Mega Man v1 - ePortfolio Post

Mega Man v1 - ePortfolio Post

 With the first iteration of my Mega Man level, I did some things well, but definitely need to work on the level overall. Starting with the good news, I think the level was appropriately themed for western, at least as far as Mega Man can go, with the floor tiles being desert themed, the background had dry mountains to indicate that it was taking place in a sort of midwestern desert area, and most of the enemies were themed with the background and floor tiles. I used all the appropriate enemies and block types, and used falling platforms and breakable bricks in good places to teach the player how to use them and how to slide, shoot, and jump. The critical path was very clear and the players could easily tell where they were supposed to be going throughout the level.

First screen teaching jumping and sliding.

Otherwise, my level had many issues that I will have to iron out for the next version. Firstly, I vastly underestimated the difficulty of the enemies I added to the level, thinking they did much more damage and took a lot more time to kill. I added way too many health pickups to the point that you almost always had full health or at least 75% because of how little damage the enemies did to you. To fix this, I am going to remove a few of the health pickups and spread out the remaining ones to fit the level a bit better. I also underestimated the size of the level, thinking that it was much longer than it was and that it would take a lot more time to get through each screen than it actually did. This led to the level being overwhelmingly short and much too easy even for a tutorial, though it did teach all the necessary moves and skills to play Mega Man.

Player's first interaction with an enemy.

To remedy the issues that I had, I am going to use the same level design where to get out of the first room you need to learn to jump, shoot, and slide, but I am going to extend both the bottom and top floor by quite a bit and add a lot more enemies to each screen to give at least some sense of challenge to the level. I am still going to keep the multiple story build that I had before as this teaches the players to use the falling platforms, but I think I may either add another floor above the players or make a floor downward that the players are required to go to in order to move up to the top floor. I think this will greatly increase the length of the level, and will give me more space to place enemies, which will increase the difficulty of the level as well.

First health pickups and checkpoint.
Player hasn't even gotten low yet.

This will be an important change not only for the length and fun of the current level, but as a way for the players to improve their skills in the game and prepare for further levels we will make in the future that will be more difficult than tutorials. So overall, the level was framed correctly to the theme and functioned as a tutorial, but was much too short and easy to provide a challenge to the players and teach them skills past basic shooting, jumping, and sliding, and in the next version of the level, I will be making it lengthier and more difficult so that rather than just learning the mechanics of the game, players will be able to teach themselves on different strategies for fighting and when to use their different moves.