My role stared out out as the solo level designer to prototype and debug workflow for the larger outside world of HL. This has evolved into a much larger role with our team including 6 level designers.
The larger world in HL is one of 3 major areas in the game. My goal as the owner of this area of the game was to make a significant impact by being observant to the needs of the game, my immidiate team, and to other teams that are interacting with the larger world. Collaborating with programming, VFX, Missions, Cinematic, and story has been critical to keeping things on-track.
My goal has been to see and forsee areas of the development where the technical side of enviornment art can make the wider team mode productive and allow evel designers and enviornment artists to be more creative.
Co-Lead of World Levels – Technical
- Leadership
- Participated in Interview and hiring process of new Level Designers on team.
- Evaluated needs and assigned new LDs to needed production area. For example a LD was assigned to specifically work on traversal (collision, slope, readability). Another was specifically assigned to work on AI traversal and ambient AI implementation.
- 1 on 1 meetings with all team members as a lead and as a mentor. Talk through work flow and issues, along with personal skills development.
- Work with various outsource studios to implement additional art, level deign, optimization, debuging, trouble shooting, and tech in world.
- Maintain / problem solve world tile configuration/layout, streaming/levelbounds, and levels
- Maintain / problem solve world navmesh
- Maintain / problem solve world maps and gameplay locations
- Map/World Creation
- Created and prototypd topo map for use in World Machine based on real-world locations in Scotland that would fit our esthetic. Merged World Machine data into UE4 World Composition system.
- Participated on team to evaluate size scale and feasibility of overall map size and layout.
- iterated by exporting from UE4 to WM and back to use WM features.
- Helped to scope map and executed plan for tile spacing to optimize for less tile loading in any given are of the map. by laying map out in brick pattern instead of grid pattern
- Collaboration
- Worked with streaming systems programmer to implement and verify that streaming system in game world worked correctly and was performant.
- Worked with contract studio to develop and test performance tool to completely unload specific actors from list based on volumes in world.
- Worked with technical director to setup LOD distances and tune tile performance.
- Worked with NavMesh programmer to create system for NavMesh across world. Including navmesh, navsplines for AI traversal priority, navportals to create bridges that allow AI to traverse from tile to tile.
- Worked with Navmesh programmer to use UE4 spline based road tool to create custom ingame splines for AI navigation, navmesh priority, and in-game path based “guide” help system.
- Worked with leads from other teams to setup blueprints to execute hard loads to levels outside of the world tile area. Setup with dropdown lists of locations that would set all variables to check for mission system prerequisites and load associated levels with load screens based on trigger volumes.
- Worked with economy team to determine placement frequency of “potential” loot locations in overall world. Example – X number of chests are placed in the world on a per tile basis. The tuning of loot can then be done via database entries.
- Worked with economy team to develop and implement a enemy frequency and difficulty map/layout.
- Prototyped VFX panel for the setup and implementation of VFX in world. Keep VFX constent and uniform across all of world. Handed off to TA team.
- Worked with automation team to get various tasks put into a automation system. These included map database generation updates, navmesh generation, tile LOD generation, light probe backing.
- Technical
- Created “Marker System” for tracking assets both in game for level designers and artists, but also used for in-game and debug maps. (see detailed breakdown)
- Developed series of key feature blueprint prototypes for quick layout and iteration for measuring gameplay density and effectiveness. These blueprints included town buildings, building interiors, configurable enemy camps (buildings, set probs, breakable objects), treasure vaults, loot chests, puzzles. All blueprints had hooks and were tied into wider game systems for intrusion, locked buildings, interactive objects, fast travel. Some blueprints have more functionality and customization than others. For example, Vaults ended up being very expensive (performance) assets and are setup to use proxy geometry that shows a 1-1 representation of a instance of a vault level that will be streamed in at the location of the proxy geometry.
- Setup ISM, HISM, and LODs for various BPs and game assets based on performance.
- Created detailed documentation for use and technical details of all world blueprints, along with design principals for placement within world.
- Developed system for preventing specific files in world Composition file structure from not loading and worked with streaming programming team to implement system for preventing files from being integrated into cooked builds. This allowed us to use various Houdini systems within UE4.
- Gameplay
- Lead level design team to create enemy camp distribution and faction map and coordinated with combat team.
- Coordinated all design and development of vault areas in overland. (see detailed breakdown)
- Door/Entry Puzzles -This included working with junior level designer to walk them through the planning and implementation process.of collecing assets, prototyping placement and functionaity, then efficiant placement process via blueprinting.
- 1st pass at implementation of “dive” blueprint for entry into underwater vaults.
- Setup and maintained UE4 asset “Collections” for use by both LDs and enviornment artists. To use in game and keep ancilary assets constent and uniform across all of world
The BP based Marker System
Used for visual representation of significant gameplay assets in outside world.
Added to the Database for use by the in game maps (mini-map and full UI map) and the VizLoc map.
Added to the game database for use by the in game maps (mini-map and full UI map) and the debug developer map written to HTML and accessible to externally outside studio
Added to the game database for use by the in game maps (mini-map and full UI map) and the debug developer map written to HTML and accessible to externally outside studio
VFX Panel
Maps
Enemy Level and Distribution
Enemy Camp Distribution
BluePrints
Custom events exposed in UE4 editor to be used by LDs to quickly implement gameplay elements that are derived fom other blueprints. Objects are automatically bound, linksed, and logic is implemented. For example, a teleport tht teleports the player to a destination location is needed. This will spawn the teleport with triggers and associated animations, along with the destination location and link the teleport to the destination. The LD then only has to place the object in the world where needed. The image above shows entrance blocers to loot vaults in the game. There ae about 20 unique entrance blockers that have specific requirements that need to be setup when added to the world.
Shows the blueprint layout for a Enemy Camp BluePrint – Setup arrays of objects in camp and setup toggle options and check for valid objects in arrays. Switch types based on enum list.
