WildFire

When the mechanics were locked down, burn rates and size growth were balanced using this spreadsheet. This data was useful in knowing what exact size players would be at certain points in levels.

This was important for pacing and to ensure the levels accommodated for those sizes. It also provided metrics about movement and how to scale the spaces accordingly.

To get an idea of what the space would be like, I gathered references to base the landscape off of. Through this research the layouts were influenced by geothermal valleys and ravines.

Afterwards I made fast, dirty sketches for a quick visualization for the size and feel of the levels.

Once a general feel of the level was there, I created beatmaps to structure the pacing and environmental mechanics around. This allowed for the introduction and expansion of mechanics and skills to be executed in a serviceable manner before testing even begun.

Another important use of this was I could also explicitly plan out what sizes players should be at specific beats in the level, which informed exactly how many trees and bushes needed to be placed for every area. These sizes were also used to scale the level around.

With the content designed and references gathered I made multiple very rough sketches of possible general layouts of the levels, represented as blobs indicating specific regions of the space. I then would settle on one and make a slightly more granular top-down sketch of the rough geometry.

This was used in tandem with the beatmaps to then whitebox the level.

Armed with my preproduction knowledge I would whitebox the spaces using art assets from the previous version of the game as well as rough block-outs using Unreal BSPs.

Then followed the longest part of the process — iteration. The layouts and structure of the levels were changed to improve guidance and composition of certain areas. Tree clumps and rain cloud patterns were moved around to improve the overall pacing. The largest problems involved guidance across lakes and large bodies of water, which was solved through earlier introduction and teaching of the evaporation mechanic

When the levels were finalized I did an art and lighting pass. New terrain models were created and lighting had to be switched over to dynamic instead of baked due to build times. Light colors were tweaked for each level to convey a specific time of day for each of them and to set the general style and mood of the game.