Zelda BotW Area
World Design / Scripting
Personal solo project
Unreal Engine
Third Person Adventure
1 Week
CONCEPT
I've always been interested in world design and decided on creating an open-world area inspired by Zelda: Breath of the Wild. My goal was to learn techniques by doing thorough research, and applying what I learned on a playable blockout.
Early Process
Research
My research consisted of the following:
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Looking at GDC talks, podcasts, and articles.
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Gathering reference material.
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Playing the game while taking notes.
Optimal Path Flowchart
I found the subject very interesting and realized that there was a lot to take into consideration when creating an open world. At first, it felt like a daunting task, so I did a flowchart to get a clear overview of what I wanted the player to do.
START
END
Creating a Library
I did a library with the BSP:s I created. Since a design goal was to guide through curiosity and do a blockout that facilitates communication with environment artists, I needed assets that represent rewards, encounters, landmarks, and other things.
Start Blockout
I started blocking out the start area, to get a feel for the tool, scales, and getting a time estimate for the project. I quickly noticed I went into too much detail. I moved on to creating the rest of the world instead, painting in broad strokes.
The first iteration of the start area. Understanding the landscape tool and scales.
I quickly noticed I was putting too much detail into it, however, it did give me a rough sense of how much time the project was going to take.
From there I started working more with a more "quick and dirty" prototype method, and the world started to take form.
WHAT I DID
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Thoroughly researched open-world level design and architecture through books, podcasts, and GDC-talks.
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Sketched and blocked out a world design based on the research.
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Complemented with gameplay scripts as a paraglider for testing reasons.
LEVEL DESIGN GOALS
Since world design is a very big topic, I narrowed down my design goals to create an open space that:
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Evokes curiosity
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Feels coherent
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Guides the player to predetermined spots.
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Blockout with clearly communicated design intentions ready for an environment artist to work on.
World Map
The world map is the result of applying different open-world techniques. Below I go through the ones I used to fulfill my design goals of guiding the player and evoking curiosity.
Dividing World into Areas
One of the first things I did was to define landmarks and divide the world into smaller areas, to easier find a distinct identity for them so that the player can navigate smoother.
Landmarks That Give Overview
Landmarks That Give Overview
I define landmarks as places that are identifiable from wherever you see them. A criterion I had was that you can see at least two other landmarks from each landmark.
Landmarks often have a tower. From the tower in the start area, the player can see all the landmarks and the places where I want the player to go.
If we then go to the mountain tower landmark on the opposite side of the map, we still get an overview of three other landmarks.
Objects with magnetism
Early on I categorized the different types of structures and objects into a magnetism scale.
Distracting with magnetism
Here is an example of how I use magnetism:
1. Players see a tower in the distance, however, they prioritize the big enemy camp that's significantly closer to them.
2. The camp is cleared, and the player is even closer to the lake tower now, compared to the previous tower, so they move towards it.
3. They are close to the tower, however, they notice a shrine that is even closer, so the player chooses to glide towards it instead before climbing the tower.
360 Approach
I use the 360 approaches to make sure areas are accessible from different directions since it is hard to predict from which direction a player will approach an area. I tried dividing these areas into an onion layer, where the direction access gets narrowed down the closer you get. This allows me to create more tailored designed areas without limiting the space to being 360 approachable through and through.
We see the outer area being accessible from several directions, the middle area from two directions, and the inner area from one direction only.
Working With Triangles
A technique that Breath of the Wild uses a lot is the use of triangle shapes in the environment to obstruct the players view. This evokes curiosity, and usually leads to the player having to round an obstacle to get to a point of interest. Below are examples of how I used this.
1. In the first iteration, the village tower was straight in the players line of sight. This felt static and uninteresting.
2. By adding triangles in different shapes, the environment starts to pop more. The triangles affords for hiding, evoking curiosity and allows me as a designer to store surprises behind them.
3. Making the triangles vary more in shape, and obstructing more of the field of view with the trees, the player is further entised to round the hills too get closer to the tower and see whats behind.
4. Just by adding theese differenty sized trianges, I can hide a small lake with an an island, a village and a hill that the player has to traverse before accessing the tower.
Point of interest placement
1st Iteration
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The most effective method I found for placing points of interest was to place the POI:s on a top-down.
- On this map, we see there is a big empty area on the map. It was evident that the distribution of POI:s was uneven.
2nd Iteration
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In the end map, I try to keep an even distribution of different POI:s, and have at least 40 seconds in between points.
Different type of guidance
Guiding the player in an open world felt like a challenge. Below are some examples of how I try to do it.
Here I want the player to move towards the village tower and avoid the hill. I give the player visual cues on a new area comming up in the form of windmills in their line of sight. The road also leads towards the village. Meanwhile, I partly obstruct the line of sight to the hill.
The red areas represent different ways of fencing the player. The elevated ground to the right makes the road more of a hassle. The trees serve as a soft fence - showing the player what is behind, but still making the journey there feel less attractive.
The System - Four Elements
I prototyped a script where I tried to recreate parts of the systems in Breath of the Wild. The system allows for several elements that interact with each other.
How it works
The Elements
The player can use the elements as magic spells.
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Burnable things can be set on fire, but not if they are wet.
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Water can extinguish burning objects.
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Wet objects can be frozen.
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Frozen objects can be melted with fire.
The wind affects the direction that fire propagates and in which direction ice blocks will float on water. You need to look at what direction the grass is swaying to know where the wind is blowing.
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I wanted the player to get information by observing the level instead of getting it through UI.
