Neon Express
DESCRIPTION
Neon Express is a 3D 3rd person fast-paced parkour runner platformer where you play as Velo, a pizza delivery girl who runs atop a futuristic city and uses rooftops and trains to her advantage to get to the destination as fast as she can. This Project was made in Unreal Engine by a small group of 6 Students at VFS (Vancouver Film School) over a period of 6 months with 2 months of pre-production and 4 months of production.
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It was an amazing time working along side a team of passionate and hard working people. During the developments of Neon Express I learned a lot of new and useful tips and lessons about working in a team and as a Level Designer. Collaborating with another Level Designer on the team to make a consistent environment and levels was one of the skills I learned on the run.
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We made sure that our vision for the levels we wanted to create were similar and communicated that to each other and the rest of the team. Having meetings and constantly communicating with each other and the Environmental Artist was the key to the environments we managed to create. Neon Express had 3 levels in total and I was responsible for making the first 2. I had an amazing time working on District 1 and District 2 and after many hours spend designing and iterating I managed to make them both look and feel the way I wanted them to for the players.
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District 1
Backstory & intent
"District 1" was one of the early concepts we had for first level of the game. The idea behind "District 1" was a low class area of the city with the goal of tutorialzing the mechanics to the player and giving them a chance to try what they learned and challenge them based on those mechanics.
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The idea of the low class area was part of the world building process we had and the goal was to make the player feel the change in environment every time they start a new level.
Approach
First level was taking place in lower class area so a dirty environment with foggy atmosphere and neon signs and advertisements towards the needs of people who lived in that environment was how we populated the environment.
bringing down the elevation of the playable areas compared to the buildings around that were being used to populate the city was another approach we took to give the sense of being in a lower class and lower power environment.
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In a fast paced runner platformer, knowing where to go is important and we did that by keeping a clear line of sight for the playable areas for the players and using land marks as a guiding tool to show the players how close they are to getting to the end of the level.
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Turorialization was a supper important part of this level so we focused and dedicated most of the time to make sure that the players were being taught properly and were ready for the challenges they were being faced with.
Challenges / what I learned
Making a level for a fast paced runner platformer for the first time, one of the biggest challenges that I faced early on in the production was getting the flow and the pacing of the level right. Our goal was to keep the player momentum going and let them always be running forward and never make them slow down. after many hours spend on researching fast paced games like ours and looking into racing games I managed to find the best design that suited our game and was clear enough for the players to understand and follow. Watching play testers and analysing feedback was also a helpful factor that helped me in this process.
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Another challenge that came up mid production was the tutorialization at the beginning of the level and players being confused on what they were required to do, but after spending some time to research other games and their tutorialization I was able to make a harmless safe area for the players to start their run at, with the main focus being the players learning the mechanics properly and no penalties for failure.
District 2
Backstory & intent
A middle class area full of entertainment advertisements and neon signs and many billboards, these were what we had in mind and concepts we came up with for "District 2". We wanted to introduce the wall run mechanic to the players in this level since the elevation of the area was higher and closer to the billboards. The main focus of these level was to teach the players the wall run mechanic and challenge them with different patterns of wall running to get them ready for the final level which challenged the players with all of the mechanics.
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We wanted to create an environment with many advertisements and ads to really give the feeling of being in a different environment than the previous one. One of the things I really wanted for this level, was to make it feel like an arcade room while someone was playing it.
Approach
The theme of this level was entertainment, so following that theme I came up with some things that are used as ways of entertainment in life and decided to use them to feel the environment and the area District 2 was taking place at. Video Games, Movies, Drinks and Cars were some of the things that I came up with and after communicating that to the team we decided to show them as neon signs and advertisements on billboards.
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I wanted to make the players feel like they are in an arcade room while playing this level so I decided to use purple/pink and green as main colours in this level. Adding a fog to the level to show the hight that the level was taking place at and to show the beauty of the night and flashing neon signs and billboards was another approach I took to add more to the atmosphere and the environment of the level.
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I wanted the player to learn about the wall run mechanic enough in this level so by adding a tutorial section at the beginning I made sure that the new players understand the mechanic early on in the level. Also by playing with elevation in different parts of the level and making platforming challenges that required wall running I added more wall run interactions in this level.
Challenges / what I learned
Making a tutorial section for wall run mechanic was tricky since people who were the target audience would understand it right away and people who were new to this genre of games, would have difficulty getting it so, I changed the tutorial section to make it more obvious what was required of the players.
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On challenge I faced towards the end of the production was the level being too busy with all the noisy flashing lights from moving billboards and neon signs, so I had to make changes and make the signs and none wall runnable billboards less flashy and noisy and more static and it solved the problem and players were more focused on the path than the environment.
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One big challenge I faced while making this level, was teaching the players which surface was wall runnable and which wasn't, so by colour coding the billboards that were wall runnable to an orange colour and making the wall runnable billboards being the only billboards that had a moving screen we solved that problem. By making the direction of the advertisements go towards the direction the path was going we guided the players even more through their runs.
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Another challenge I had with wall running in a game with moving trains was to teach the players they could wall run on the side of the moving trains. After trying different methods and nothing getting the results I was looking for, I decided to change the tutorial for the train wall runs and bring show that mechanic much earlier in the level and after many attempts and iterations I made a tutorial section for the mechanic that was hard to understand and made it easy and obvious to notice, learn and adapt to.
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Aside from the challenges with wall tunning mechanic, I had to do rapid prototypes and iterations on the level and different platforming challenges to keep the flow and pacing of the level at where we wanted it and that was a challenging process that too a while to understand.
Mochabyte
