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Role: Level Designer 

Responsibilities:

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  • Iterated on combat encounter implementation based on leadership input and user feedback

  • Rewarded player exploration and problem solving with puzzle design

  • Scripted quests, objectives, and triggered events to direct the player’s experience

  • Collaborated with environment artists to bring maps to life and solve bugs requiring negotiation of art and design

  • Coordinated with multidisciplinary departments to implement cinematics, art, VFX, & lighting

  • Addressed bugs and other issues brought up by QA; provided team with clear repro steps for issues I noticed on my own

Combat Encounters

One of my main jobs on this project was to implement combat encounters throughout the maps. This was a collaboration between the LDs and the combat team. Whereas the combat team would plan the pacing/enemy composition of the combat ahead of time, I would place individual spawners at tactical locations while shaping the combat arena to fit the scale of the encounter.

Player Spawn

Archers in high points 

Close-range meele

along alleys

Example 1

Combat Plan: Sniper Overwatch Fight 

Enemies: Archers & Blue Constructs

As LD, I raised towers for ranged enemies to be spawned as part of the combat plan, while delving alleys for melee enemies to stalk 

Example 2

Combat Plan: New Magnus Challenge (mini-boss) 

Enemies: Blue Magnus, Archers, & Shieldmen

I spawned the mini-boss at raised location at the center where it's spawn animation would be visible from most locations.

Mini-boss centered and visible

I place shieldmen next to archers and restrict their movement radius so they stay close while the archers harass the player from elevated spots.

Glaivegate Let's Play

by MKIceAndFire

 

Arena Design Breakdown: Glaivegate

When I was assigned the Kalthus map, it didn't have an overhead layout, as all of the Points of Interest has been laid down on the map by my senior LD (Clemence Maurer) and approved by reviews. This meant I had to work within existing constraints rather than acting with broad autonomy, but my senior LD gave me leeway to whitebox the arena in which one of the major battles of the game would take place. 

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And so we have Glaivegate: a military installation on Kalthus, iconic for its enormous wall. The original prototype featured combat along battlements, courtyards, garrisons, and airfields. This section of the map would act as a rallying point for Jak and his allies following a heavy defeat in an earlier chapter.

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Here is a video so you can reference the scale.

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I worked on whiteboxing Glaivegate for about two months. However, during a game-wide review of the scope of the game, including the amount of assets to model and the scale of the set dressing, the leads decided to cut areas out of multiple levels, including Kalthus. Here is a breakdown of my original design to be compared to the later, scoped-down design.

It was decided that the Mountain Garrison and the Airfield were to be cut to reduce scope, bringing Glaivegate down to just one arena. In the interest of time, my level design lead (Shawn Lucas) and I worked together to trim this section down. He cut most of the original layout, but then gave me clear priorities:

  • Redesign the courtyard ​

  • Delete most of the old Glaivegate level scripting.

    • Keep the cinematic scripting and logic. 

    • Remove all combat-related actors like enemy spawners, pitfalls, and nav volumes 

    • Keep the objective scripting that's was still relevant and cut the objectives pertaining to cut locations (Mountain Garrison and Airfield)

    • Get the cinematics working again with the new layout

  • Implement new, semi-functional combat: three waves with a handful of enemies with the last wave featuring the Blue Magnus mini-boss again.

  • Implement combat space cover and occluder/cover pass

    • To restrict architectural modeling scope, leveraged natural elements like rock formations for boundaries and platforms and avoid suggesting forts and large ruins, while using crates, pillars, rocks, etc. for smaller stuff. 

  • Add a degree of verticality to the combat space via shallow trenches, raised ridges, and scaffolding 

Out of the priorities above, I've captured the most visually salient aspects of the redesign in the images below. All the green and blue geo comprises the new whiteboxing I implemented or modified, while the grey geo is the work of Shawn Lucas, my lead.

Puzzle Design

I lead the design effort on seven puzzles on the Kalthus map, while soliciting input from with my senior level designer, technical design, and the environmental art team. In this section, I break down the design process for a few select ones.

Animate Staircase

(In collaboration with Clemence Maurer, Senior LD, and Noah Zilberberg, Tech Design, and Michael Audije, Senior Environment Artist)

Protototyping:

Before I was assigned to work on Kalthus, it's previous owner, Clemence, had collaborated with Bret Robins, game director, to conceptualize a puzzle using one of the spells in Jak's arsenal: Animate (telekinesis). To the right is Bret's original concept. The idea was to manipulate a magical platform that could be raised and lowered, like a scale which the player could then use to scale the environment. 

In-game, the contraption's movement axis would have looked something like this:

Once I was assigned to this map, I took over the puzzle. Clemence and I exchanged visual references to anchor the design into something less abstract, which lead us to settle on stacked platforms that expand upwards and contract downwards.

To the right, is my first attempt at prototyping this puzzle.

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A pair of columns reside atop a wide central platform. The wide platform could be manipulated to move forward and back while the columns on either side could be pulled up/down independently of each other. Glowing runes on each of the part designate to the player that whatever it's attached to is moveable. However, with level reviews and feedback, I decided to cut the runes on either side in favor of a simpler setup below.

While the setup above does fulfil the job of allowing the player to platform towards the next area, there were several things I noticed while testing:

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  • The solve position doesn't draw the eye towards the exit as well as it should

  • It's somewhat cumbersome to traverse (you can see Jak hitting his head jumping underneath a platform)

  • It only moves in one axis: up and down. Not only does this not require much skill, it's limiting the intended use of the Animate spell (to mode objects along more than one axis to the solve position) 

The level review team concurred this puzzle could use a bit more love. So I went back to the drawing board and reconfigured the solve-position of the platforms.

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Admittedly, this configuration looks and moves less like the game director's concept and more like an angular staircase, but the difference was necessary for a few reasons: 

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  • It was more intuitive than its prior iteration

  • By cutting out unnecessary platforms, it became easier for the player to visually trace the line from floor to the top

  • This setup could move up/down and side-to-side, requiring a bit more skill while leveraging the Animate spell the way it was intended to

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The steps to solve the Abandoned Outpost Animate Puzzle are as follows:

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  1. Stand in front of the Animate rune on the narrow side of the base of the platforms

  2. Using Animate, raise the platforms so that they're high enough to reach the top and slide them right 

  3. Jump on atop the first flight of stairs, then to the alcove in the middle ​​

  4. From the alcove, jump to the second flight and presto

The angle of the stairs form a line that the eye can follow easily

Technical Polish:

Once I had a staircase that visually made sense, I consulted with Noah Zilberberg, the project's technical designer, to help me polish the technical aspects of the puzzle. This puzzle powered by two of the projects tools: 

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  • Movers: actors placed into the map that can be scripted to move, rotate, and/or scale objects 

    • Can be used to simulate floating objects, raise/lower platforms, open doors, etc.​

  • Animation controllers, which can control movers en-masse ​

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I poked his brain about which stick directions to best use for moving the platforms along their axes, where to force the player camera to look while platforms are moving, how to fine-tune the extent of movement on the Y and Z axis, as well as how to prevent player's from cheating the puzzle.

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Environment Art Input 

My environment artist for the map, Michael Audije, also helped to accommodate the environment to the puzzle. 

That platform became a pillar to jump on

A platform the player can use to jump from the first flight of stairs to the second

I needed geometry to prevent players from cheesing the puzzle by jumping from one top floor to another instead of Animating the platforms

My artist made these door guards to obstruct undesired platforming to and from the top floors

And so, we have the finished product:

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