Northern Iron - Highway segment

For the Northern Iron project, I decided to divide the game level into three distinct playable areas, the highway, the canal and the train yard. This allows me to easily pace the game in terms of level design, with a small amount of enemies appearing at the start of the game, and gradually getting to a larger amount of enemies as the game progresses.

While the general layout remained constant, the highway segment received the most changes in regards to asset layout.

Originally the highway segment was incredibly compact and featured a small playing area. This was a result of the area slowly introducing the game to players and featuring very few enemies. Buildings were placed to provide obstacles for the player to weave around allowing them to get used to the in game movement.

The end of the highway segment is marked by a pile of wrecked cars, forcing the player to duck down an alley way to progress to the next segment, the canal.

When I received the finished floor model of the highway, it was much larger than the original blocked out playing area, however it was a simple enough case of rearranging the buildings to fit the scene. This also had the added benefit of allowing the player more freedom to get used to player movement, meaning that the original obstacles were unnecessary and detracted from the flow of the scene.