![]() ![]() But the major issue with Descent’s map was its wireframe rendering – as levels got more complex it became almost impossible to use in some cases, with a lack of depth information turning the wireframe into a confusing mess of lines. It gets filled in at the same time as your mental map does, so it helps players reinforce their spatial awareness of each level. Similarly to Descent it gets populated on a line-of-sight basis – when you’ve seen part of a room, even if it’s just a glimpse through two other rooms, it appears on the map. While Descent itself had an automap, we’re really proud of how ours works. It’s been a really interesting journey, working out how level design works in a game such as this.įinally, the map view. This includes lighting, props and the shape of the rooms themselves. In terms of level design, each pre-made room is focused on flow and giving the player cues on where they’re meant to go. It becomes limiting as the player grows in skill and learns to forget about ‘up’ and ‘down’, and people tend to turn it off before long, but it gives new players an orientation to hold on to. This was featured in both Descent and Forsaken, and can really help some players get to grips with the space. The first and in some senses simplest system is the optional auto-levelling. But we’ve worked hard on minimising that, with three main components. Put simply – the feeling of flying a zero-g gunship is probably the most important part of the game for us we’ve spent a lot of time and effort polishing that and we’re really pleased with the result! Killing the Navigationįully 3D level design in a 6DoF shooter inevitably has more potential for disorientation than in the vast majority of other games. The ship is also a little bit more responsive than in Descent, while still retaining a feeling of weight. ![]() Given gamers’ proficiency with modern mouselook shooters, we wanted movement to be equal on all axes, and there’s a certain smoothness to the game that this adds. A subtle but important example is that in Descent, you can yaw faster than you can pitch. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with the opposite, and there are great games such as Retrovirus and NeonXSZ which take that approach, but it’s definitely a core design decision for Sublevel Zero.īut that’s not to say we didn’t want to add anything to those mechanics. There’s a definite and intentional feeling of being in a vehicle. In particular, Sublevel Zero focuses on the weight of the ship, rather than it being a pure FPS game but with fully 3D movement. We all love the experience of flying around tight, twisting corridors in zero-g, with enemies attacking from all angles. The core gameplay is absolutely intended to feel like Descent, particularly 1 and 2. We never stopped iterating on these throughout the development process, and every couple of months the game would look and sound better and better. So we polished up the jam build as a prototype, whilst also working on the visual, sound and music style of what we’d like a full game to feature. Obviously it was rough, but we knew we had something good. In the original jam build we went with a low-poly, retro-inspired look on a whim as much as anything, and really liked it. Having already roped in Gary and Will with the plan to do something relatively ambitious between the 5 of us, it was obvious what our game would be! Over 3 intense days we managed to create a surprisingly polished game which was very well received. Then the next Ludum Dare game jam came around, and the theme, miraculously, was “Beneath The Surface”. We were all busy at the time, so thought we’d never have a chance to actually do it. We had just discovered we all loved Descent (and were perennially disappointed with the relative lack of new titles in the genre) and, with Phi and Jey just finishing TinyKeep, had the idea of a roguelike Descent-clone. ![]() Idea was basically born in the pub! Myself, Phi and Jey had for about a year been involved in the Manchester indie dev scene, which is a wonderful group of people full of energy, creativity, and community spirit. ![]()
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