Auxilium
Student Project (~50 developers)
Platform: PC
Release: May 12, 2017
Lead Level Designer
Responsibilities:
-
Led multi-disciplinary sub-team of designers, artists, and programmers
-
Led map critique meetings with stakeholders and level designers
-
Designed and scripted music and sound effects across the game using Unreal Blueprints and Wwise
-
Pitched and prototyped initial map designs
-
Pitched and prototyped character class abilities
DESIGN GOALS
Designing for Player Classes
Our largest design focus was building a level that could evenly accommodate four unique character classes for competitive and cooperative play. Our level design had to take varying weapon types, character stats, and abilities, in addition to design challenges inherent in Capture-the-Flag. We began each section of the map with a particular character class in mind, and then made alterations to balance that class with others. As a result, players were drawn to areas that matched their character's skill set without allowing them to dominate sections of the maps.
Dynamic Level Mechanics
Our team wanted to design dynamic events and obstacles to make the level more fun and memorable. Since building for seamless navigation and elevation were our core design goals, our unique mechanic had to contribute primarily to those goals. We designed a rotating ring in the middle section of our map that allowed players to flow through the center of the map quickly, target players from a high vantage point, and drop down to alternate lanes for close-quarters combat. Players enjoyed the emergent team dynamics that evolved from the variety of gameplay options that came out of leveraging this mechanic with each player class.
Designing for Elevation
Early in production, we discovered that direct face-to-face combat was difficult to balance with classes that naturally performed better at a particular range. For the Magic Academy level that my team worked on, we addressed this by focusing our design around elevation to make combat and navigation less predictable. We designed the level as an arena with multiple lanes separated by elevation that players could seamlessly flow in and out of using jump pads and ramps. Players constantly found new ways to flank enemies and counter other teams' strategies by using elevation to their advantage.
Gallery
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |