Full Sail Project

Introduction

During my time at Full Sail University I was part of a team where we took the individual levels that we worked on and were to combine them into one massive level. The game is called SCRAPS and takes place in post apocalyptic world. Bastions are safe havens for the rest of humanity and the rich live within. The Scrappers go into the wastelands for the Bastions in hopes of earning a place within.

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This project started 3 months ago as individuals for the first couple of months. It was during those first couple of months that my level was designed, learning about the mechanics of SCRAPS, how to make objects in Unity, and how the mechanics work together. The first month was learning about making a level design diagram. With the diagram in hand, the next month was spent learning about mechanics and using the diagram to build a working level using 2 different mechanics for the level to progress through. This is where a quest was also added that the player was sent on by those within Bastion. On the last month a team of 4 was put together to take the individual levels into a large course with transition to each level.

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By shear luck our team had similar designs for our levels. We decided to make the levels match and feel more cohesive by basing it off a military island to make it the same setting. There were cut scenes added for the transitions along with adjusting and adding terrain to the levels to make it feel like the player was on an island.

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What Went Right

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1 Teamwork

The team itself was great. We all got along and worked together by bouncing ideas off and fixing any problems or bugs that arose. Even when life got in the way we had each others back. This did allow for quicker improvements to our project as a whole and pushed us further. Our team also communicated well and had set roles for each other so we knew what we had to do without stepping over each other.

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2 Beta Testing

We had other people from the other teams test the levels out. I based my level off of an underground bunker that was falling apart. One door moved in a special way only to jam at an angle. It was pointed out that the way the door move didn't fit the overall design and though I liked it, I did agree that it was out of place and changed it. There were other problems that were found and it helped the team overall improve our project.

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3 Level Concept

As stated earlier in through shear luck we had a similar theme to our levels. It helped with time constraints as we only needed to make small changes to our levels. It also helped find a collectible for the players to find in our levels which was canned food similar to T-Rations found on military bases. With this in place the team was able to focus more on other parts of their levels instead of redoing a lot.

 

4 Mechanics

I selected a pressure plate and mechanical lever to use in my level. A couple others on the team also used the pressure plate and we made sure to make them all the same to keep the project feeling cohesive for the players. This allowed for objects to be used in different ways across the project as a whole as the plate could be used as a button to open a door or a plate where something needed to be placed on it to keep a door open.

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What Went Wrong

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1 Unity Terrain

This was a big problem from the start. Most of us had experience editing terrain through other programs like UnReal. The terrain constantly fought us every step of the way and by having an underground level for my stage made it worse. We spent more time trying to match up the levels and smoothing things out  which caused more issues with terrain bugging out when adjusting one terrain another separate one started to adjust even though they were separate terrains. It even affected the neighboring levels and transition areas. Something that could be done in the future is do 1 massive terrain for the whole project or make sure not to do an underground level.

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2 Rebuilding Level

Being a bit newer to Unity and not having much experience with parts like ProBuilder did cause some issues for me. I ended up scrapping the block out level I made and rebuilt the whole level. This set me back for my level and I spent more time redoing it than I wanted. It did help with the final project as it made it look better by doing so take out unused rooms and areas that had glitches when walking through them.

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3 Perforce

Throughout the time during these months it did cause issues for everyone. The servers would go down randomly and lose connection constantly. If you tried to load more than 15 files it would crash too. The last month wasn't as bad, but anyone without high speed internet suffered the most. If there were a lot of files it would timeout or drop connecting so the person would have to start over again. It is a nice tool to use but the issues compounded for everyone making it difficult and keep up at times.

 

4 Team Meetings and Availability

There were things that happened to the team that hindered some from coming to meetings. It did have a small effect near the end when working on Gold Videos like some were only available late at night. The team at least wasn't spread across large time zone gaps like EST to PST but the times were still an issue. We were able to work around it and complete our goals but it shows how it can affect a team if they were to not communicate any issues that come about.

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Conclusion

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The project over the last 3 months really showed everyone how it works and what goes into making a game. The time constraints on these projects meant if you didn't keep up it can come back to hurt you. By planning more of what to do with a level instead of jumping into it can help streamline the process more so that time isn't wasted on smaller things that could have been taken care of earlier. This is a great learning experience on how level design works and can come together to make a whole game.

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