Note: This is a jam for a school assignment, but feel free to join the jam even if you're not part of the course :)

Theme

Something Left Behind

Goal

The main goal of this jam is to encourage jammers to get into the habit of quickly prototyping entire levels so they can playtest and iterate their games faster. Jammers will develop a 3D level of their choice and can represent anything from a single level to a mission or quest in an open world, to a short game with one single level, to anything similar to these concepts.

Rationale

Too often I’ve seen students focus all of their attention on the beginning of a level, only to begin modeling the later portions of a level at the end, setting up the lopsided result of having a more developed beginning with a poorly constructed first-draft ending.

Level Completion

Since the goal of this assignment is to normalize the concept of developing a FIRST DRAFT of an entire level in order to understand and iterate, this is your goal, with a few caveats:

No Materials

Do not use any materials other than the following:

• Default Material
• Prototyping material
• Basic colored materials to help the player understand hierarchy such as figure/ground, paths, buildings/landscape, etc.

Assistance

If you are designing a portion of your level that requires parkour or grappling hooks, go ahead and design for that, but create little cheats so that the player can just bypass those places since the mechanics will not be working.

For instance, if the player is going to be scaling a tall building, add some stairs or a platform that allows us to follow along the path of the level. If there are “jumping puzzles” (please, god, no don't, or at least make them meaningful if you do this) then make sure the player does not NEED to complete the jumping puzzle in order to progress. Have little ramps the player can run along to just skip that part.

Text Prompts

Q: How can you possibly finish a game level in slightly less than 2 weeks, especially when your game will require combat, AI, complicated puzzles, and more?

A: You won’t include combat, AI, or the actual complicated puzzles and more. You will refer to those things with UE’s text renders (or text solution of your choice).

Example1: If you are setting up an ambush for your player, when they walk into a house and are attacked by over-confident racoons, you would build the house out of greyboxes, and use text render elements describing the attack of the raccooons at the very place where the player would be ambushed.

Example 2: If you are designing a puzzle that requires finding parts to an ancient air purifier, you will design the space in greyboxes for your player to search, but you will use text render elements to explain what to do and what the puzzle will do once I bring back all of the parts.

Example 3: If you are designing a puzzle that the player interacts with, just add a greybox cube with the text render describing what your thoughts are for the puzzle.

Example 4: If you are designing paths to be opened or closed based on gameplay (eliminating enemies, solving puzzles, etc) don’t worry about blueprinting working doors or moving obstacles, use the text render to guide your playtester.

Essentially, a player should be able to go through your entire level to experience the size of the game world, major spaces, interiors and exteriors, spaces for bottleneck, an understanding of how paths work, physical obstacles barriers and enemies, and experience major vistas or viewpoints.