This project came about as a means to hone my skills in level design principles and techniques whilst learning more about the FPS PvE genre and enhance my skills within Unity and C#. The project was created as a white box blockout, however some 3D models have been used to aid the prototyping experience.
It is set within the Star Wars Universe and the player controls a clonetrooper named CT-1327 "Jax", who has crash landed into a Separatist-controlled laboratory on the Planet Exthelon during a Republic invasion of the planet. Initially attempting to escape, Jax soon realises the experiments in this lab had produced something that could threaten the entire Republic invasion force.
Genre:
Engine/Language:
No. of Players:
Project Type:
Dev Time:
First Person Shooter
Unity/C#
1
Personal
~12 Weeks
My Contributions
Entire project
Implemented level design principles and techniques to produce a well rounded level
Scripted the basic mechanics of the level in C#
Worked with textures, lighting and animation
Researched, designed and produced the entire level within Unity
Produced level layout diagrams, sketches, mood boards and more
Created the narrative and wrote the dialogue
Designed from the core, using ProBuilder and ProGrids
First-Person Shooter PvE Design
With the ability to shoot enemies from a first-person perspective, along with a narrative and progression, this project allows the player to experience this level as if it was a part of the campaign of a full FPS game.
Supports Multiple Playstyles
Whether you enjoy a full frontal attack or prefer to stay out of sight as you pick off enemies quietly, this complex provides opportunity for both stealth or a direct fight.
Fully Playable
With a functioning blaster rifle, interactive buttons, destructible environments and moveable elements, this level is fully playable from beginning to end. Providing full immersion in the intended gameplay.
Blockout Timelapse
Goals and Restrictions
My goals of this project were to:
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Hone my skills in Level Design Principles and the techniques used by designers in AAA games.
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Learn more about first-person shooter PvE level design.
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Design a laboratory complex that would fit naturally into the Star Wars Universe using architectural concepts.
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Create a playable level using a mixture of my own C# scripting skills and an Asset Store player controller pack for a deeper prototyping experience.
I placed my own restrictions on the project for time constraint and scope reasons, there were also some that were unavoidable:
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Very simple combat.
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Enemies have no AI and do not move, their locations are as enemy placement holders only.
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Whilst keycards work as intended, other pickups are, again, only there as placeholders. Health and ammo are stored to your inventory, but do not carry out their function.
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Spray usage and detection metre mechanics have not been added.
Level Layout & Mission Objectives
Below are the level layouts of the three floors of the laboratory complex:
The mission objectives of this level are:
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Initially, to find a way to escape the complex without being detected.
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After a change of narrative, the player must first destroy all tentacles of the mother creature.
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Destroy the generator feeding the mother creature with electrical energy.
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Defeat all spawn.
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Navigate the lab and open up access points via the use of keycards and by destroying tentacles obstructing routes.
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Defeat the mother creature.
Once the mother has been defeated, the player will be able to escape the complex via a roof pickup to continue on with the next level.
My Process
Step 1: The Art of Level Design Course
This project was the outcome of having enrolled in a course in the Art of Level Design. This not only enhanced by skills and understanding of level design as a whole, especially with regards to level design principles, but it also offered inspiration for my first project that was entirely focussed on level design. I also undertook research in spatial communication techniques as well as overall game design to ensure that I produced a high quality and well designed level for this project.
Step 2: Inspiration
With the course offering me some guidelines, I was able to let the creative juices flow when coming up with the idea behind my level. I quickly decided that I'd like it to be set in the Star Wars Universe, both as a big fan of the franchise, but also as I have a great deal of experience with Star Wars related games, along with others of which the mood I wanted to follow. This includes games such as Battlefront II, Jedi: Fallen Order and survival horrors such as The Last of Us.
Step 3: Level Design Document
Before I began creating my designs within Unity engine, I made sure I had planned and prepared for the entire project as comprehensively as possible. The first step of this was creating a level design document that allowed me to record all of my ideas and tie them together for use when designing.
