Dev Log 2 - 10/19/25

We've made it to the halfway point!

It's hard to believe it but its officially half way through the semester and so I'm halfway through my project. And with that comes some big updates, including a new level, roaming AI, dashes, crouching, and the starts for a sci-fi adventure! So let's get into it.

Level Design

Level Design Document-

When looking at the level design document, I really wanted to focus on the sightlines and the level geometry to make a good stealth design. I built long hallways that open up or close into tighter rooms, I built corners and angles to help give the player some sense of understanding for where they needed to go next, and I wanted to make the sightlines never quite long enough so the player always felt the risk of stepping out into danger when they walked through the level.

Systems Design Document-

In the systems document there were two main things to focus on, the game loop, and how the player has advantages over the enemy. I ended up tweaking the game loop by removing the ability to pick up or throw items in this level as I felt and the play testers found that it became too strong in gameplay and made some of the challenges obsolete. The sneaking and fleeing loop stayed, and with the players dash and more nimble movement than the ai, evading the ai became a fun challenge of juking the ai until the player could reach safety.

Player Emotion-

I want the player to feel tense as they walk through open halls where they're easily spotted if they step in the wrong direction. I also want the player to feel accomplished when they hit their moments of relief as they know that they're safe for now and can continue forward with a new sense of bravery. I do think my level fails a bit at being too tense, but that's something I'd like to tweak with my playtesters giving more feedback so I can find ways to make it feel more high stakes as you sneak past an enemy.

Player Behavior-

I want the player to be allowed to behave in a multitude of ways, from trying to move through the levels quickly, evading danger left and right to sneaking slowly down the halls of the level as to not get caught. 

Multiple solutions-

Like previously stated, I want there to be a range of options for the player when going through this level so they have the chance to replay and try new routes, strategies, and challenge their skills. That's why there's a couple of areas that branch off, either to allow for some sneaky gameplay or for some parkour to avoid the enemies altogether. There's also the speed at which to play the game, while I did tone down the dash quite a bit it still is very strong and can allow for some fun player movement to dodge enemies if they'd rather rush through the level.

Moments of relief-

As the level evolved one thing I realized and my playtesters noticed, was the lack of relief in the level. There was interaction after interaction after interactions. I did have some small areas with nothing in them, in my mind I thought the player would be able to notice that this was the relief as use it as such but they didn't tend to, instead rushing throughout the game without a single stop or second to take a breath. So I added in some sliding doors, the code is still a little buggy but they are meant to open when you walk up to them, and close when you walk past. I made a few rooms with these doors, with a plan to make them into decontamination chambers or elevators, places where the player gets to sit for a second and wait before the doors open and they can continue forward in their adventure.

Playtesting results-

The playtesters enjoyed certain parts of the map but there was a lack of respite after challenges, leading to an unforgiving challenge that lead to the player feeling rushed to continue forward and causing more deaths than intended. Some challenges were also made obsolete with things like sound distractions or pathing, so I removed the sound distractions entirely from this level, as well as changing enemy pathing from being so simple so the enemies were able to explore the space more leading to a more complex stealth gameplay in some sections. Another thing the playtesters found was that the dash felt too strong and too slippery, and while fixing the slipperiness wasn't very easy I was able to tone down the dash so it felt more rewarding to control and to understand how to control well.

Enemy AI-

The AI is rather simple where it either patrols randomly or goes to specific patrol points on a loop until it sees the player, then the chase begins! The AI will chase the player and swing a club at the player until they either lose line of sight for an extended period of time, or until the player dies. There's currently some bugs with the AI not patrolling through their patrol points properly but I hope to fix that soon and figure out where I went wrong so I can avoid that mistake in the future.

The AI has some blend space animations, blending between idle, walking, and running so between the different speeds the animations still feel smooth and accurate to the speed that it's moving towards. This makes sure that when the enemy goes from idle to walking or walking to running it has a smooth transition feeling more natural to the eye and to the actual speed that it's moving with.

Win condition-

The player wins by reaching the end of the level, at the end is a big glowing circle that if they walk into plays a 'you win' screen and then teleports the player back to their last load. I hope to change that so it can reset the save data and send the player back to the beginning every time but I'll need some more time to tinker with the code to figure out how to do that properly.

Lose conditions-

The player can lose by one of two ways, either by getting caught by the enemy AI and getting hit by their club and thus, losing. Or by falling into the killing floor that the player can parkour over in some sections if they'd rather parkour than sneak past enemy guards. Both of these will result in a game over screen and the player teleporting back to their last saved location.

Save and load system-

The save and load system in the game is global, so it impacts all levels as it works on world data instead of it just being instanced level to level. This can be a strength and a weakness at times, but in having this I can have my player load their checkpoints every time they lose as well as unload their checkpoints by simply pressing R for reset.

New Mechanics

Dash-

A way to launch the player forward a bit so they can quickly move past enemies or move over some perilous terrain. I had to tweak the numbers on the dash quite a bit to make sure it wasn't too strong (as the playtesters first noticed) as well as to make it feel less slippery to use.

Crouching and Crouch walking- 

While the player crouches, they are lower and therefore harder to see by the enemies, however they lose the ability to dash and must exit their crouch before moving forward to quickly escape. Crouching also means the player can now get under certain areas that were before unreachable, I hope to implement some of that into future levels and gameplay.