Sour Patch Kids – Sour Hollows
Level Design
Concept to Launch
Call me old school, but I do like to start a lot of my projects with a sketch pad to get ideas out quickly.
In our initial brainstorm grave yard crypts were brought up.
Based on this, an underground cave environment became the base of the level design.
The obstacle course (obby) started as thoughts of how to incorporate typical Halloween themes like coffins and jack-o-lanterns.
These sketches led to the use of vines as a theme in the environment and as a main part of our narrative for the game.
Next, 3D blocking began. The Roblox platform restricts the size of each level. To make the most of this, I focused on utilizing verticality.
Once a basic blocked model was finished, I could start breaking off obstacles for my team to model and develop gameplay for.
Environment models were created to be modular so that we could instance them.
One way to cover any repeating patterns was to ad vines to break up the textures. This tied into our narrative of the pumpkin taking over the crypt as well.
Below is the modular rock floor going from low poly model, adding normals, fully textured and placed in the scene.
The Pumpkin Obstacle – the original model based on the previous sketches. The model was refined to prevent clipping from the players as they jumped over the vines. Colliders and animations added in game engine. Finally, never let a good model go to waste. We re used the original vine model as background environment models.
As models were created, they were placed in a new layer on top of the blocking.
Once in the scene, assets were animated and given game functionality.
While the level was being assembled and coded, it was time to look forward to setting up cinematics for in game and for promotional material.
Cinematics in Roblox are handled a bit differently than in other game engines.
This is the initial blocking of a long shot camera to be used to give the player a preview of the level as they spawned in.
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