The document includes information on the genre, overall narrative, level location, the mood/atmosphere, the objectives, the key locations and features, the NPCs and enemies it would involve, the major game mechanics and its place within the overall timeline of the full game, along with some concept art that would be required for the final polished game.
Above I have summarised my level design document into an easy to read slideshow. To the left, is the written document with full details.
Step 4: Mood Board
Once I had an idea of the theme of my level, I could then start to compile a mood board of images that would represent the atmosphere, feel and design of my level.
Seven primary areas are focussed on within this mood board; a laboratory environment that would fit within the Star Wars Universe, this comprised mostly of sci-fi lab art, Star Wars and sci-fi interiors in general, space battles and starship crash sites, tentacled alien creatures, to help inspired the appearance of my mother creature, nighttime coastal scenes, clonetroopers and finally large abandoned spaces.
It very much helped my design process, specifically with regards to how the laboratory would appear, as it provided opportunities for placement of objects that would guide the player, as well as inspiring the mood of that area of the level.
Step 5: Hand Drawn Flow Diagrams, Level Layouts and Notes
The toughest part of a project is a blank page, and so to get the ball rolling, I started by jotting down a very rough flow diagram to start building an idea of the level's progression and key events within the narrative. This led onto some very simple box drawings of the layout of the lab, that would cater for the progression developed in my flow diagrams.
As my ideas continued, these rough floor plans became more and more detailed, with many changing ideas and shifting thought processes.
Eventually, my hand drawn floor plans and progression ideas got to a point where I could begin to design a more polished level layout within Krita.
Step 6: 2D Digital Level Layout
When drawing out my 2D map within Krita I tried to ensure it was as accurate as possible to aid the process of building the level in Unity. This included adding a scale onto my diagram that made transferring the size of the building into engine that much easier. I also made use of layers in Krita to allow me to remove each floor within the complex along with each separate element on each floor, allowing me to make edits and iterations to my 2D map if needed, incredibly simple, and this would prove to be the case when I made major changes to my map following playtests and feedback.
There were some important aspects to my design process when drawing out my 2D map:
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The complex would be over at least three floors, with the player starting on the ground floor and working upwards.
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The map would provide for a level that began more along the lines of a survival horror, as the player explored the complex attempting to find an exit. Building up tension and making the player feel uneasy, before changing up the objective through a shift in narrative and subsequently leading the player to engage in fast paced first person shooter gameplay in the latter half of the level.
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Whilst practicing the concept of 'form follows function' the complex still needed to be designed as if it was a functioning laboratory, with all the facilities and rooms that would be expected, laid out in logical manner. This was a difficult element to balance with good level design, as sometimes these clashed when considering convenience and functionality of a working lab compared to how a I needed the player to navigate the level.
During this step, there were a handful of questions that needed answering regarding the narrative and setting that directly affected the design of the level and gameplay, before I could implement the level layout. These included:
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Why is the first part of the level absent of enemies when there has been a mass breakout? Why are they contained to the latter half?
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How would I ensure the complex was impossible to escape despite having crashed into it and when the complex would have regular exits for the workforce.
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How were the test subjects transported between rooms and areas of the complex?
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Why are the enemies in certain areas but not in others?
Below are the complete 2D maps for each floor. The left gallery overlays each floor on top of the previous to show how they all work in tandem. The right gallery shows each floor individually to allow you to see each of them in isolation.
Each Floor as an Overlay
Each Floor Individually
To allow for easy reading of the maps, I have added the layout of each separate floor below. All elements, such as enemy and item locations, can be removed individually.
Ground Floor
Second Floor
First Floor
Third Floor and Roofs
Fourth Floor Roof
Step 7: Building the Level Blockout in Engine
I used both ProBuilder and ProGrids in order to increase both efficiency and ease of editability when creating my level within Unity. To demonstrate this, I have added a speed run video below, showing the development of a selection of areas of my level.
Step 8: Scripting Functionality
Due to the importance of functionality of the level for accurate playtesting, it was important that I scripted certain elements of the game. This included:
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The ability to open doors with specific keys using an inventory system.
