Kung Fu Panda level design was a blast. I’m really fond of Metroid Zero Mission for the GBA and to date I’ve got over 90 hours invested in the DS Castlevanias. Having had so much fun with these games I was really excited to get the chance to design and implement this kind of play. Though I bounced around working on many different levels my main area was the Chorgun Prison. This was later on in the game so I was able to make levels that were a bit on the difficult side relative to the rest of the game. The Chorgun Prison also presented an inherent challenge due to it’s abundance of verticality. I was expected to replicate this environment and feeling in my level design.

I can’t say it enough, the paper map is the most important part of the level design process. All seventeen rooms of Chorgun prison were designed out on paper and iterated on, on paper before 3D Studio Max was even opened. I was able to quickly get my ideas down and have them reviewed by other designers.

I didn’t complete all of the maps collision before doing any scripting or gameplay but this is a nice image of all of them complete. Each room’s collision was exported and played in the game before any art was done for it. I really try and avoid causing any rework for an artist. It’s also worth noting that as I created the maps I would work closely with the artist paired with me to make sure what I was doing was going to be okay.

Having already planned out the gameplay on paper, this step just like the collision step actually happened quite fast. I didn’t have to worry about what to do and I didn’t have to worry about how to do it because I’d already thought it through. All I had left was to just do. I’d love to show you the webs of visual scripting lines but the tool is propietary and as a result I don’t feel comfortable showing it. Instead here’s a picture of a Tigress Smash in a Chorgun Level.