Level Design Devlog

Hello! I’m Deven, a 3D artist at Studio Boulder focusing on the level design of our game, Club Crash, which will be showcased at the University of Wisconsin Stout Game Expo (SGX). For now, I am here to give you a peak at our current level and talk about its development process so far. Development for the game Club Crash began in October 2023 as an idea focused on a backyard bash, which is an event UW-Stout holds that introduces students to the various student organizations on campus. With the backyard bash theme in mind, our artists and programmers came up with different level design concepts revolving around college towns and college courtyards. We decided early on to have a compact skylit-enclosed courtyard with two stories, but we realized that the design didn’t feel how we wanted it to.  

We wanted the player to feel in control and powerful. Being able to jump over buildings and traverse rooftops was a good way to enhance that feeling of power. After another two weeks of ideation, we turned our design concepts into a blockmesh (a rough draft using basic 3D shapes). From our three unique versions of the level, we decided on a small college town.

Once we decided which design to use, it became my job to clean up the blockmesh. The first draft was rough, so I had to use my imagination. The courtyard area needed less work compared to the outer section of the playable area. For the courtyard, I only needed to extend geometry to complete the building footprint and then add staircases to reach the pier and upper-level streets. For that, I needed to shift the location of the buildings to connect to the upper area of the map. 

After the courtyard was approved, I exported the meshes as FBX files and imported them into Blender, my modeling software of choice. I then turned each of these basic shapes into detailed buildings, with footings, windows, doors and roofs. Since we wanted the level to have a small college town feeling, I referenced the local Menomonie/Eau Claire, Wisconsin area for references. I had never modeled the outside of buildings before so I wasn’t too sure how I would go about doing it. I would start by breaking a building down into simple shapes. I started by blocking out each floor of the building separately, and then any exterior details like a storefront canopy. After I laid out each section I would reshape and detail them by adding extra geometry for the windows and doors. I went through this process for all the other buildings and other meshes. Next was optimizing my meshes by removing any extra geometry that wouldn’t be seen by the players. All the while, looking for faces with more than 4 vertices, manifolds (an edge that is shared by more than two faces), and inverted Normals (a flipped polygon that can appear invisible to the player). 

Currently, I am in the process of texturing all the level assets in Substance Painter and placing windows and doors on the buildings. I am also aiding in designing a 3D scene for our menu. In the next few weeks, we will be adding grass, bushes, trees, and other greenery to the level. The development of our level has been a long one with many ideations and iterations, but for now, we are on a stable path to completing the level before the game is released this May 2024 at our Stout Game Expo.     

Link to Stout Game Expo page: https://www.uwstout.edu/academics/colleges-schools/college-arts-human-sciences/s...

Thank you for stopping by and reading about our journey through our level design process. All of us here at Studio Boulder appreciate your feedback and are excited for you all to play Club Crash! Please feel free to check out our other blog posts and don’t forget to check out our social media pages: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClubCrash2024

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clubcrash/video/7311206921036516654 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clubcrash2024/

Here are some more pictures of the current level being worked on!