Space Prison Escape Level Design

Background: For the first round of BVW my team of five had two weeks to make a game where the guest helps character A escape from character B using the HTC Vive. The team consisted of two programmers, two artists, and a sound designer with myself an artist. Our team decided to have a prisoner escaping from a space prison, with the guest taking on the role of the hacked security system AI. Within the prison there would be robots patrolling through the hallways, waypoints to guide the prisoner to, and doors that could be opened or closed. The robots would follow a set path, then reverse the path if a door was encountered. Our eventual game would include three different levels. Unfortunately we weren't able to sort out all of our bugs in the two week time frame, so the game is still incomplete.

Level Design: For the design of the prison layout I wanted to make sure that each door could affect the patrol path of at least two different robots when manipulated (opened or closed). I also wanted to make sure the guest could choose from between more than one path to guide the prisoner. It was also important for robots to not be trapped between two doors on a single section. For ease of assembly I converted the environment designs from my fellow artist into consistent modular sections. These hallway sections were a T shape, L bend, straight hallway, and + intersection with centered openings so that any section could fit with the others. In the center of each section I placed a waypoint for navigating the prisoner.

The diagram below illustrates the level design for the second and third levels. The first level is not complex and serves as a tutorial level. The top of each drawing is the start position, and the bottom is the end.
Each dot represents a waypoint and therefore the center of a hallway.
Each line between dots represents the physical hallway of the prison.
Each line intersecting the primary hallway lines indicates the placement of a door. Note that these will always be located at the boarder between two different hallway sections. Also note that for level three only the circled doors were kept (pencil would have been a better choice for this...)
Each X represents the start position of a robot. These were kept off of the main hallway for ease of reading. There are no positions listed for lvl 3 because I wanted to iterate on the placement in the actual maze.
The arrows indicate the patrol path of a robot guard and the starting direction. Note that these paths would reverse if a closed door is encountered by the robot.
Scribbled lines indicate removed

DoorMaster.jpg