When first designing Bye-Plane, we knew we wanted it to be open world. This posed a great challenge for myself because I’d never designed levels to be used in an open world before.
This task was made somewhat easier because each ‘level’ would be an Island that the player could fly to. This meant that the open world aspect of these areas was somewhat contained and I could therefore design these areas to be unique and give the player certain things to do on these Islands. The player experience on these Islands could be tailored similar to Wind Waker instead of being fully open world like any Bethesda game.
I began by drawing up the plans and deciding upon a shape for the Islands. These plans use a height gradient and different shades of grey to demonstrate height variations. This is supplemented with a height measurement in meters. The plans also showed where camp fires, chests and quest characters would be placed.
A plan for the HUB Island can be seen below.
After doing the plans I then began a whitebox using the measurements and the layouts I’d designed. These whiteboxes were taken in engine to make sure that the scales were correct and that the areas were interesting to walk around and explore.
I then gave these whiteboxes to Joel, our Environment Artist, and he would use these along with the plans to build the Islands and the terrain. Once done we would meet to make sure that they met the requirements and we then put them into the engine again.
I then began the long task of dressing the Islands to create a fun and interesting play space for players to explore. This included adding in a little form of bread crumbing to try and lead the player to specific locations. This was done by the use of gold coins that the player could collect and the flying hoops to make sure players flew between islands.
That’s all for this week folks! I hope you found it interesting and that it gave you some insight into my level designing methods.
See you next time.
Tom Pugh