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Functional lifts that moved to the correct floor when accessed.
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The shooting mechanic.
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The ability to move the platform and turn off ray shields through interaction with in-game buttons.
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Triggering dialogue that aided the player's understanding of the objectives.
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Some simple animations.
Having these essential mechanics provided for an entirely playable level, allowing playtests and thus accurate feedback that allowed for the following iterations and improvements to the design and flow of the level.
Step 9: Testing, Feedback and Iteration
After blocking out the first iteration of my level, directly following the designs of my original 2D maps (shown below), allowing for a few tweaks, and completing my scripting, a few run-throughs immediately highlighted some issues in the design.
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One of the two primary issues was that the opening section of the level, the part that built tension, was far too short and failed in its primary purpose of building enough tension before the change up in pace. It was also clear that the narrative hadn't been developed sufficiently, so the player would lack motive for the dramatic shift in gameplay. This was the motive for the major change to the ground floor plan.
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The second primary issue was the poor flow and unnecessary repetition of route coverage after having returned to the first floor. The route was sometimes confusing, forcing the player to either go back on themselves, repeat parts of the level they had already covered or routed were made to seem more important than they turned out to be. This is what led to the alterations of the first floor.
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The player's escape objective is not properly followed through before the change up in narrative.
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Easily missed keycards causing a frustrating necessity to double back to find them.
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Some rooms that were originally designed with a purpose in mind became either redundant or were not fit for purpose.
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A lack of variation in each room risked causing stale gameplay.
With regards to the first issue, it was originally felt that having explored the entire dormitory wing, which included the first floor of dorms in this case, along with canteen and kitchen areas, the lab prep room, the foyer walkway and research centre would be ample time for the tension to build and the player to gain an understanding of the narrative, even before coming across the second offices and secondary lab, as labelled below. Yet after removing the first floor dorms and navigating this opening section of the level, it was felt that this build up ended far too soon and the first confrontation with an enemy far too early.
The second issue was centred on the transition between the ground floor cells and the first floor research laboratory (as now named and seen in the maps above). Having opened up the two barred doors in the cells area, the player has been rewarded, along with information about the enemies, with a keycard to the elevator that is now directly in front of them. However, after taking this elevator, they player is returned to the research laboratory that they have already come across, with no clear reason as to why. My thoughts were initially to give the player the opportunity to pick up some of the spray they need later on, if they were to have missed it the first time, but this was far too insignificant following the fact that the player must now redo the 'challenge' of crouching under the tentacle and avoid a high risk area they have already successfully avoided.
On top of this, the requirement for progression was to find a keycard that allowed them access through the ray shield in the corridor. This keycard is in the first incinerator room, a room easily missed if they were to follow the obvious path laid out to them. This means they'd have to travel all the way back downstairs again, just to return back to this point. A very frustrating amount of back and forth.
As shown above, my initial designs had a far less substantial ground floor before the entire cell wing was added. The second floor dormitories were made inaccessible and many rooms were significantly changed up. Third and fourth floors, whilst small in size but important nonetheless, were added to the level.
How my changes addressed the issues highlighted above:
To address these issues that had been highlighted through external playtesters, I made some fairly significant changes to the design of the level.
The first order of business was to extend the opening section of the level. I did this in two ways; the first was by adding the entire cell block wing on the ground floor, under the main lab. The second was by delaying the point at which the player first engaged in combat with an enemy.
Adding the cell blocks served a few purposes, firstly it added more game area for the player to explore before entering the right hand side of the first floor, where the first enemies now were. It also gave more of an opportunity for the player build up the narrative in their head and was a more extreme exposure of the experiments to the player's character by having him come across dead clones that had been brutally experimented on, tortured and killed, whereas before the player only came across small examples of what had been happening, the most severe being a video of the experiments on a projector screen.
The first combat was then also moved from the iteration one library - at the top left of the first floor - to the new iteration library (in the location of the lab stores in the original maps above). This opened up even more opportunity for slow pace exploration in the rooms on the left as well as the chance to enhance the fear factor and build up by having the player attempt to pass by the window looking into the main lab without being detected.
