Introduction
Breakdown
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Individual solo project spanning 6 weeks of 50% work .
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Focus on building the combat spaces and enemy placements.
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Infima Games Low Poly Shooter Pack template used
The level takes place in a war-torn city inspired by 1940s london, where a man has to fight his way to one of the last friendly strongholds found at the bank.
Page 1
This project was made with a focus on fast and intense shooting combat in first person. i wanted to create several unique areas that play differently from each other while still using the same mechanics.
FIGHT TO THE BANK
A First person combat experience
Issue
2
#
2024
7
PAGES
Page 2
OVERVIEW
tension graph
flowchart
1. Bank forshadowing
7. The square
LEVEL FLOW
4. tollhouse
5. breathing room
3. climb the cranes
2. find a way to the broken wall
6. The Tunnel
8. The broken buildings
9. Sprint to bank
Page 3
topdown
Start
End
1
2
ToolHouse
harbor
Tunnel
Broken Buildings
bank
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Square
harbor
Tollhouse
Back alley
Tunnel
Broken buildings
Tension
First enemy
Broken floor
Bank reveal
Square
Bank
Ammo box
The Harbor
THis combat space is in a tight and dark tunnel with very dangerous combat and hard to see enemies.
Player experience will be enemies covered in darkness pining down the player encouraging the player to find an alternate path that can be used to flank the enemies.
The Clear condition for this part is to flank the enemies and shoot them in the back or slowly eliminate the enemies.
The tunnel
This combat space is The first and takes place in the harbor, an open area with several approaches and short to medium range encounters.
the player experience will be fighting their way through the lower area while trying to move up to the second level.
The Clear condition is to enter the broken wall. this can be done using the boxes to walk over the crane or use a hidden shortcut under the crane.
The square
This combat space have several buildings with different paths and heights.
PLayer experience will be using one of the several paths to battle through the enemies, jumping from building to building avoiding the no man's land at the main street.
The Clear condition is arriving to the bank in any way possible. every path grants different challenges to overcome.
Combat encounters
The tollhouse
This combat space is an indoors segment with two floors and vertical combat.
the player experience will be using cover to eliminate upstairs enemies then choose to go downstairs or use their high ground to eliminate enemies.
The Clear condition is getting to the back exit either by eliminating all enemies or using the broken floor to avoid enemies and make a quick exit.
The broken buildings
This combat space takes place in an open area with long sightlines for the player and enemies.
player experience will be finding paths and navigating the area defeating the enemies by using the limited cover.
The Clear condition is for the player to find and decide one of three exits leading to the next area providing different advantages.
Enemies
Altarnate paths
Page 4
PLayer choise
the player is led into a dead end. if the player looks into the collapsed door they are awarded with a free elimination.
A Bait-and-switch is used to lead the player the wrong way forward just to show the exit of the area above. after receiving this information they are forced to turn around finding a breadcrumb trail made of platforms leading them onward.
due to the focus on combat in the level players will actively seek out enemies to eliminate. Because of this enemies act like a breadcrumb trail to guide the player.
I created brown plank structures that lead the player forward also giving the player visual affordance for scary jumps and where to drop down.
Design techniques
Player guidance
Tricking the player
In the tunnel a no man's land is placed between the player and exit. when the player approaches they are pinned down by enemies covered in darkness. this encourages the player to find an alternate path But they are still able to force their way through.
Page 5
Using the side path
My intent was to create a big area with several fun paths that the player can choose or jump between while fighting enemies.
The issues I faced were players getting confused or losing their mental map and falling down from buildings and losing their path forwards.
My solutions were to use enemies, doorways with stairs and points of interests to help guide players keeping them from getting lost.
i created two points of interests with the statue in the square visible in the first half of the area and the bank visible for the second half.
The enemies were placed in a way to always be infront of the player locking certain areas off so players would be less encoraged to backtrack.
Doors and stairs where placed in a way to be visible for players that happened to fall of the buildings leading the player back to some enemies.
Three story building
My intent with the tunnel was for the player to avoid the straight path and use the side path to flank the overpowering enemy force.
The issues i came across while designing were that players were more interested in shooting the enemies and most playtesters did not seem to care about the side path at all.
My solutions to the problem was making it harder to go straight and give incentive to use the side path.
I placed the enemies in darkness and gave them increased cover so the player has a harder time defeating them.
To encourage the side path i made the doors more visible with more prominent locations, light and adding strong red lights linking both doors together
Design Challenges
Before
After
Page 6
Fast start
I had a very fast pre-production and wanted to try a very iterative design but I still wanted to create a clear base layout.
I created a fast overview map and sketched the two main areas on paper. Quickly after that I started construction in unreal engine implementing the parts I sketched While trying to create intresting ways to connect the sketched areas based on my base layout.
Reflections
This project was very fun to create being my first city based location that i made a polished blockout out of. during the process i learned much about this kind of environments and how to design them.
Building unique assets for everything might have looked good but took much longer time, effort and made certain environments harder to complete and change. the upsides to using this method was more unique terrains and encounters.
I learned that Working without set snapping distance and not following a grid in the rough blockout made the progress even slower affecting early blockout in a negative way.
Thank you for reading
Building process
Process
My project went through three stages of building.
First stage I created a very simple version of the base layout, i mapped out what i sketched in my pre-production.
Second stage i started populating the existing areas one at a time with cover, paths, environments and enemies to make a mostly complete area for every section.
Third stage i used playtesting from both me and other people to improve upon the design and make it as fun and easy to navigate as possible.
