Hello Again! This is Ian Stoops writing about our nearly finished game: Beta Breakers!!!!!  Due to our developers' dev log schedule, I ended up being the first to post and (according to the schedule) the last to post, so my before and after are very different. To start, making this game was a blast as much as it was tedious. When working on not just level design but UI, animation (mocap and 3d), and some modeling, it gradually burned me out, but I kept giving it my all to make a great final product! Also to note: lighting was done by Jaden Mercado, and Stephen Biechele did modeling; this world would not have been possible without their work.

Going into the level design, I felt that my ideas with the original 3 levels were good, but wouldn't fully cut it for a finished product, and with multiple playtesters liking the concept, they wanted more substance and environments to play in. This resulted in me making 3 alternative levels that would take the place of an original level through a playthrough. They serve as "challenge" levels, each with their own unique challenge. The first is a hide and seek, the second is to reach the end as fast as you can, and the last is a strength challenge to clear out 4 areas of enemies.

Each level is in the first video with a 360 rotation above each of the levels, going from levels 1, 2, 3, 1 alternative, 2 alternative, and 3 alternative. I also provided 4 beauty shots of each level in the same order as mentioned earlier.  Aside from just making extra levels to go along with the game, it was also important to populate them with the little amount of time I had left. Through playtesting, one of the larger issues I found was that the player didn't have a clear direction strictly through the level, so trying to fit the theme and also make an unique way to guide the player I asked my modelers for some road signs that i could not only litter through my levels but also use their arrows and wording to guide the player to where i want them to go, so as you start the game any level you go into you'll see signs pointing you to where you should go. Although I didn't feel like that was enough when considering my demographic and the lighting that was being implemented, I found another way to help guide the player by adding footsteps and cross decals that glow in every level. They glow bright enough to catch the player's attention and also tell you exactly where you need to walk, hence the reason I used footsteps.

Another thing that was hard to balance was the space for the player, the space for the enemies, and the space for combat. Trying to take up space with the props and buildings was a major part of my design for the city, but making sure there was enough space was hard to measure. Starting with having to start designing the level and modeling without a player reference made scaling a bit difficult, but once I got the player, enemies, and other models, I worked hard to find a balance between all of them. In some areas there is going to be more space for fights with more enemies, but in others there is less space for fights with less enemies, but throughout all of my levels, i did my best to make spaces and areas that the player could run to in case they start taking too much damage or just need to pick off enemies at a slower rate. I believe I found a good balance in the end with the player being able to move around with ease from area to area, but also being able to fight among many props and enemies.

Lastly, I really wanted to make these levels feel full; this took a good amount of time, but the final product was worth it. Through the setup of the levels, I always had an idea of where I would want certain props to go and around what areas the player would run around the most. Populating these areas with props wasn't the only idea; I also wanted to make some graffiti to fill in empty spaces on building walls and in places the player would often see. So I did some research on graffiti and went into Photoshop to come up with designs and phrases (some more absurd than others) to not only take up the empty spaces but also catch the player's eye.