Sips of Narrative, Level Design and Art in BLOCK: Odyssey.

My original plan for this post was to show some Level Design documents. I didn't make any of them. Why?

In BLOCK: Odyssey I am using a lot of assets that I didn't make, this means that it takes time to understand how to use them. A couple of times I have been forced to change the design because some assets didn't work the way that I expected.

Planning without having a good knowledge of the tools that I am going to use is not a good idea, that's why I decided to spend some time working on engine, trying to define best practices and a meaningful pipeline for this project.

In this article, I am going to show where I am at, focusing on how I solved some issues that prevented me to complete this first test level.

I made this cinematic walkthrough because I like to set the mood up before jumping into the action; this is the first environment that the player is going to explore.

At the end of BLOCK, we are not really sure about what happens to Sophie: we kind of understand that everything restarts all over again, but we also confused by the another Sophie. If they are the same person, how is possible for them to interact? The other Sophie lives in another dimension, ready to help the player -and herself- to find a way out, but how did it happen? In this first chapter I wanted the player to question the narrative, trying to stimulate curiosity and having him asking questions.

What if the dark cave where BLOCK takes place is just one the boards where Sophie plays trying to get out? What if just completing all of them she will finally be able to escape from her prison? BLOCK: Odyssey is going to expand the same plot.

This game is about loneliness; this time the player is on his own.

This first screenshot shows an overview of the area that I didn't have time to complete: at the end of the canyon, a futuristic ruin is going to introduce the player to the first gameplay puzzle. Note: some trees look weird because of the LOD.

Working on this environment I used LAM, the SciFi Props Pack, Ultra Dynamic Sky and some assets that I made. Also, I would like to thanks to Ian Savage for the music.

I don't know why this GIF doesn't behave like a GIF, but if you are curious to see some procedural screens of this area, just click HERE.

This sci-fi lamp that I made converting BSPs caused the first -and not last- problem in this level: basically, I wanted to have dynamic shadows, which was not supposed to be a big deal because the only asset in motion is going to be the player itself.

However, because of the wind also trees and grass are moving, this made me having no more than 12 FPS without even moving the character. I tried to find alternative illumination solutions, but at the moment I am still stuck with this issue. I temporary disabled the shadows, but I think that I will prevent the grass from moving, because without shadows the environment doesn't cohesively blend together.

Incredibly, 2K textures, high-poly meshes, tessellation, thousands of foliage instances and real time illumination don't get along together.

Anyway, these lamps introduce the player to the first concept: if he wants to reach the next step, he has to follow the light.

I am going to extensively use lights and shadows guiding the players during the whole game; I will use different sources of light, but I will keep a cohesive color palette.

In this first part I also tried to psychologically influence the player:

• Bright lights push us to move towards the shadows, looking for a safe place, far from lights that annoy our eyes.
• Every light is on the right side of the track, this means that I am pushing the player to look and to move towards his left.
• Our left side is our weak side: moving towards left means running away from problems, giving up, escaping from a stronger enemy.
• This act on a subconscious level, making the player to feel weak, beaten, anxious and uncertain about the future.

It is also true that humans are always looking for light, that's why I created extended areas with no direct lights. Once again, safety is not the feeling that I am trying to craft.

Players like to understand where they can walk and where they can not, that's why I decided to highlight the borders of the bridge that connects the Island with the shore.

As I did in BLOCK, I created a long emissive mesh to put on the sides. I made mesh and material in less than five minutes, but after wasting 30 minutes trying to align the new mesh with the bridge, I decided to try a new approach.

The bridge is made of few meshes and a particle effect: the first image shows how the bridge used to look at first, the second one is the final asset. What is the difference?

If you pay attention to the left side, you will notice that the first image still uses an overlapping emissive mesh to highlight the border of the bridge; the second image shows on both sides a different technique.

Inside of the material, I am overlapping three textures:

• The center one is always panning and it looks like energy moving.
• The other two, on the sides, are overlapping the texture in the center, but it is still possible to see energy moving under the blue stripes.

It might sounds like I just applied two lines on the sides of the bridge, but using this technique I significantly improved the blending between the different sections, eliminated every alignment issues and the necessity to deal with different assets.

During this week, I am going to design and build the ruin and hopefully, on the first portal. I am going to use for the first time some new modula assets, so I really don't know what I am going to be able tu pull out with them, but this is the reference.

Let's see how different the ruin is going to be. Thank you for reading.