“Five-Finger Gunslinger is a third-person online arena-battle game where players compete against their friends to become the most popular kid in the west. Battle evil cactus-bandits and pelt your opponents with water balloons as you struggle for suburban supremacy!”
Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1377240/FiveFinger_Gunslinger/
Five-Finger Gunslinger
Five-Finger Gunslinger is a game I worked on with a team of six other students from Champlain College. We started it as a project for our Production II class, but then we decided to continue working on it over the summer for fun. We ended up releasing it on Steam, which has been super exciting as well. I also got to focus on almost exclusively the level design, which was really nice as well.
Programs Used:
Unity Editor
Probuilder Plugin for Unity
Microsoft Office
Adobe Photoshop
Paint.Net
Total Team Size: 7
My Process
I started, as always, with a quick sketch on grid paper for the general level layout. This was so that I could quickly show off what I was thinking for the level to my team to get their thoughts on it.
I then made a more official verson that was easier to edit using Paint.Net, since I didn’t have access to Photoshop while I was at home. This was so that I would have something a little nicer than a sketch to put into design documents, and so that I could edit it easier when I made changes in the level.
I then built out a basic version of the map using Unity’s terrain features, ProBuilder, and some of the art assets we already had.
The next thing I did was actually to make a quick concept of what the current map we had would look like was a more linear level for a more story-based game, which was something that the team was discussing trying out. We ended up staying with the PvP aspects of the game, but this was good practice for me thinking about how to guide the player in a more linear fashion.
As we got new art assets and feedback came in, I continually updated the level to include changes to make it both look better and play better. I added another bridge across the stream to help the level flow a bit better, for example. I painted some new textures on the ground to add a bit more variety in the landscape, like the grass, dirt, and pavement.
One of the final things I did was add light probes to the level to help with shadows on the characters while they were moving around. I placed the probes everywhere where the lighting changed, which was just where ever there were shadows in this level. This let the characters take the light level of the surroundings without putting too much strain on the system.
I did also create a tutorial level, based on a narrative timeline that the other designer wrote up to teach the player all of the controls, but unfortunately we ran out of time before the next school year started, so we weren’t able to implement it. It was still good practice for me, and I was rather happy with it, even if I would have gone about teaching the players a little differently than the other designer wanted me to.
I did also do the light probes in this level, even though I didn’t show it here. This is another angle of the level, so you can see the other side.