First Contact: Planetfall - Level Design
Originally First Contact was envisaged to have a heavy emphasis on exploration and be a branching open world environment. As the project progressed, I realised that the mechanics required for such an experience would have demanded a much larger programming team of which there was only one member.
The level design was a constantly evolving from the point of that realisation. The two main new mechanics of the game, the first being that the environment was constantly sapping your suit energy, and the second, that the life forms on the planet became more aware of you the higher your suit energy becomes, required a lot of on going balancing and pacing. Even now I think it needs additional tweaks.
With the programming emphasis on getting the new mechanics working, the level design had to be reworked into a more linear, funneled experience and finding ways of adding additional new gameplay using only the existing features of the engine.
I think given the time constraints of the project and size of the team we managed to put together a competent game experience, considering new mechanics and gameplay was the focus.
The Level design managed to achieve some unique moments for a FarCry Mod. Freeing trapped indigenous herbivores which then guide you through a poisonous field safely; hallucinogenic plant life; a canyon chase that can be ended quickly with some guile; a classic cog puzzle while avoiding detection; an incredibly difficult, multi-staged boss fight; and some breathtaking audio visual moments.
A subtlety of the level design is how each major area presents its own visual mood. This was not simply achieved by new assets or textures, it was a subtle dynamic shift in the lighting intensity and hue from area to area which managed to transform the area more than I originally thought it might.
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Here are some of the very early plans which set out the general pacing and events, after it had been decided on a linear structure. (The design evolved a fair amount during the development)
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Here are some of the later plans using the close to final landscape layout which more closely resembles how the final design turned out. Notice the amount of additional areas between the old 1.2 and 1.4 (now 1.10). The large map only shows the areas for level 1.
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