‫Hello and welcome.
‫In this lecture, we're going to be implementing a level design for our obstacle assault course.
‫You can see here, I've added in some more islands and a little victory end zone at the end.
‫We're going to talk about my process for doing this and getting out some pen and paper and making our
‫own level designs.
‫Let's dive in and get started.
‫So let's try and spend a moment to design a level out of the different components we've got here.
‫Here's my approach.
‫I'm going to start with what kind of permutations and options of obstacle do I have?
‫So what elements can I play with to design this level we've got rotating versus moving.
‫That's one of the key elements we could fiddle with.
‫We got up or down or left and right, so you could have platforms that transport you across a gap.
‫You could have up and down to take you up a level like we've already shown.
‫We've got the pushing slash transporting option.
‫So platforms can be used to push you off of something so they can be an obstacle to avoid or they can
‫transport you, in which case they're an obstacle that you want to get on.
‫So those are some of the options that we've got available here.
‫Let's have a look in this case at a simple linear course through our obstacle assault course, where
‫basically the whole objective is just to get from the start to the end.
‫And there aren't any kind of diversions.
‫You can't take a shortcut, you can't take an option B path.
‫So what I suggest you do is you take this and you take a sheet of paper and you get away from your computer
‫for a little bit and just brainstorm a few different designs.
‫I recommend that you try fitting the design on one sheet of paper so that you just limit the scope because
‫it's very easy to get carried away with all the amazing things that you could do and just take on a
‫little bit too much.
‫So we're going to try and limit the scope to just one sheet.
‫In my case, it was a sheet of A5.
‫You can have a sheet of A4 if you want to.
‫Here's the example of what I've come up with really very quick and dirty, just to give me an idea of
‫what I want.
‫And this is just going to be something that I can adapt later on.
‫And you can see it's incorporating some elements of the design that we've already got.
‫We've got the up and down platforms that take us up to a second level.
‫We've got the pushers going backwards and forwards.
‫We've got these rotating platforms that we need to get across.
‫Then I thought maybe it would be nice to have the idea of a sweeper.
‫So something like a pusher where it rotates around and tries to sweep us off the platform or something
‫like that, and then we'll have some goal at the end, maybe something to to reach that looks cool and
‫makes it clear that we've got to the end of the obstacle course.
‫So that's my idea.
‫And I'd like to challenge you to make your own level design too.
‫So limit yourself to one sheet of paper.
‫As I said, share your results once you're done, choose the design you like the best and share it in
‫the discussions before you go and implement it and then try and implement it for yourself.
‫We've seen how we can make different blueprints for different elements, so you might have a few more
‫elements that you've incorporated in your design, so you can go ahead and make a few more blueprints
‫and put them in the world.
‫So let your design adapt as you play it as well.
‫Once you've written it on paper, you don't have to stick to it.
‫It's not a rule, it's just an idea to get you started.
‫So pause the video and have a go.
‫Okay.
‫Welcome back.
‫So the bit that I wanted to add on top of this level design that we've already got is perhaps we'll
‫add a second platform in here and we'll rotate it around so that it doesn't look the same and lift it
‫up just another level.
‫So this is what I mean.
‫I'm already adapting the design because I've noticed that my I don't have any more space on this platform
‫to put a pusher in there and then there are some stairs down here.
‫I kind of like those.
‫So I'm going to take a copy of this ramp and try and paste it down here.
‫I want to actually move it up to the platform somehow.
‫So what I might do is take the location of one of these rotating platforms and copy it and click on
‫the ramp that I've duplicated and paste the location so that it comes up here.
‫Excellent.
‫And now I'm going to try and position this ramp so that it takes us up to the next platform.
‫So I'm going to have to adjust the height of the platform and adjust its position somewhat as well so
‫that it takes us nicely up there.
‫So so this is where using the play from here, it comes in really handy if we right click on just after
‫we've gone past our rotating platforms, click play from here and see if we can get up these stairs.
‫Hmm.
‫Looks like we can't.
