Combat Tower - Level Design
Key Things I Worked On:
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Effectively used Unity's Visual Scripting to design environment trap behavior
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Facilitated the level design process by using random generation tools to generate dungeon environments
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Effectively used tools provided by the programmers to implement interactable items like pick-ups and destroyable props
Level Design Process
The Combat Tower is the main core of the game right now. This area serves as a roguelike mode in which the player can collect boons, fight enemies, defeat bosses, and level up while fighting through an infinite amount of floors. I was in charge of the environment design, trap design, pick-ups, and other mechanics that could make these encounters fun. During the initial iterations of this mode, the design team wanted a dark dungeon environment that randomizes every time the player enters the level.
Combat Tower - Initial environment iteration
To design this dungeon environment, I used a tool by FImpossible Creations in the Asset Store called PGG (Procedural Generation Grid). This tool helped speed up the level design process and gave me an idea of how random generation works. By learning some of its functionalities and other basic stuff, I managed to make rules so that each dungeon that spawns is different. This was achievable thanks to some programming and tools provided by the programmers.
The initial environment design only had simple props and enemies. To add more variety to this, I decided to create environment props that the player or the enemies can destroy if interacted with them. Some of these props do damage to both the player and the enemies, which offers multiple strategies to the player and groups, and at the same time, it gives variety. One of the constraints of designing this mechanic is the networking aspect of the game. Networking made this a bit difficult to design, and it took multiple iterations before it worked nicely and properly.
Combat Tower - Most recent environment iteration
Combat Tower - Boss room w/ spike traps and destroyable props
I ended up designing 2 types of traps with multiple variations of them using Unity Visual Scripting. Among the different sets of traps, the player can find spike traps, interactable laser fences, and rotating laser traps.
Combat Tower - Multiple set of traps
While traversing the dungeon, the player and the team will encounter a variety of enemies that will serve as a challenge to get to the next floor. In addition to these enemies, there are boss encounters, which can be found at the end of each dungeon floor. I was in charge of the design of the boss room, as well as the implementation of the rules in PGG for the spawning of the enemies and the traps that were going to appear in these encounters.
Combat Tower - Coffee cup boss fight encounter
Combat Tower - Trainer bot boss fight encounter
Overall it was a fun experience to learn and use these tools in order to make random-generation environments. It was something I had never done before and from this, I was able to learn a lot along with the multiple artists, designers, and programmers on the team.
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