{"id":105,"date":"2014-08-16T11:02:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-16T19:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/?p=105"},"modified":"2014-08-16T11:03:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-16T19:03:14","slug":"105","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/?p=105","title":{"rendered":"On the Level"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks blocking out two new levels (called “Streets3” and “HighRise1”) and improving two older ones (“SafeHouse” and “Hospital”).<\/p>\n

HighRise1 takes place about halfway through the game, and is mostly comprised of conversations. Writing dialogue has been a new challenge for me in NEON STRUCT<\/em>, and I’m not entirely confident in what I’ve written so far; but I tend to err on the side of short conversations to keep things moving.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Streets3 has been one of my favorite levels to build so far. I’ve wanted to put a neon-lit 1980s-esque mall in a video game for a while, and I finally had a place for it in this game. I spent one morning last week looking up reference photos of dead malls, which was rather depressing despite my interest in the subject.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Streets3 is a social level the first time the player visits it, but will be repurposed as a stealth level on a return trip. I had originally planned for it to be a hub which the player would revisit several times during the middle part of the game, but streamlining the level flow<\/a> negated the need for a hub. Building a level to serve as both a social and stealth space has been an interesting challenge. The social levels in NEON STRUCT<\/em> tend to contain very open spaces, and Streets3 is no exception, so stealth play will necessarily be based more on shadows and enemy facing than occlusion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I returned to the SafeHouse level to add some extra decoration and finalize the quests. I’m finding it to be more fruitful to bounce between levels than to try to complete each level in a week. It gives me a broader range of tasks to pick from on any given day, and affords a lot more time to reflect on the levels before continuing to work on them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For example, the first pass of the Hospital was an oversized monolith of a level, built without a clear purpose for many rooms and too much concern for realism in its floor plan. I revisited it this week, hacked off a third of it, and redirected the flow to fit the tighter space. The result is a less realistic but far more interesting map, with fewer prefab rooms and more identifiable landmarks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, I threw together a training level for upcoming playtests. I don’t expect to ship this\u2014tutorialization in the final game will be done organically in the first real level\u2014but I needed a way to start play testers from any level of the game without confusion about the mechanics.<\/p>\n

Whether I ship this level or not, the System Shock 2<\/em>-inspired neon cube world (which I’m tentatively calling “the Struct” to retroactively justify the game’s title) will definitely be making another appearance somewhere else in the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks blocking out two new levels (called “Streets3” and “HighRise1”) and improving two older ones (“SafeHouse” and “Hospital”). HighRise1 takes place about halfway through the game, and is mostly comprised of conversations. Writing dialogue has been a new challenge for me in NEON STRUCT, and I’m not entirely confident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neonstruct.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}