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Runes of Legacy
Encounter Design

Encounter Goals

Every encounter in Runes of Legacy needs to serve a purpose- and it needs to do that while also meeting the gameplay pillars Exploitable Encounters and - for most - Powerful Warlock.

About
Runes of Legacy

Runes of Legacy is a 10 person team academic 8-month project where I served a UI/UX and Level Designer. Every design choice was made with the intent to support the pillars Powerful Warlock, Meaningful Decisions, and Exploitable Encounters.

Project Specs

Engine: Unity 2021.1.10

Duration: 8 weeks

10 Person Team Student Project
 

Level Creation

How level creation is done for Runes of Legacy is unique in that all rooms are handcrafted for their encounter placement, but the drawing of those rooms is random. This means that for the 8th encounter players may encounter 1 of 4 different encounters, and allows for different level designers to own rooms across the whole experience. 

To make sure that the experience is consistent regardless of what rooms are drawn our game is broken down into encounter categories, and each categorie has rules for how that level should be made.

The main rule is emotion valence or EV. EV can be -1, 0, or +1. It can also be looked at as high tension, neutral, or high excitement.

An EV of +1 is an exciting fight full of action- the player should feel powerful through obliterating waves of enemies, be able to get lots of trap kills, and always feel like they came out on top. An EV of -1 would be a more harrowing fight with more tension, likely require lots of trap avoidance for the player and enemies with a tougher pursuit. Rooms with an EV of 0 serve as places of rest.

It's a simple system, but it serves us well in our goal of delivering a crafted experience to the player with the replayability of fighting different encounters each playthrough.
 

EncounterLayout.PNG

This is an encounter category. It contains the rooms that can be chosen when the player reaches this element in the level layout.

EncounterCategory.PNG

This is a level layout. It contains encounter the encounter categories, and will always proceed through them in this order.

Level Workflow

How I create levels has changed with the tool workflow- from being limited to a square room prefab to now being able to paint floors in any shape I want. With the current state of the tools available to me, here is my process for creating a level in Runes of Legacy.

Let's create a room for encounter 9.

Encounter 9 is the last enemy encounter before the boss fight, so it should accomplish these goals:

  • Emotional Valence of +1

    • Large groups of weak one-shot enemies

    • A limited number of powerful enemies in central positions to create micro-goals in the level

    • Traps push the player onward, but provide opportunities for guiding enemies through ​

  • About 40 - 60 seconds in length

  • 4 waves of enemies- the most enemies seen up until this point in the game

  • Provides scenarios where the melee attack is ideal

  • Provides scenarios where the ranged attack is ideal

Problems with the Current Encounter

I made this room very early in development before the goals of the encounter categories were fleshed out. Some small iterations have been made to it such as changing the enemies from waves of challenging enemies to groups of weak enemies with a few strong ones scattered about.

Here's what it has done well and what needs to be changed:

Satisfying enemy waves

  • The enemies the waves draw from are relatively solid choices. The ranged and lightning enemies provide an interesting dynamic of shooting over the pits, which you must either navigate around to get in melee range or dodge their bolts while firing back.

  • The small groups of melee swarms are fun to wipe out and their number quickly disappearing is satisfying. More of these could perhaps be added to amplify that feeling.

 

Big red flags:

No traps

  • This is a major inconsistency with the past levels, and ill-fitting for the room before the climax. 

  • With no traps, the level only attempts to accomplish the design pillar of exploitable encounters through the fact that the space is large enough to kite and attack melee enemies with projectiles. Traps would allow the space to lean into this core design pillar more.

The bottom right quadrant of the room is poorly utilized

  • The bottom portion of the room gives no reason to go down there. In testing, some players who enjoy exploration and finding narrative points after battles ventured down here only to be rewarded with more retracing.

RoomQuandrant.PNG

Building a Level

For the sake of retaining the old room for comparison, I'll be starting this room from scratch but with the category goals and lessons of the old room in mind.

I start by fleshing out the shape. For this level I want the space to feel more open making navigation easier.

InitialSpace.PNG

I then cut up the terrain with where the pits will be to add interest. Stars mark where I see the central positions of ranged enemies being.

CutUpSpace_WithStars.PNG

Here's a quick play of the current space, seeing how an enemy does in the center. The center space appears too small, and there's no micro goal being made here- the enemy takes damage from the trap because it happens to be pushed back by my approach. 

Here I changed the enemies to ranged, after deciding the storm enemies set off the triggered trap too much for this encounter.

I also switched the path to the bottom so that players don't go straight left.

Moving the top ranged enemy down will limit the ranged enemies from hitting the trigger trap themselves.

Added a storm enemy to the bottom defended by weak melee enemies in wave two, this will draw the player back down after they finish engaging with the ranged enemies.

4.PNG
5.PNG
6.2.PNG

Wave 3 will draw the player up left, with more weak melee enemies. Ranged enemies sit at central point two and will fire on the approaching player.

I really liked the resulting strafe across the spikes while firing on the ranged enemies so I added more, but of the type that die in one hit.

This caused a few problems:

  • It's a lot fireballs all targeting one area- if you get hit you get hit

  • They condense down in the bottom. If you don't kill them all in one pass your blind approaching from the top

7.PNG

Changes:

  • Removed the storm enemy because it distracted the player from the ranged fire enemy and allowed them to bundle up

  • Removed some ranged fire enemies

  • Cut some of the melee enemies because it had been a lot to wade through

The desire here is to focus on moving quickly while shooting the ranged enemies feeling. We're almost there.

Changes:

  • Remove fire trap that was shooting down

  • Extend spike traps down

  • Add an additional weak ranged enemy

These changes make the run-up less dangerous by removing the unseen trap, and the additional ranged enemy gives one more thing to shoot at.

10.PNG

Changes:

  • I decided the last encounter should be in a more open space with advantageous trap placement. 

    • The weak melee enemies can easily be guided onto the spikes​

    • The ranged enemies can be killed via the trigger trap

    • The storm enemy provides a reason to continue to move through the space

11.PNG

Changes:
Revisiting wave one I've:

  • bumped the fire trap down as it was killing wave one enemies and difficult to doge when moving back up

  • Removed some of the initial melee enemies as they were pressuring the player up towards where the player starts instead of drawing the battle down 

12.PNG

Time to add walls, get a final feel for things, and dress up the level!

Here's what the level has become:

Moving Forward

The level is built. It is fast-paced, with various opportunities for damaging enemies with traps, and uses a combination of closely places enemies ideal for hitting with a melee attack and ranged enemies spawned across dividers for ranged hits. 

This sounds like we're hitting the level goals- but I'll need to put it in front of players to see if that's true.

Items to test

  • Do players use both their left click and right click ability?

    • ​This will allow me to see if the moments I developed for these spells are apparent to the player​​

  • Do the players enter the central area?

    • The left bridge on the central area is placed there currently for if the player pressures the ranged enemies away from the trap- but this bridge can be cut if this doesn't happen​

  • How much damage do players take from Wave 3, the wave with the ranged enemies on the left side of the map?

    • I suspect this will be the most challenging part of the encounter. If they take damage from many of the fireballs at once, some of these enemies should be removed​

  • How long is the encounter?

    • The encounter should fall in the goal of 40 to 60 seconds for a first-time player. ​

  • Do the players feel powerful after the encounter?

    • This encounter consists mostly of enemies that die in one hit to achieve this. If the player is instead feeling stressed after the encounter, the EV is likely -1 instead of +1.​

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