Level Designer & Technical Designer

Aug 2018 - Apr 2019

Engine: Unreal 4

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RoboKnights is a 3D hack n' slash with a fixed camera angle in Unreal 4 that has wrapped production! I worked with 18 others that includes designers, artists, sound designers, and programmers. This was my last student project while at DigiPen Institute of Technology!
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Level Designer:
As a level designer, I am championed 2 out of 4 levels and oversaw a 3rd. I oversaw most of these levels through from concept to the final stage. Championing these levels means going through from concept, to block out, lots of iterations, populating with art, and creating transitions into and out of the level. I replaced primitives using a Houdini tool created by our tech artist to add a level of polish to the levels and make them look organic. 
 

Technical Level Designer:
During pre-production I made 7 action blocks over the span on 5 weeks that consist of 10 different environmental mechanics. Every week these action blocks are playtested to see what works, what doesn't, and what people find entertaining. Some mechanics in these action blocks are: Treadmills with spawning objects, rotating gears, a bridge that breaks apart and rotates, player traps, destructible objects, and falling obstacles. During playtests, the mechanics in the action blocks are what people were most engaged with and found entertaining.

 

For production, I focused on modularizing environmental mechanics so that they could be used in multiple places throughout the game and to remove hard coded values that were put in during prototyping. Mechanics included: drawbridges, checkpoints, traps, elevators, and crates. In addition to modularizing mechanics, I was also responsible for creating intros and outros to levels using Unreal's sequencer. I worked along side an animator, VFX artist, and environment artist to create these cutscenes that showed hero props of levels as well as previewed areas of levels.
 

Mentorship:
Another responsibility I have is mentoring other level designers on the team. The other level designers on the team don't have too much experience or knowledge in different methods of designing and making levels . So I have been sharing knowledge and resources among the team to ensure everyone has a good foundation going forward into production!