Game & Level Designer
Tim Andersson
Serpentine Estate
An over the shoulder Horror Game
"As a curious journalist breaking into a mansion to solve a mysterious incident,
you find yourself trapped in an unimaginable circumstance."
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The team:
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3 Level Designers
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4 Game Artists
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3 Animators
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2 Technical Artists
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6 Game Programmers
Production time:
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8 weeks half-speed = Around 160 hours.
Engine:
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"Unity" as a level editor
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Game Engine made by the team
My Contribution:
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Level Designing game world
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Eastablishing a Level Design pipe-line
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Level Propping / Level Art
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Level scripting
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Game Design
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Reference and Inspiration Material
I am very fond of the survival horror style Resident Evil games, and set out to create
a similar experience. The levels below are not linear, but where the player can
go is very limited by various locked doors. As the player progresses more paths are made
accessible, increasing the lay-out's complexity while getting more and more familiar to the player.
Noteworthy points
The corridors in Resident evil are not always logical. Looking closer at them you may realize that they are often quite narrow with many sharp turns. This is to capitalize on the suspence of not knowing what could be behind every corner. This is something I wanted to prioritize in our level.
There are also several stairs leading to floor 2. This creates good circulation and offers the player options in what path to take to get to their destination. Additionally it allows for some nice opportunities for paths looping back on each other when first exploring the level.
Planning and overview
First steps
After deciding on game direction and setting I sat and started roughly drawing several mansion lay-outs, picking out the best part of each and puzzling them together into a rough first iteration.
Being a fan of classic survival horrors, I had experience making similar styles of levels. I like to call them "puzzlebox levels", because the level lay-out in itself is almost like a puzzle that opens up as the player progresses through the game.
During this time the team had several discussions on how we want to construct the mansion, how we can manage to get a desired graphical quality within the limmited development time and story beats and events.
We decided on using a modular tile-set with a floor-tile size of 2x2 metres and a ceiling height of 4 metres.
The top-down as it looked at the end of the planning phase
Some things we would cut further along development
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The basement would be the final area in the game. Due to concerns of work hours needed to create unique meshes we scrapped it.
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Puzzles were planned out at two locations. This was cut because we underestimated the effort needed to implement essential systems into our engine such as animations, physics and asset importing.
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Several rooms (Kitchen, secret room and guest rooms) were cut due to concerns over the play-time exceeding the desired 10 minute.
Prominent features of the level
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Two floors would serve to making the mansion feel dense and create interesting loops to explore.
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Narrow corridors and many sharp turns would disadvantage the player creating suspense.
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Locked doors were used to lead the player along the intended path, slowly increasing the level complexity as more keys were found.
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Scripted events made previously accesible doors inaccesible, changing the lay-out.
Block-out
Floor 1 blocked out in Unity.
Work-flow stratergy
To allow several designers to work in the same scene simultaneously we used a hierarchical structure. Scene>Floor>Room. This would pave the way for portal culling and make the work-flow smooth.
Pipe-line
A major concern was having a good asset pipe-line. We built the levels in Unity and then exported them as json files that our engine read. Unfortunately Unity and our engine could not share asset directory, so we had many discussions on how to make the pipe-line as smooth as possible.
The solution we decided on was writing a plug-in that would export models from unity into the engine. Ironing out all the small issues relating to rotations and pivot points was a process that would continue through-out development, but largely the pipe-line worked well.
Floor 2 initial block-out
Early Unity testing and lay-out analysis
Iteration and Cuts
Concerns over game lenght and feedback led to a heavy trimming of the level.
I was initially very reluctant to make the cuts, but after relenting see that it was the
correct decision under the circumstances. The level turned into a tighter experience
after the cuts.
We lost some of the maze-like puzzle box design I was going for, however.
Before Cuts
After cuts
Space planning and level design
One stratergy I was adamant about was to have three model asset
categories. This was to optimize asset modeling priorities and for us level designers
to have clear cut tools for working with gameplay flow.
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Architecure assets constituted models used to build the room. For example. Floor, wall and ceiling tiles. Stairs and hand rails.
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Furniture assets were any asset that would affect the game-space. These were of high priority as they were used to level design paths and spaces within the actual rooms.
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Decoration assets were the lowest priority category. This category was composed of assets that would not affect the play area, such as paintings, books and other assets placed on top of or inside furniture and rugs.
Just like our reference game, Resident evil 2, our enemies would be slow but powerful. If a level allowed it, the player could endlessly circle around and outrun any enemy.
The enemy challenge lies in the disadvantageous enivronment. Corridors that force the player to fight to get through, turns that surprise the player or the danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed.
To enable freedom in creating these situations without breaking the logic and rules of architecture we utilized furniture to control spaces in addition to architecture. This also created interesting and varied environments.
Level Highlight: The Gauntlet
F2 east wing, codename: The Gauntlet
This is a stand-out feature of the level I designed taking inspiration from needing to revisit frightening areas in Resident Evil that I had barely escaped, leaving large ammounts of enemies behind.
At the start of the game, all doors are locked except the one on the second floor leading into the eastern wind. Entering the first small corridor they are imediately presented with a locked door that leads to the final area of the game.
Going deeper into the mansion the door is blocked behind them and made inaccessible for the rest of the game. As they enter the bedroom they find their weapon and are confronted with the first enemy, who they may defeat or escape. As they exit south they are confronted with more enemies than they can defeat with their current supplies and must flee deeper into the mansion, into unfamilliar rooms.
As the player approaches the end of the game and finds the final key, they must renavigate this whole are from reverse and confront what they had earlier escaped.