The second order of business was to fix the back and forth element between the first two floors. This was done in multiple ways. Firstly, a ray shield was added in the -new- research lab, obscuring access to the elevator and the sprays. Crossing the large window was now made impossible, through both the detection metre mechanic and a newly added enemy at the end of the corridor who would otherwise smell you, until the sprays behind the ray shield was accessed. This had the desired effect of making the action of travelling up the elevator from the cells of far greater importance and by adding the key card for the ray shield directly behind it, the route now appeared as a convenient shortcut, rather than an irritating repeat. The player now no longer needed to return downstairs if they missed the keycard and the right side of the first floor was now made accessible.
To cement this even further, I made a one way valve in the doorway down to the foyer as well as making the other door inaccesible to make it impossible for the player to double back on themselves and improving the importance of the elevator yet further still.
. As well as vertical highways, roofs, ray shields etc. . (Screenshot of new ray shield making elevator more important etc)
The other issues highlighted earlier were also fixed by new designs:
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Shown by the videos below, it was ensured that the player would see through the objective of escape. Whilst originally the player was encouraged towards the cells entrance before even attempting to use the fire escape, now, the player must complete the objective that the player is given, that of escape. This was done by adding walls that covered the cell door entrances, with the only access being right up by the fire exit. This made much more narrative sense as the character's desire for escape isn't randomly distracted by other doors. Now the player is attempting to find another exit when they come across the clones in the cells.
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Along with moving keycards to better locations, another ray shield was added in the corridor outside the library to prevent the player walking all the way upstairs before being told they need a keycard. Now the player is effectively trapped in the library stores until they find the keycard in the cupboard. These alterations save a lot of frustration.
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Rooms, such as the first floor dorms, were completely removed, and others, including the lab prep chambers and library stores were chopped up into smaller rooms. Others were enlarged, or their ordering within the level progression was altered.
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Variations in mini objectives were added, for example the warehouse introducing the new 'mini tentacles' to overcome, as well as including vertical highways, outdoor areas with new perspectives of the complex and allowing for optional gameplay styles, either remaining stealthy or going in loud. The rewards and progression requirements were also improved within certain rooms. Overall this provided for a far more engaging and enjoyable experience with variation, mini completions and better flow to the gameplay.
The videos above show one example of the changes I made to my level layout. The left demonstrates how the cells foyer area was laid out before the changes; much more open with guidance clearly weighted towards the first door on the left, rather than the fire exit. The video on the right shows the new design, covering the direct route into the cell blocks and encouraging the player to the exit, as is the objective at that time.
Once the issues highlighted by the playthroughs and feedback were addressed, I completed some simple polishing to make the game feel more genuine, including lighting, some simple 3D models and basic environment design. As the level was set at night and on another planet, I chose a space-like skybox, created a darker environment and added a red hue that was emanating from the large nebula in the sky.
Other Design Decisions
Environmental storytelling
I always knew that this project would be heavily story driven. To make away with an excessive amount of exposition and reliance on cut scenes, I decided to place the vast majority of the level's storyline within the level itself, achieved through layering. I did this by slowly introducing elements of the narrative to the player as they progressed through the level. Firstly, the place seems very suddenly abandoned, the player then comes across a barricade of bunkbeds with piles of bodies behind, they come across labs with suggestive devices, machinery and tools, they see escaped creatures and videos of the experiments. Finally they're exposed to imprisoned clones along with many notes on the experiments as well as the beginnings of them going wrong. All this built a narrative in the player's mind whilst they played the game.
A large group of dead scientists behind what appears to be an unsuccessful barricade from something
Large tubes containing the creatures you've just seen having broken out
Piles of clonetroopers ready to be incinerated having been experimented on
Multiple Playstyle Options
The player is made to complete earlier segments specifically through either stealth or by guns blazing. Later on, the player has the option to complete an area in whichever way they prefer through space that is designed to support both. This adds a great layer of variation to the level and increases the challenge as they progress, placing the decisions on their shoulders.
