THE SPACE LAB
SUMMARY
The Space Lab is a first person level with a strong focus on stealth gameplay. You play as a test subject locked inside a space station laboratory. Your objective is to find a way to escape the space station without being captured by any of the guards. This includes breaking into laboratories and stealing resources, blowing up a machine room, and stealing a spaceship from the space station hangar.
In this project I wanted each aspect of the level to feel complete, both when it comes to level design, gameplay events, and level art. The duration of this project was two weeks. I spent the first week focusing purely on the level design flow and blocking out the main layout of the level. In the second week of the project I focused on polishing the level art, creating triggered events and making level sequencers.
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
PRE-PROD
The first step of the process was collecting reference images and brainstorming ideas as to what kind of level I wanted to create. Using the reference images as inspiration, I wrote up a basic flow-chart of all of the events of the level, and drew overviews for the level layout.
BLOCKOUT
The next step was making a basic blockout of the entire area. Since the available time for this project was very short, I did not have time to make a very polished blockout or whitebox of the level. It was however enough to get a feeling for the space and the level flow,
POLISH
During the final week I started polishing the level by adding new meshes and lighting. With the little time I had, I wanted to make each area as visually polished as possible.
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EVENTS
The final week was also spent adding AI and events to make the level come alive. I used destructable meshes and vfx to make the destruction of the machine room feel impactful. For the final escape from the space station, I used a level sequencer to animate the spaceship taking off.
