I’ve always had a strong interest in designing narrative environments and settings; I often draw or work on them in my spare time (and work time), and want to be in jobs like storyboarding or relevant fields. This was my first time creating a 3d game level, and though I was initially intimidated, I immediately felt a familiar sense of excitement from times in my childhood when I’d try to create board games or design cool environments. From the moment the assignment was given, I held an interest in the idea of having the player fall down what was supposedly an underground series of rooms and end up on an extremely high bridge (the fence model but really really big). Changing from a tall bridge amidst clouds with beaming sunlight and a blue sky to halloween trees was mainly because I wanted some tangible form of reward at the end (originally just a tree on the final platform), and also because I was in an October-ey mood.
One particular bit I noticed was interesting during my level creation process was the fact that it was almost entirely indoors, and relied heavily on alternating pure darkness with directional lights. This meant that when actually changing and playing the level, I’d constantly have to slide away a face of the current room I was working on to change the internal mechanisms, then often forget to slide it back and enter a room completely filled with sunlight.
In terms of player feedback, I was slightly surprised that Jesse actually was suspicious of the false green goal and looked down; until that point, I’d myself never actually seen what the “Hell” drop looked like looking down from the top. I’d even designed the fall distance to have a certain amount of pitch blackness staring at the wall before the red light gradually transitioned in. Overall, I was decently happy with my result despite the lack of technical knowledge; the main goal I had was seeing if I could establish a decent semblance of atmosphere. In the future, though, I’d definitely want to include sounds, as well as fix the random lighting that started to bleed through the walls as my level gained complexity beyond a single room.