Personal Development Plan

In 11 weeks before the hand-in of this assignment, I will start my work towards this personal development plan, improving my level design abilities. Level design is a section of the games industry I'd like to be in, and this process will help me hone my techniques and gain a greater understanding of the process for creating a level in a game. My aim goal is designed to follow the SMART format (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Time-bound), to follow a target at a professional working standard.

Through my previous research on level design, there's a lot of theory and planning involved in the process of even making a single level. Learning the process of creating a decently-sized map in a game, to a point where I know a huge amount of the concepts behind how a level is made is something I need to know. I' already aware of the basic mechanics behind creating a level, such as planning out out the stage first before I even open the game engine, having a good difficulty curve that improves as the player learns the game's mechanics and also to make sure everything I put in my levels have a purpose to reduce general clutter. However there's still a lot to learn and I want to continuously improve my design skills to a professional standard, following industry-level practises to become a great designer.

So throughout the course we are doing a Games Design unit on what makes a great game, and since these core concepts are quite broad, some concepts a level designer needs to know are more specific for the skills I want to improve in my development plan. To prove I'm learning new concepts I will add continuous blog posts into my development log showing my researchn into various concepts and my implementation of them. To provide evidence of my development I will also create a scene in Unreal 4 that shows various level design techniques, from the research I conducted proving that I will have learned throughout the 11 weeks. This involves various mechanics, like teaching the player the game's mechanics by doing not saying, among other things like possibly having a part of the level that can unconsciously manipulate the player in playing the game in a certain way (so for example if they see a hidden door in the corner of a room, they're instinctively going to want to explore that area). It will all be based in a giant HUB world that the player can explore.


To follow my SMART target, my designed end-goal will meet all of the criteria shown below:

Specific- I will specifically be researching level design concepts on what makes a level good, and I will be incorporating these tactics into a level I'll make in Unreal Engine 4, where the player can explore and I'll have various segments around the world that include a different mechanic, and I'll write about each one in my blog posts.

Measurable- I will have 11 weeks to create this Unreal 4 level with included research in my blog posts, and it's definitely possible to achieve this in that time due to it testing my implementation of concepts over actually creating the assets I'll be using. They will either have been made by me previously (like models in 3ds Max), or sourced royalty-free online from various websites (like the offical UE4 Store).

Agreed upon- Dan has approved this plan and I will begin working on it afterwards.

Realistic- I feel with my weekly management plan and content I plan to include in this, I have enough time to fit in both the research and development elements into my project.

Time-based- As shown below, I have a strict time management plan that I'm determined to follow. Each week will involve around 10 hours of work, with these 10 hours being outside of tutoring lessons in uni, and in my own time instead.


Weekly time management plan:

Week 1- I will spend this week researching various level designs, such as teaching by showing and not doing. I will document my finds in the blog post. Also I'll begin planning my level.

Week 2- I will continue researching other professional level designs, including examples of professional games in the industry and what they do well (as posted in my research document). I'll start importing various assets into a new Unreal 4 scene, ready to get started properly incorporating my designs next week.

Week 3- I will begin to create my level in Unreal 4 incorporating my concepts. It will eventually be a large HUB world where the player can explore and find various secrets using level design concepts. But I will start off small and being creating the scene.

Week 4-8- Continue researching other concepts as each section of the HUB world gets completed

Week 9- Begin polishing up the game, improving other areas and removing any possible bugs

Week 10- Write a conclusion on what I learned overall and how I grew as a person finding various level design skills

Week 11- Finish off with a fairly large 3d area in Unreal 4, where the player can explore and find secrets using various level design techniques, documented in the previous development blogs.