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Platformer Elfscape: Ancestors is telling the story of a temple Guardian. She is asleep, waiting for the prophecy to come true - when the Chosen One shall descend underground, he'll fight a victorious battle against a Demon. One day, the Guardian is awakened, and she quickly realises the Chosen one is nowhere in sight. She needs to find him, and quickly - her life energy depends on it. Elfscape: Ancestors brings 24 levels, distributed into 6 environments, through which you'll be accompanied by an epic story told through visual-novel-like elements. Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council (www.fpu.sk)

Post news Report RSS (#4 Dev Diary) Details in level graphics

Different details suggestions for level graphics and a reason we chose them (or didn't).

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Details in level graphics

Dev Diary 04


Details are important if you want nice looking and interesting levels. Let's take a look at a few suggestion that our graphics designer, Adel, made for fancying up a level.



Suggestion: pipes

Suggestion: Add some pipes with/without crystals. The crystal could be animated and moving inside and out of the pipe.

Decision: Yes, but we added some iron bars around the crystal, so it wouldn’t look like it could harm the player. We also omitted the animation, because it wouldn’t make much sense.


Sketch for the iron bars on crystal pipes.
Crystals with iron bars



Suggestion: cables


Suggestion: Add cables. Either in an organized manner, or just randomly throw them in some places, sticking out of platforms.

Decision: It looks quite nice, but the cables are making the level look damaged and a bit messy, and we don’t want the level to look like that. It would also be contradicting the rest of the environment which looks “clean”.



Suggestion: buttons


Suggestion: Add mini-machines to the platforms. The mini-machines would look like buttons and could be connected to each other.

Decision: Yes - it looked good and it was easy to do.


Suggestion: windows


Suggestion: Add a few windows/look-through glass panels, so the player could see how it works “inside” of the platform - there would be some cables, mini-machines, etc.

Decision: Yes, but only small windows with little details, no big window panes.


Suggestion: balconies


Suggestion: Add platform balconies to the front side of platforms.

Decision: Suggestion denied. The balconies looked too jumpable so the player could try and jump on them, mostly killing himself in the process.


Suggestion: crystals


Suggestion: Add more crystals of another type to the front side of platforms. Just so it looked nicer.

Decision: We don’t need more crystals in the level, it would be too repetitive.


Screenshot of added changes


And in the last picture you can see implemented all the details we approved. What do you think?




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