it was too hard to really choose their own path. Hopefully my second iteration of this map can be much better than the first.