{"id":10314,"date":"2018-12-07T22:23:14","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T22:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=10314"},"modified":"2018-12-07T22:23:14","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T22:23:14","slug":"level-design-willow-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/?p=10314","title":{"rendered":"Level Design: Willow Run"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This game was originally based on Willow Run, also called Air Force Plant 31, which was a manufacturing complex constructed by Ford Motor Company during World War II outside Detroit, Michigan. Willow Run was the first aircraft factory to utilize Ford\u2019s methods of mass production, and produced a famous line of B-24 Liberator heavy bombers. Additionally, it was a woman employee at Willow Run who posed for Rosie the Riveter, the star of a campaign to recruit women workers to the manufacturing-heavy defense industry during the war.<\/p>\n

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Paper game for game testing in-class. The Game Over screen reads: THE WAR IS OVER! THERE IS NO LONGER ANY USE FOR YOUR PLANE & YOU ARE BEING LAID OFF BECAUSE THE MEN ARE RETURNING HOME.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Map draft and ideas, post-in class game testing of the paper game.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These images show some of my first designs for this collection-style game. Basically, I wanted to lean heavily on design and aesthetics to create a clearly non-modern factory setting. The actual gameplay mechanics were secondary to the creation of space and the punchline at the end showing, because you were a woman worker, the end of the war was a bit bittersweet as it likely entailed you being laid off, and women\u2019s sphere in society contracting.<\/p>\n

However, this idea was something I came up with in one night, and I became dissatisfied with it pretty quickly; this narrative felt reductive and the one-punch humor wasn\u2019t amusing to me after working on it for a while. I ended up making the sprite something fairly arbitrary and ridiculous \u2013 a fly, instead of a woman. I felt I was in some odd centrist zone of mild war propaganda with a very watered down political message, but knew that I would have to essentially re-skin the entire game and do a lot of UI work to give it a political message that I would be satisfied with, so I chose to mostly depoliticize it instead, removing even the original ending message.<\/p>\n

I tried to focus more on creating zones using game items, and have locked\/unlocked door sprites as well as hard-to-see keys that I currently have unchecked, as I never got into gamestate, which would be the best way to code them.<\/p>\n

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Nevertheless, I think that my map is extensive enough that even without explicit barriers, there are zones and bounds created. Originally, I had the oil slick and broken glass obstacles affect the score by decreasing your points by one. However, I found that this made the game too short, as I had to set the number of points required to win to be significantly lower than the number of collectible objects, otherwise you could accidentally get stuck in a never ending limbo if you hit too many obstacles to reach the number of points required to end the game. I resolved this by inserting a second measure: health. Now, the oil and glass decrease your health by one\u00a0 point, while your score is unaffected. The game either ends when you lose all of your health or collect every object.<\/p>\n

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Journal page \u2013 desk, welder, plane blueprints, bolts, key, engine, engine blueprints, propeller, notes on how to make it more interesting through use of UI.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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B-24 Liberator heavy bomber sketches.\u00a0<\/figcaption>\"\"<\/figure>\n

I think that the main appeal of this game is in its hand-drawn animation and general aesthetics, but, as it stands, there isn\u2019t much replay value. For most of the semester, I was thinking of working on a more full version of this game for conference, but I\u2019ve spent so much time looking at it that I think I would rather pursue something fresh. However, it\u2019s worth documenting my ideas for how to make this game better:<\/p>\n

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  • American flag sprite obstacle, freezes player movement for duration of a National Anthem clip (no health loss)<\/li>\n
  • Oil slicks trigger movement slowdown (with health loss)<\/li>\n
  • Timer (tested for exact time, probably between 1-2 minutes), time of completion and points collected displayed at end<\/li>\n
  • Expanded map, not all visible at once \u2013 more maze-like\n
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    • Different background music depending on where on the map you are<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Glowing outline around sprites to show if they\u2019re helpful or harmful<\/li>\n
    • Functional locking doors and keys<\/li>\n
    • Reskin to be more modern and about drone warfare rather than WWII\n
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      • Within drone context, use text UI to convey specific sentiments<\/li>\n
      • Also illustrate the stairs around the furnaces<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        This game is a pretty good base and has a lot of potential. I definitely value the time I put into it and the ways in which the process helped me learn the technical aspects of Unity and game making, as well as understand what I personally want a game to accomplish narratively in order to be satisfied and inspired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        This game was originally based on Willow Run, also called Air Force Plant 31, which was a manufacturing complex constructed by Ford Motor Company during World War II outside Detroit, Michigan. Willow Run was the first aircraft factory to utilize…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":10316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[409],"tags":[414,423],"class_list":["post-10314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-design","tag-level-design","tag-game-mechanics","wpcat-409-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10317,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions\/10317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/r6g.ad7.mwp.accessdomain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}