Chrono Shift - Prototype Sprint 3

For sprint 3, my team and I focused on continuing to develop our digital prototype for our game Chrono Shift. The producer and lead programmer have been focusing on programming all of the character movement and interaction, and I've mainly focused on level design. During this sprint I have completed the annotated map and 3d Unity environment for the first level after the tutorial.

Section I used of a 1400s map of Kyoto, Japan, Annotated map of level 1

This level focuses on the player's dashing ability, which lets them dash through breakable walls that would otherwise prevent them from moving forward through the environment. I've chosen to make these objects bright green so that the player can easily tell what objects are breakable and which are not. The level is themed based on the player taking on the form of a ninja, so I used online resources to theme the level in a fitting way. I wanted it to feel like Japan during the time when ninjas were most active, which was the 1400s-1600s. I found a map of the city of Kyoto made during that time period and used a small section of the map to base my level off of. I made the map begin in a rural area, surrounded by farms and mountains, where the player chooses the path they want to take that inevitably leads them to a bridge that they can cross to get into the city. The player is given many paths they can choose whether or not to take, some leading through to the goal and others being dead ends. Ultimately, the player's goal destination is the large temple in the center of the city. There are two separate main paths the player can take, one being shorter but more difficult and having more coins, and the other being longer but less difficult and with fewer coins. The player could also choose to go through both paths if they wish to collect all of the coins. There are plenty hidden throughout the level, which I used as a reward for players' exploration.

Luckily, our team has had little issue with communication or creative differences. We have had disagreements about various small implementations, such as whether or not to have a cooldown bar for the dash ability. Still, we are always able to have a civil discussion about it and let the most relevant lead members ultimately decide what they think is best. In this instance, I was decided to be most relevant as the lead designer, and I chose to keep the current color changing system for the time being, and if it manages to be a persistent issue then we can experiment with changing it to a cooldown bar to make it more easy to interpret. I think both solutions work fine. It really just depends on what makes the most sense for the player. Overall, development has gone pretty smoothly so far. I'd say that we all work well in our roles and keep up a good pace when it comes to completing work on time and on or above expectations. I still have a bit of difficulty handling criticism occasionally, though I'm doing my best to improve on this skill to allow my ideas and creations to be broadened and enhanced through the input of others.

Something I want to improve for the next sprint is the time I spend working on the environments in Unity. Creating the first level took a long time for me because I'm learning how to work with Unity's Pro Builder add-on, and I've had to add a lot of cuts to geometry to get it to function the way I want. I'm going to try to expedite this process as much as I can as I continue to work on the levels, and hopefully, it will enable me to get more work done in less time.