Game Design

 

• Design of Entrances of the Roads of Avalon
• Design of Name Generator for the Roads of Avalon
• Design of Gameplay Templates
• Distribution of Gameplay Templates

The Entrances were an interesting challenge to design, they had a very specific mechanic that was communicated by a hover over text. Yet I wanted to create visual feedback that would tell a knowledgeable player all they needed to know: (You can find the designs on the right)
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​Additionally to the entrances I also worked on the naming of the Zones. It was very important to us, that each zone name is unique and that all zone names sound mystical. I invented a naming system that would combine syllables based on what the zones have to offer. A good player would be able to know if and why a zone was worth their time just by the name.

• Example: An Area with mixed resources, that were distributed in a balanced fashion, that has a fiber hot spot of uncommon rarity,  a rock hot spot, based on the main layout "O" , and that has a solo PVE dungeon
• Syllables: M + ag + os - O +am
• Final Name: Magos - Oam

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Lastly I distributed all gameplay templates within all 150 zones to create zones of different rarity and worth for the players to find.

Level Design

• Prototyping of Environment
• Design of Workflow
• Creation of Layouts
• Construction of Templates
• Construction of Areas

In level design we had a massive task at hand. We had to create areas the size of a third of the current world within a few months.
Firstly I looked into what the new design had to deliver, from that onward I established a design principle that would allow us to create the Road Areas as very narrow pathways, cutting the work to create free roam-able space. But to keep the idea of traversing a vast area, we came up with the idea of separating Road Areas into two distinct places, the "road" and the "wilderness". The road would be a purely architectural space, very narrow and straight. The wilderness would be equally as narrow but the shape language would be for more, well wild. This created the illusion of vast spaces even though the whole Area was a narrow tube.
 I established a workflow using large tile-able pieces that would allow us to build the huge amount of areas we needed to build, allowing one part of level design to work on the creation of these tiles and the other part to layout areas.
Additionally we designed the layouts to represent easily readable letters - O, P, A, X etc. - so that players could track in their mind which pathways they already traversed.   

Narrative and Visual Design

• Creation of the Narrative of the Roads of Avalon connecting them to the race of Avalonians
• Develop the visuals design and level design via the narrative

The narrative of the Roads of Avalon was very fundamental to the development of the feature. I had to develop a narrative that would connect to the recently introduced Avalonian Faction and give a clear direction for the visual representation of the environment that can be found in the mist.
Summery:

• The Roads were built in the Mists by the Avalonians (Link to the Avalonian Lore), a faction that is very ancient, masters of crystalline magic and former rulers of Albion. 
• The Mist is a mystic and sentient dimension very close to our own where space works differently. One step in the Mist could equal thousand of miles traveled on Albion.
• The pure magical force of the mist can pierce the reality in Albion and leak into the world in random places. But entering the Mists was a death sentence.
• The Avalonians noticed that they could enter the Mists and use their crystalline technology to keep the Mist at bay. They developed roads  in the Mists between the rips in reality, which would allow them to traverse massive distances in a few minutes.
• When the Avalonians were betrayed and had to return to Avalon with the wounded Arthur the roads were abandoned and the Mists slowly started to destroy the intruding elements.

The narrative allowed us to use our Art and Level Design resources very efficiently as we could use the existing Avalonian Architecture and combine it with Forest elements. 
Adding destroyed elements to show the hostile nature and the age of the architecture made it easy to reuse existing prefabs in a completely different context.

The Mist: Deep and ancient woods, winding narrow paths, every growing and slithering. In the Mists no one is ever alone.

The Roads: Sturdy, straight architecture that plows straight through the midst of the Mist, keeping it at bay by brute force