Level Design
This page contains info on my work related to level design.
(Unreleased)
Squadron 42
Squadron 42 is the single player cinematic experience counterpart and sister project to Star Citizen. It contains a mixture of FPS and Space Sim gameplay.
My first 6 years at CIG was spent working as a level designer and mission scripter; during that time, my work as a level designer involved the following:
- Level ownership, from block-outs of FPS & space flight environments to working closely with artists in sprint-based iterations
- Scripting mission flow & events with in-house visual scripting tools (a combination of an esoteric visual mission scripting environment, and a CryEngine native level visual scripting tool), working closely with programmers for additional level and project specific features
- Prototyping gameplay unique to levels during production, and pre-production prototyping of level & mission types
- Tools; working with technical directors & leads to ensure new mission & AI behaviour scripting tools provided the required functionality & viable workflows
- Mentoring; training and guiding designers in the use of CryEngine, in-house scripting tools and methodology
(PC Alpha releases)
Star Citizen
Star Citizen is a feature rich FPS & Space Sim MMO, and can be described as an “everything game” in terms of its ambition and scope. Star Citizen’s development model is crowd funded, with the game deploying regular Alpha releases of new content and features for the past decade.
During my initial year at the company, I created the level blockouts for two of the project’s spaceships (flying vehicles with interior levels of their own).
(Note: I do not own this video)
My involvement with this ship interior was from a very early stage, tasked with taking a concept model and blocking out the traversable interior spaces.
Ship Art team and Tech Design team took the ship concept and my blockout and iterated further on both.
(Note: I do not own this video)
I was tasked with taking a concept model and blocking out the traversable interior spaces of this spaceship.
There were several iterations between myself and art, before the Ship Art team and Tech Design team took the ship concept and my blockout and iterated further on both.
(Xbox 360 – Sept. 2010)
Hydrophobia
Hydrophobia is a 3rd person shooter with initially non-lethal weaponry (relying on player triggerable environmental hazards as a means to kill enemies), simple puzzle elements, and (at the time) a unique water simulation engine.
Originally intended as a much larger and deeper project, restrictions of the water simulation, various development issues, and limited project funding ultimately lead to it being much smaller in scope.
My work on the project, relevant to Level Design, involved:
- Level creation
- Level block-outs, content population, AI placement & setup
- Pre-production exploration of what could be achieved with the level design toolset, water simulation and associated mechanics
- Visual scripting level flow, events, objectives, dialogue triggers
- Tools mentoring; training and guiding more junior designers, and onboarding others, with bespoke visual script interface and level design toolsets
Playthrough video (Note: this video does not belong to me)
The video (above) shows part of the released level, with all scripted events setup by myself.
Many of my blocked out levels were unfortunately abandoned, as the team pivoted to a shorter full production period, and releasing an initial chapter in what was intended to be an episodic format.