Failed First Level, Player Physics, and Learning - but not doing?

I failed.

I tried to create a first level for my game (Android Arena). The game is supposed to be an arcade-like 3rd person shooter. Each level is supposed to be short. Since enemies and AI are still in the works I decided to go ahead and try and design a first level totally based on player movement. Just simply block it and see if it was fun. Sounded simple enough.

So I hid myself away and spent from around (6-8) designing and strictly blocking out the level. After I completed it, I brought in my teammates to give it a try. They graciously told me the level sucked, and I could clearly tell. The level was frusturating, it was difficult, it was annoying, and simply put...

The level sucked.

Here's what it looked like (click to see a larger image):




Here's what I did wrong:

1. No play testing while creating the level

The first major regret I had from building the level was not having someone else play the level and tell me that it sucked while I was making it. Someone else can be more harsh and judgmental of the level. Since they're also less experienced at your level they are also better gauges to measure the difficulty of your level.

2. Tested the level section by section

It's easy if you play a level a bit by bit, which make it entirely useless to gauge difficult. Even if you go back later on to test the level from beginning to the end, you're generally so well practiced in each section in the level in the first place that it makes it really difficult to tell whether or not the level is hard to beat. Testing the level section by section also removes any frustration coming from restarting the level from the beginning, which also clouds your judgement.

3. Secrets too difficult to get to

Even though secrets were there and added a substantial amount to the level, some of them were so ridiculously difficult to reach that it made the secret pointless in the first place. Even if the player managed to spot where they may think a secret there may be, after a lot of failed attempts they will give up and never assume there was a secret there in the first place.



Here's what I did right:

1. No artwork committed into the design

Although I lost a lot of time (6 - 8 hours) a lot more time could have been potentially been wasted.

2. Secrets

If there were no secrets, the level would just plain suck and have no redeeming values to it. The level in itself without the secrets was far too frustrating to play, and if there was nothing else beneficial behind it, the level would have been a total loss.

3. Learned that I despised the player physics

This last point might seem a little harsh. However, when building a level based on movement and how to get to point A to point B, you really get to know the ins and outs of the player physics. One of the most notable nuisances of the stock player physics is the lack of air control. The lack of air control makes it impossible to jump on to a higher surface if you're standing right beside it. For example if you figure out you can't step up a surface, and you try to jump up on to the surface, you're jump will be blocked, you will come to stand still, and move straight up, then straight down. It is impossible to get on to the surface, you need to jump on to it from a distance.

Issues like these got me a little side tracked...

So I decided I was going to document the player physics found in stock TGE. Not only that but I was going to share it with everyone on TDN. You can find the results here. Hopefully someone else will find it useful.

And finally I arrive at my last topic...

I seem to be spending an awful lot more time learning about Torque than using it. Hopefully it's a long-term investment in terms of time, but all I really want to do is get my game done. It's difficult to turn away the possibility of trying to understand fully what you can control and manipulate. Is that a bad thing?

I suppose tweaking player physics and starting another level will be on the agenda.

- Eric