Megaman Eportfolio 2

 This assignment was interesting, it was cool having to work around specific restrictions and theming. The limits of specific enemies that could be used made enemy choice important especially if the level designer wanted to make sure the enemies were on theme.  Since the level designers were limited by the blocks available to them that since Megaman is heavily sci-fi that level 1’s jungle theming was a little harder to achieve because of the industrial look of most of the blocks.

I struggled with designing my levels for this assignment as there was no smooth way to circulate and repeat areas. There were no circulation elements to my level as I found it hard to double back more than one tile, the player would be pushed off the Footholder meaning there was no way to double back and if you missed the pick-up you were out of luck. 

The power-ups I used were the Nado and the C. Kick. I kept forgetting to use the power-ups when I set up the level but the tornado allowed the player to readjust themselves on the Footholder.

I had issues with my original ability to backtrack as there was an issue with the tile transitions where Megaman would be pushed off the Footholder and I was unable to figure out why Megaman kept being pushed off as I attempted to playtest the backtracking ability. I also struggled when it came to the theming of the level, I struggled to find industrial backgrounds that wouldn’t hurt my eyes to look at while building and playtesting the level. I ended up settling on a background that was like an automotive factory. A simple dark green background with tires and the tiles I used looked more like struts rather than ground or stone giving it an appearance similar to a catwalk. 

I think I kept to the theme rather well. One of the things I think that went well was how I designed the map of the level, I tried to keep things fairly linear the way an actual factory or industrial floor would be laid out.

Scaling the difficulty level I found to be a little difficult as what one person might consider easy because they play platformer games similar to Megaman will be or run the very real possibility of being very hard or impossible for someone who is unfamiliar or doesn’t play the platformer genre that Megaman is apart of. 

I think to improve my level in the next iteration I would force people to double back having to platform instead of using the Footholders as an elevator system which was my original intention and goal. This can be achieved by hiding the keys and power-ups in the loop, preventing the player from going forward without going back, and double-checking to make sure they haven’t missed anything. 

I’d like to think that the path was fairly easy to follow, as I tried to make the platforms lead to specific areas to go to to get to the next tile. Once we got past the first five tiles, it was fairly easy for the players to know where to go, because of the fact it forces the player to descend at first it looks like the player has nowhere to go forcing them to risk going down the holes in the floor and being rewarded with progress when they decide to take that risk. I wanted to reward the players for taking risks but I’m sure there was a more seamless and clear way to achieve this than just forcing the players to go down the holes in the floor.