3PLE: 3rd Person Level Editor
3PLE (pronounced triple - ee) is my master’s thesis project at Michigan State University. When working as a teaching assistant for MSU’s game level design class, the other instructors and I realized there is not a freely-available, high-quality tool in which student level designers could prototype 3D platformer levels. This project is meant to fill that gap.
The game itself is inspired by games like A Hat in Time and Mario: Odyssey. The player takes on the role of a raccoon garbage collector that has to explore a 3D platformer world to find trash. I built level design tools into the package that mimic functionality available in industry level design tools.
The project is being used as the basis for a student level design project at MSU. Students are assigned to build original levels using the tools I created.
Team Size: 5
Platforms: Unity Package
My Role: Primary Designer and Programmer
My responsibilities:
Design and implement system mechanics including player movement, enemies, and obstacles.
Spearhead development of tools for the student level designers.
Coordinate supporting developers’ efforts, especially art asset creation.
Implementing art and animation assets in-game.
Tool Development
Tool development is another big part of this project. When implementing mechanics into the game, I always kept in mind what kind of workflow the student designers could use when bringing those mechanics into their levels.
For example, I created a button in the game that the character can ground pound to trigger special events. The results of the button press are settable in the Unity Inspector. Certain pre-made interactables, such as the fans, can be assigned via a simple drag and drop field.
The button also invokes Unity events when it is pressed or released. Students with a programming background can use this event system to easily call functions on their own custom scripts when the button is pressed.
I included both these options to give the student designers a simple to use interface for the button, while still allowing more complex customization for those who wanted it.
Gizmos are drawn in the Unity scene view from the button to all connected objects, including those connected via the drag and drop interface and those connected via Unity events. This makes it clear to the designer what buttons trigger what outcomes at all times.
Character Controller
3PLE features a medium-complexity character controller. Developing and iterating the character was a big part of my work.
I started with a pretty simple version of the character with basic movement and jumping. After that, I would playtest, balance, and add new features that it felt like we were missing.
For example, the character lacked vertical movement options, so I prioritized adding wall jump, ledge grab and mantle moves to give the player more options for moving higher in the world. These moves went a long way towards opening up the options for the student level designers as well.
The character’s move set also includes options such as diving, crawling, rolling and ground pounding.
Sample Code
Here is a piece of sample code from this project. This is the class that controls the button which is explained in the section above.
Its a great example my tool development skills. Level designers working with this script can easily set triggers in their level that execute when the button is pressed by the player. The gizmos make it extremely clear exactly what the button will do when pressed.
