CTF-Alienist
CTF-Alienist is my take on a competitive 5 v 5 capture the flag level made for the game Unreal Tournament. Level design is inspired by original unreal tournament levels and quake champions, and the visual style by the show Alienist.
Main Role: Level Design
Timeframe: 8 Weeks
Platform: PC
Team size: Solo Project
Software used:
Houdini
Jira
Unreal Engine 4
Perforce
G-Suite
Main Responsibilities
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Research into assigned product and competitor analysis.
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Concepting and proposing the map to a team of stakeholders.
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Creating a gym level for metrics and a modular building set.
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Initializing and upkeep of professional documents like; the Level design document, Conditions of satisfaction, and the iteration document.
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Creating blockouts, grey-box, and white-box of the play spaces.
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Allocating weapons and ammo to the level sections.
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Conducting playtests and upkeep of iterations based on its result.
Research and Competitor analysis
After having done the concepting, the first thing I did was competitor analysis on Styx and splinter cell. After exploring our reference games I started sketching out moments to get an idea of the type of gameplay that we wanted to create. I also wanted to sketch gameplay scenarios, closely related to our user stories, to get visual reference for what we wanted our players to feel like.
Documentation
Level design document
Since one of my goals was to maintain documentation that would provide enough information so that any level designer could theoretically take over the map, the Level Design Document was extremely important. I made a concise but in depth document covering; the purpose as a level, the purpose of each section, the node map, the gimmicks and the player feel.
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Level iteration document
To give any stakeholder or other level designer a clear overview of progress and justification of iteration, I kept a Iteration document that holds and overview of all stages of the map with its changes and corresponding imagery.
Conditions of Satisfaction
I made the conditions of satisfaction as a means of keeping myself in check for iterations. By keeping the CoS I had a baseline of goals for each iteration and a clear end product of the different phases of development.
Preparation
Metrics & Asset Gym
As the Unreal Tournament editor comes with a metrics gym that covers most things I needed, there was only need for a tiny amount of metrics gym work to be done for the metrics that I planned to use, like fall damage heights, that weren't included in the base gym. Besides that I made a small set of modular assets that would cover most of the base geometry that I used in my blockout.
Gimmick Gym
As one of my goals was to use the mechanical fan in the level, I had a lot of experimentation to do with the mechanic. I ended up really liking the way the translocator (an unique, gamemode exclusive movement mechanic) interacted with the fan, and I did a lot of research and testing to get the most optimized and exiting interaction out of them.
Process & iteration
Concept
During the Blockout phase I was very focused on metrics and movement. Since UT4 is all about optimizing flow and movement throughout the map, it was one of the key aspects I wanted to focus on. I added a ton of geometry and mechanics that combined give players a lot of freedom to express their skill.
Greybox
During the greybox it was all about weapon/ammo placements and focus test on individual areas of the map. I have specific sections of the map where I want certain weapons to be used (or at least available) and I wanted to test them with the intended weapons.
Whitebox
During the whitebox process, my main focus was polishing of geometry/metrics and playtesting iterations. The most challenging part of this stage was getting the players to use the space the way I intended them to be used. To solve this problem I did a lot of testing with the active UE4 community to get the best result for potential players.
Sections
Flagroom
For the flagroom it was important to me to have a lot of different exists at different elevations to give a lot of ways to interact with the mechanical fan outside. I wanted to give the attackers a slight advantage by having multiple entrances and exits near the flag point, which makes it easier to quickly snag away the flag.
Meat grinder
The meatgrinder in CTF Alienist is designed around the fan mechanic. The space consists of a giant mechanical fan in a circular room. Since a big part of the player experience in this room is mid-air I wanted to encourage the tracing weapon, resulting in a challenge of aiming at your target whilst trying to control where you're going.
Front grinder
Front grinder is where I wanted the snipers have a go at it. Each party has a sniper tower with long sightlines in-between. To prevent snipers locking the entire space down I placed columns to block the line of sight, which also double as traversal objects to get to an advantageous point in the meatgrinder.
Behind grinder
Since all the other spaces (besides the flagrooms) were quite open, I wanted to give some opportunity to use the shotgun and rockets effectively. Behind grinder has a lot of intertwining paths throughout making it a more stealthier option to the other side of the level, and this part supports the games original movement mechanics best.
Outside
The outside area is a mix of all the combat spaces, since its the connection point from the flag point to all the other areas. I tried to make all the weapons viable near their placement, which was a very tricky due to the different natures of those guns. The outside are is also home to a few of my favorite movement setups of the map.
Concepting​
Concept & Planning
Since we had no artists during Pre-production (other then for the character), I combined the work I was going to do for metrics and build language into a small example scene to concept the look and feel of the game as well. I experimented a lot with lighting and volumetric fog to get a strong and convincing mood going, and prepare the setting for artists that would join later on in the process.
Project proposal
After concepting dozens of different gameplay setups I picked a few that looked the best on paper and fit well together, and I combined them into one full level concept. For the planning I made a Molecular design and put it into our level design document together with a tension graph, level design pillars and user stories.
Personal Post-Mortem
Other Projects
My stance in the project:
Being the designer behind a highly competitive FPS map is quite a challenge, since you have to get everything perfect, especially metrics. Through the playtests I've done with the community it shows that I've done a pretty decent job at getting the game to play right. Even though the map feels a bit out of place at times, the metrics and movement get supported.
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My biggest mistakes:
After doing some solid research into the existing and release maps, I let go of the original level design too much. During the process I strayed away from the game too much making the level feel a bit disconnected from the game.
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My best learnings:
Through the project my best learnings were probably related to the importance of a gym, metrics and flow. Through the entire project I've spend a lot of time working on player flow and providing the right geometry for interesting movement and skill expression.