‫For some reason, I think the angle of these stairs is a little bit too steep.
‫So how can we fix that?
‫Well, I can go over to the third person character, and I can click on its movement component.
‫And here there's a bunch of properties about how this character walks.
‫And you can see one of them is the walkable floor angle, and it's set to 44 degrees.
‫So it looks like we've got a bit of a steeper set of stairs.
‫So I'm just going to set this to 60 degrees to make sure we can make our way up it.
‫Then we're going to play from here again and see if we can get up there.
‫Yep.
‫Sure enough, we can go up those stairs now that they're a little bit wider.
‫Now the platform's a little bit down.
‫So I'm going to adjust that and then I'm going to try and make a sweeper.
‫So we're going to go to our C++ class.
‫We're going to right click on it and create a blueprint class, and I'm going to call it the beep underscore
‫sweeper.
‫I'm going to put it in the root of content.
‫Then with that open, I'm going to go to our content drawer and search for well, I quite like the look
‫of these archways.
‫If they were rotating, we'd have to kind of get inside of them and then move on without getting hit
‫by them, which might be kind of interesting.
‫So I'm adapting my design from what I had originally thought, but that's kind of cool.
‫So we've got a large gate, that's what it's called.
‫Let's go to our content, draw inside a beep sweeper, go to all and search for large underscore gate
‫and I want the one without the force field.
‫So that would be it looks like it's made up of two measures actually.
‫So we've got the gate large and then the gate frame.
‫So let's drag both of these in to the scene and that construct our gate rather nicely.
‫Now I think I'd like to make these a little bit wider.
‫So I'm going to use the scale tool and just extend them a little bit along the x axis and I'm going
‫to save that.
‫Then I'm going to look at our sweeper and we're going to not have it move.
‫So set its platform velocity to zero, but set its rotation.
‫This time I'm going to go in the opposite direction at about -100.
‫So it's going to be a little bit faster and a little bit more challenging because we're later on in
‫the level and then we're going to try and navigate back to our island.
‫So I'm going to click on it and get click go here.
‫And then on top we can start placing down these sweepers.
‫So clear my filter and start getting some sweepers and sticking them on the island and we can rotate
‫them a little bit so that they are all at different offsets from each other and duplicate them with
‫alt a little bit here, like I say, I'm rotating some of them to everything.
‫Start slightly differently.
‫Let's click play from here in the safe zone of our previous platform and then come up and have a look
‫at what these sweepers look like.
‫So yeah, it looks like they could definitely be pushing as if we don't watch ourselves and we might
‫fall off the platform if we're not careful.
‫So we have to be a little bit careful or we're going to fall to our deaths.
‫So it looks like a fun little puzzle with these sweepers.
‫And now all we have to do is put a little end zone in for this.
‫I'm basically going to copy this little courtyard area that they've created here in the standard kit.
‫So I'm going to select the stairs and well, there's quite a few things here that I want to select.
‫Let's see if they've gotten together in the outline of, first of all.
‫So it looks like there is a folder called Castle.
‫So maybe we can select everything that is under that folder so we can right click it and select all
‫descendants.
‫So what I'm going to do is actually use it in place and just move that island up to be at the foot of
‫the island that we have just traversed here.
‫So now it should be possible to play from here.
‫Let's go inside one of the pushers and then try and escape.
‫There we go.
‫We can get up to the Victory Island, and once we've got to the castle, that can be the goal of the
‫entire game.
‫So one thing it looks like I messed up by moving that island is it seems that I've moved the ramp that
‫was under the same folder in the outlier.
‫So the ramp between our rotating platforms and our rotating pushers has been moved.
‫So I've just positioned that back and if we zoom out, we can take a look at the entirety of our level
‫from our start over here moving platforms, pushers, rotators and sweepers all the way to the little
‫victory end zone.
‫So I'm pretty happy that that's a fun level and obviously you should give it to other people to playtest
‫and tweak your ideas and maybe implement a few different level designs.
‫But for now, I'm quite happy with that and I'll see you in the next lecture.