Three Headed Monkey
Game: Gears of War
Description: Three Headed Monkey is a single player experience, which takes place between Act 2 and Act 3 in the Gears of War universe. In order to develop the level I wanted, I had to overcome three major obstacles.
1. The timeframe for this project was extremely limited and chaotic, in order to build the level I wanted, I decided that after I had the general layout on paper and an overview of the levels goals, I would build a small whitebox and do some prototyping. Doing this early in the project helped me decide what was going to be cut later down the road. This also helped me understand what I could and could not do which made writing the level design document easier.
2. Initially I designed the level with several combat scenarios and didn’t allow for much of a break between each one. After I built the whitebox of the entire level I quickly put all the encounters in so I could test the gameplay and cover system. I immediately recognized the need to remove most of the encounters to allow for a cool down period in order to create a rollercoaster feel. This experience taught me to not only playtest as much as I can but watch other people play the level too.
3. The final obstacle was being comfortable with cutting parts of the level in order to create a better experience. During the prototype phase I started scripting a checkpoint system; I couldn’t use the standard tools due to the fact that the character model in my level is Carmine. I had it nearly flawless, but it still had a minor glitch where sometimes the character would spawn at the checkpoint as Marcus. I was nearing the deadline of the project and had to cut the system. The level is small enough so it isn’t hurt by the lack of a checkpoint system, but this experience taught me how to cut something even if I’ve put lots of time into it.
All three of these obstacles helped me create a technique of designing levels from start to finish
Development Time: 8 weeks
Download: Three-Headed Monkey
Documentation: Level Deconstruction | Level Design Document
Pit Stop
Game: Half Life 2
Description: Pit Stop takes place along Highway 17 within the Half Life universe. One of the requirements for creating this level was to pick an entity in the Hammer editor and focus the design around that entity. I chose the “physics_cannister”, imagine a fire extinguisher that’s been punctured and is flying around. The development schedule for this level was intense which required my prototype phase to be done rapidly. Initially I designed the level to utilize the “physics_cannister” throughout its entirety, unfortunately due to my rapid prototyping I missed testing for some specific cases.
- Initially I prototyped using BSP, during whitebox I used several curved surfaces called displacement. During tests of the level about half the time the canister would collide with the displacement and ricochet in an undesirable direction
I was forced to do some major adjustments and redesigned the flow of the level due to the time constraint. I had to replace most of the canister events with simple doors the player now opens. Even though most of the canister events were removed I still learned many other things about the Hammer editor.
- How to control A.I. and have them react to a situation
- How to create something unique to my level using the scripting tools available in Hammer
- Becoming more familiar with the Hammer editor in general
I enjoyed this assignment and really like idea of using the “physics_cannister” as a hook in a level. I would like to revisit this idea and revise my design choices as well as the components that make up the entity itself.
Development Time: 4 weeks
Download: Pit Stop
Fire Emblem Quest
Game: LuaQuest
Description: Fire Emblem Quest was developed during the Level Design Scripting minor class at the SMU Guildhall. The entire game is LUA based. As a class we were given a shell of the game with only basic functionality. Each assignment I added more and more functionality like shops, combat, and a leveling system. Here are a few of the major requirements for the game
- Custom gameplay features, I created a gambling system and combat notification
- New sprites and title, most of the sprites I used come from Fire Emblem
- Ability to load and parse through CSV files
- Ability to take screenshots
During the time I spent writing functions for this game I learned just how important it is to create and manage tables in Lua. Also, I learned how important it is to get into the code and start tinkering myself, so long as I keep good source control!
Development Time: 8 weeks
Download: Fire Emblem Quest - Requires LuaX to run