Infinite Perception
Infinite Perception is a level I created in the Shadowrun editor with the goal of creating a project that I both was interested in but also to test and mess with the limits of the editor. I was curious what I could and couldn't do so I ended up learning from the ground up to create a simple but decently complex level. You take the role of a Runner, just doing your daily business and various jobs when you check your email. It seemed like someone was trying to find you but they stopped after just one email even though they seemed rather distressed. The player is then contacted for a job to clean out a warehouse of bandits, no questions asked and you'd be paid some upfront and the rest once you've finished the job. After leaving your apartment, you set up your team and find a dead person in the alleyway by your building. With the right skills you can hack into her phone but if not, that's the end of the mystery. The player then can spend some money at the local black market before they head into the warehouse. From there, things can be as easy or complicated as you make them. You can move through and kill as you please, not reading any emails and whatnot or you can talk and learn about what's really going on at this place.
Jacked In
Complexity is not always needed
I started working on this level shortly after I had a talk with some of my friends. Some of them wanted to try getting into Shadowrun. I had played the video game but never touched the tabletop version. We all sat down and had a few pokes at it before we ended up returning to D&D. From there I was curious and ended up watching some videos about what I could do both in the tabletop and in the games as I hadn't played them all. This led to me researching the level editor and some community content. After messing around I decided to see what I and the editor could really do.
I started with the storyline and worked to create a town and people in that town. I spent a lot of time learning the dialogue and scripting system. There was a big learning curve and it took me some time but after a few weeks, I had a cast of characters and computes to fill. I spent a good amount of time creating emails between characters as well as datapads to tell this story passively. Next, I really wanted to learn the limits of the character customizer. Depending on the skills you had there were just certain things you could not use. Sometimes things were harder if you had one or another and other times you were just rewarded with some kind of item or story content. Since there wasn't a lot of number crunching to do, I was able to just level design and fill each area with tons of things to make it really feel alive. It was a very fun experience and the people I got to play it also enjoyed their time.
Postmortem and Thoughts
Well I'm here now...
This project was something I wanted to do for a long time and I pushed myself to try something different. The engine was something else and it took a while to get used to. I loved my final project and still aren't sure if I will go back and add more.
What Went Right:
Level Design
Style
Narrative
When receiving feedback I was told frequently that the level design and set dressing looked good. The interiors were what most people seemed to like the most and I can agree since the selection of tiles was a bit better and the same is true for the plot. The level worked in the game's world and was something sorta similar to something you would do in the world.
What Went Wrong:
Time
The worst thing was the amount of time it took to learn and utilize this engine and everything it could do. There were so many shortcuts and little things that I still missed I'm sure and that just blows my mind. It isn't the prettiest or easiest to use though and that also added to the frustration when working.
Lessons Learned:
I really mastered my patience when working on this level. The more I worked and the harder I tried, the fast things got and the more everything started falling in place. Week by week it just turned into a real level somewhere along the way and I couldn't be happier about that.