Megaman Level 1 Feedback

Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan

When creating my Megaman level I looked up other levels from Megaman 6 and Megaman 1 specifically. I looked up the overall size of each level and wanted to make something of equal length if not a bit shorter. While I have not played a classic Megaman game in a while, but I have played the x series which is overall the same. When working with the Megaman level design I counted the number of squares necessary to make the level the right size and proper length. When developing I will admit it took me a but to get the hang of the program but after that making levels was a bit easy and fun. I made the levels linear as it was supposed to be as and kept up with the usual Megaman level design methods. While not using spikes, I wanted to avoid pits at all cost but compromised and used them but avoided things that I personally felt were a bit cheap such as enemies on small ledges. Due to the lack of enemy variety I decided to have them placed in unique areas to add variety. Planning out the level was easy enough, but I admit which actually making the level I deviated from designs from time to time when it actually came to be implementing the levels. The basic tools were simple enough to understand but the limiting nature of the assignment prove to be a bit of a hurdle.

Linear Level Reference 1

What went wrong with this assignment was a bit simple to understand during play testing. While I tried to avoid hassles that I personally couldn’t stand I ended up creating a few more hassles for my play testers. When transitioning from plane to plane on a level enemy would respawn so I had instances of being knocked out of one plane back into another and those same enemies returning preventing the players from moving forward at a constant rate. A simple replacing of enemies can fix this issue but another problem I encountered was the lack of health that was guaranteed to spawn. I placed several health pick ups for the level to keep the player moving and never looking back but with the problem mentioned before this wasn’t a complete answer for the problem. I also had made an error when developing the level as I implemented a boss at the final stretch as most Megaman levels at least have 1 boss in each level, so I thought that was necessary. I will remove the boss during re editing of this level for future reference.

Multi Path Level Reference

When developing the level for next time I would like to implement higher and lower paths for the player to follow. Both of them would be optional but I want a measure of exploration for players to have fun with and bigger, wider levels might make for a more interesting experience. The level was linear and thus only one path to follow as that is what I remember of intro levels I have played. The issue comes in that I have experience with these kinds of games so developing for someone who hasn’t was a bit tricky. The level was overall short, but I included section that required players to learn about the slide dash and charge shot to defeat enemies that needed them to be destroyed and put the player in situation where they needed to use all the buttons to avoid damage. This in turn made some parts of my level a bit difficult as not learning these mechanics would result in death but with infinite lives, I felt that was acceptable.