Freelance Year Week 5 Level Design Jam finished

To start the week I began by creating the ramp and foundations of the tower so that I could properly estimate the size of each of the floors and where each of the staircases would go in order to help with navigation. On the ground floor I continued the previous puzzles with the player having to jump for one platform to another changing colours each time however they now had to jump upwards in elevation which adds a slight amount of challenge as they have to guide the characters fall while also changing to the right color. Next I decided to add Blue and Purple walls to show the player that they wouldn't just be changing the floors and to prepare them for future challenges further up the tower. While doing this I also readjusted some of the player's movement settings to avoid difficulties later in development after creating the puzzles.

Next I began creating the first floor puzzle which involved the player jumping onto three reciprocating platforms while also having to despawn walls that were in their way unless they wanted to fall off and restart the puzzle. Creating the moving platforms was easy enough as it was just a elevator moving on a different axis. I also decided not to add the walls yet so that I could easily see inside the tower and fix anything that needed it.

The next floor was trickier to make as it involved a series of overlapping blue and purple bridges that the player would carefully navigate across in order to reach the exit. The player could also grapple to a purple platform floating above the exit to get out faster. I created the longer blue and purple platforms by scale down and elongating the actual spawner.

Finally the third floor would involve the player using the grapple hook the zip to different platforms and then spawn the floor below them in order to land safely, this was mainly meant to be a test of the players patience and planning ability. The player would also have to avoid the moving walls that could block their path. Again the moving platforms were simply the platforms from the first floor rotated and moving on a different axis. I then placed yellow lights at each of the exits on the floor to help guide the player towards where they were meant to go.

After finishing the tower floors I was able to place the floating islands in the correct place around the outside of the tower, I then created smaller islands with 'hooks' or poles on them to help the player attach onto them using the grappling hook. I then placed some of the blue and purple platforms to add some variety to the outside of the tower instead of it just being the grapple.

Following this I created a death barrier to kill the player when they fell from the islands or hit the ground on the towers puzzles. I then created a checkpoint and respawn system so that the player didn't have to constantly start the level all over again when they died.

Level streaming was the last major thing left to implement however the third person template map did not allow for sublevels to be added so I had to copy everything into a blank template which did result in some lighting issues however these were easily fixed.

Finally I did a few Q/A testing to make sure everything worked and after a few adjustments to the world and player I was ready to upload to Itch.io

Game Page: https://titanwolf2002.itch.io/get-to-the-top