Level progress planning

Machinations is great for visualizing 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 visualizing, getting your vision across, and playtesting the level design before having a playable prototype.

• Resources (the token) can represent anything
  • Create and colour your resource types in the Resources panel on the toolbar
  • In this diagram, the Resource represents the player moving through the dungeon
• ◯ Pools collect Resources
  • Level Start represents the spawning point
  • Rooms 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 transferred through Rooms together with the HP Resources
  • This is ensured by the all formulas on the path Resource Connections

• Sinks consume Resources
  • The Encounter Sinks 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 Resource filter on the Resource Connection going into the Sink.

• ⇢ 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 transfers 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 transferred to Level Completed: Success!