Learning

Level progress planning

Machinations is great for visualising flows. A flow can be anything.

This example takes you through:

• laying out the path a player may take in a dungeon
• loot they may find in each room
• encounters
• setting conditions for level completion and game over

This helps with visualising, getting your vision across and playtesting the level design before having a playable prototype.

• 🔴 Resources (the token) can represent anything
  • In this diagram the Resource represents the player moving through the dungeon
• ◯ Pools collect Resources
  • Level Start represents the spawning point
  • Room 1-6 represent rooms in the dungeon
  • Level Completed represents the finish point
• → Resource Connections transfer Resources
  • In this example, the → Resource Connections act as paths the players may take
  • The double edged Room Pools with 2 connections represent rooms between which the player can go back and forth
  • The double edged Room Pools with 1 connection represent rooms from which the player can only go one way

• ⚫️ Resources
  • In the diagram above, the Resources represent players’ stats & items in inventory
  • They begin with 10 HP
• As players move through rooms, loot gets added to their inventory
• Initially, loot is stored in Pools that push all the Resources they store as soon as the player enters Rooms 1 and 4
• Once collected, the 💚 (represented by a green token) and the🪁 (represented by a blue token) will become part of the players’ inventory.
  • They get transfered through Rooms together with the HP Resources
  • This is ensured by the all formulas on the path Resource Connections

• Drains consume Resources
  • The Encounter Drains will consume HP (red Resources) while the players are in Rooms 2 and 4
  • Encounter will only consume HP, not loot. This is achieved by applying a Filter on the Resource Connection going into the Drain.

• ⇢ State Connections change the state of elements on the diagram
• Upon start, Room 6 is not available to the player
• The quest for the players is to get the 🪁 from Room 4 to Room 1
• The check 🪁→Resource Connection:
  • checks the availability of 🪁 in the players’ inventory
  • if the Resource is there it transferes it to the place 🪁
• The State Connection activates Room 6:
  • checks (>0) if there’s a Resource in place 🪁
  • if true, it activates Room 6
• When entering Room 6, all Resources get transfered to Level Completed: Success!

While players are in Room 4 they:

• get 🪁
• fight a Boss (3 HP Resources get drained for each step while in there)
• ⇢activate if
  • checks the number of resources in Room 4
  • if >0 (whenever players are in the room) they activate track

• 🔳 End Conditions stop the diagram
  • The track Pool takes 2 inputs from Room 4:
    • >0 It will be active as long as there are resources in Room 4 (explained above)
    • = It mirrors the number of HP Resources in Room 4
  • If players lose all HP Resources (<1) the End Condition is activated: Game Over.

Note: The track Pool contains 1 resource to ensure the End Condition doesn’t trigger prematurely. The path that goes from Room 4 to Room 3 is set to instant. This ensures that when the Room 3 interactive Pool is activated (clicked on), the transfer happens:

1. at the beginning of the step
2. instantaneously