Concept
Shanghai longtang is a series of apartments and public living areas that creates a narrow living community. This design is highly inspired by Tianzi Fang, a former longtang that developed into a tourist site.
I want players to navigate the area and observe this detailed beautiful community we built for them, and finally meet each other.
The First Design is based on the tourist Site TianziFang. Based on the hand-drawn map available online, I created the first iteration of the level design. Professor Patrick LeMieux and Stephanie Boluk did a playtest stream on 3/25/2022 about this
Design Problem
The former Grey boxed version is a 2x3 area where players can easily find each other with the rumble hint.
Solution
I make this area larger and add more paths so players can get lost easily and will easier get attracted by other events happening in every single corner of the place.
This is the first layout created to make the player harder to find each other. It is just a start for everything. Later on, some animation and NPC conversation will be added to this area in order to distract people as much as possible. A lot of bottom area is added to let players navigate the whole area easier. The color-coded layout will be sent to the culture advisor in order to make sure the level art meets the history record.
After sending the layout plan to our culture consultant, I got some feedback on the area division doesn't really fit the real case scenario. Also, by searching some documentation with our consultant, we add a more complicated area for players to navigate on the map.
Here, we get the final layout of the level before the first playtest.
