Question re level layout

[Brian_Robson]

I’m not sure I can explain this properly, but I’m struggling in some areas for designing my level. Its all around my lack of understanding in terms of transitions and limiting where the player can go. Let me try and explain…

I start with a similar ‘reveal’ of the village to Rick. Basically I’m going with the idea of starting in the forested hills near the village, chopping wood. And heading home, turn a corner to see the village and meet the first questgiver - a panicked villager telling you the village is under attack.

Now I’ve already hit one problem by this point. Starting in a forest path, I want my player to be confined to that path - ie not able to wander in the middle of the trees where the camera view will be blocked… How can I go about that?

Then after the village encounter, I want the next parts of the story to unfold by being sent from the village to achieve various quests - I have some farmland to protect (finishing off the raiders), then a stone circle to visit (Druids Test), some ruins to clear, then barrows.

Now for each of these locations, I want them to be unreachable UNTIL that quest is given. Obviously the level has to be designed around that, but how? What mechanisms can I use to achieve it? Yes, I can have cliffs and rivers etc… but how can we block them sometimes and open them other times…? For cliffs, Can I limit movement by, say a texture? If I use a cliff texture? Or will the steepness work?
How can we limit movement to a ‘path’? I kind of thought it would be a case of bordering it with hedgerows/fences/walls that have colliders, but if that was the case, I’d have expected it to be much easier to find them on the asset store.

And then… I have a path that goes to the end of the terrain to move on to the next area. Is it ok to have that? Obviously at the moment, you could simply walk off the edge of the terrain.

I kind of think a video at this stage (ie before blocking-out) on this subject would have helped a lot.

[Rob]

Hi Brian,

Now I’ve already hit one problem by this point. Starting in a forest path, I want my player to be confined to that path - ie not able to wander in the middle of the trees where the camera view will be blocked… How can I go about that?

For hills/mountains you may be able to adjust the scenery or the player settings so that the angle is just too step to move up, although you often find with that approach that if you keep the player jumping and moving you can often catch a foot hold and keep traversing, so not ideal.

Another approach would be to use some cubes, stretch the out, make them taller than the player, and taller than the player could jump etc and make them invisible. Rigidbodies/colliders - that could work. Perhaps at the beginning, depending on the nature/feel of your game, you could pop a message up “Oooh, I’d better not go in there, looks scary” or something along those lines, give the player an indication that they need to remain on the path etc.

Now for each of these locations, I want them to be unreachable UNTIL that quest is given. Obviously the level has to be designed around that, but how?

The above could potentially still be used for this too, at least in its most basic approach - it would prevent you from walking to the undesired area whilst enabled, then disable it when you want them to be able to move through. An invisible door effectively. Of course, this may seem a bit odd, again, depending on your game, so perhaps you need some other things there too to decorate it, trees etc, which then later are removed - all depends on your theme/style/desire.

Equally, you could have little portals, the player approaches a shimmering, whispy light effect and is then transported to the other area - depending on your game story they could be magical, or perhaps in your game they are just ways of moving around your world, perhaps they are just game portals which help you move from one area to another and are not actually magic at all. You could apply the same for the end of level that you mention where you may fall off the end of the world, have the player approach / enter something, then fade the screen to black, load the new scene, fade back in…

I kind of think a video at this stage (ie before blocking-out) on this subject would have helped a lot.

I recall this being touched on, I think by Ben from memory, said something along the lines of “we could spend a lot of time on this now, or, come back to later”, I expect something on this topic would be covered in perhaps another section of the RPG.

[Brian_Robson]

Thanks Rob. That does help - quite a lot.

[Rob]

Hi Brian,

You’re very welcome, I’m sure there are various other approaches, but for something fairly straight forward and easy to implement, you could experiment a little with the above to see what you can achieve