As Design Lead, I'm involved in a lot of the design aspects for Shadows of Dawn. My experience with C++ and Unreal Engine Blueprints allows me to quickly prototype new features and seamlessly communicate with our development team. I frequently collaborate on in game systems with our Senior Systems Designer. Level design, lighting and managing our team's asset pipeline are also key parts of my role with Next Player Games.
Level Design
When we began concepting ideas for the tutorial level of our Alpha we had a few small environments that our artists had made for some promotional material while we were still in early prototyping. We determined that the most sensible way to begin building our open-world would be to use one of these environments as a jumping off point and repurpose it for our new direction. Our Art Lead and I got together to review the three environments; a cave setting, a wooded encampment, and a crumbled overpass. We came to the conclusion that based on our current storyline it made most sense to repurpose the cave setting into a hybrid cave system and sci-fi science bunker. Exploring this setting would give us the opportunity to build up to revealing the state of the world to the player and pace out some of our game's systems without overwhelming the player.
To adapt my process for level design to the task or repurposing what was already built, I took an overhead screenshot of the existing level and drew over it to solidify the layout. This proved to be incredibly helpful in the long run because while it all lines up nicely on paper, the existing environment was much smaller than what we were going to need for player's to explore properly. So this sketched layout helped me keep track of my progress and the direction I needed to be going as I started expanding everything.
While plotting out the layout of the level, I included notes about the levels progression (indicated by number). This helped plot out the level's pacing, determine some assets that our 3D art team could start focusing, and some mechanics that our development team could start prototyping in the meantime.
Using some of the props that our artists had been putting together while we prototyped allowed me to use a mise-en-scene approach to the levels layout. This approach alos helped with the pacing of the environment by allowing me to introduce important items, structures and mechanics at specific intervals while allowing the player to explore in between and discover how these things come together in the world.
Additionally, using the Learn, Practice, Master approach allowed me to roll out the primary mechanics for our game loop before putting them together for the player to put to the test against the game's first boss.
Enemy & Encounter Design
I've been collaborating with our Senior Systems Designer, development team and Animator to design the boss fight at the end of our tutorial level in Shadows of dawn.
With our Senior Systems Designer, Ari, I've been comparing his player stats and abilities system to the overall design of the boss' stats and abilities to make sure that the fight is balanced and only utilizes concepts and stats that the player will be familiar with at the moment the enemy is encountered in the game. For this we plotted out armor levels, overall health points, component health points, attack damage levels, ranges, durations and cooldowns. For status effects we decided it was best to keep to a minimum because the player is still at the beginning of the game at this point and shouldn't be overwhelmed with statuses they haven't learned about and can't prepare for yet. So we limited this first boss to a stun and poison effect because they're simple ideas that are common in games and fit the theme of the enemy.
