UNIVERSITY FMP -"THE DISTANT LANDS" OPEN-WORLD LEVEL DESIGN SHOWCASE

For my Games Design Final Major Project (FMP) at Southampton Solent University, I chose to create  “The Distant Lands”. This work is an open-world Level Design showcase set in a mythical, mediaeval fantasy world. The map features a multitude of environment types, enemies, loot and resources to discover, and a quest to undertake. 

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The unique facet of this Games Design Final major Project was the amount of freedom I was afforded and the sheer scale of project management needed in order to keep on schedule - I created and constantly referred back to a Gantt Chart, Work Breakdown Structure, and weekly DevLogs. Furthermore, the academic study techniques such as sourcing credible information and references from Scholar articles were also pivotal in attempting to pose a thought-provoking thesis question "How does freedom of choice and difficulty in open-world games affect players’ habits and desire to continue playing?".

 

I then tied this back to my chosen project of creating an open-world level design showcase, and the majority of my feedback questions revolved around the topic of freedom of choice, player agency and immersion by implementing "Flow Theory" (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014) and " Spatial Presence Model" (Schubert, 2009) techniques.

 

As for technical skills I learnt and improved upon, they include Unity Editor proficiency, Terrain Toolbox, ProGrids, light C++ scripting in Microsoft Visual Studio, and video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro in order to make DevLogs more refined and concise.

 

Nakamura, J. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The Concept of Flow. In: Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology. [online] Springer, Dordrecht, pp.239–263. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_16.

 

Schubert, T.W. (2009). A New Conception of Spatial Presence: Once Again, with Feeling. Communication Theory, [online] 19(2), pp.161–187. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2009.01340.x.