Project Vantium

Level Design

I was able to fine-tune my level design process by going through all the stages multiple times. The first time was for our proof of concept build where I was tasked with crafting a creepy farm region level for the showcase. After the direction of our game was changed, I went though the stages again; collecting a lot of reference images from media such as Journey and Scavengers Reign, creating a proximity bubble diagram, which was then translated into a more refined level layout, receiving feedback from the team, and finally creating the initial greybox. 

A unique element of the level design for Project Vantium was that I had to work closely with the other level designer on the team. We wanted our levels to be connected through connection points that would load the player into the other scene, to give the illusion of a large open world environment. We also wanted our levels to offer different experiences, mine having a focus on elevation and being more beginner-friendly, while his being completely flat with sprawling paths and a offering a greater challenge.

The greybox evolved in many minor ways over the course of development. Scale was altered to create a tighter and less confusing experience, gameplay elements were removed or replaced, such as the bounce pads and the slowing alien goop, and lighting was improved for wayfinding and readability.

Game Direction

The concept of our game took a new direction multiple times during development. At first, while looking for classmates to join our team, I made a prototype in Unreal for a 2.5D puzzle platformer using blueprints. The concept was that the player, some sort of bioluminescent creature, could emit or suppress light to influence an organic environment that would react accordingly. This prototype generated enough interest to form the team, but ultimately, we decided it wasn't the right fit for our collective strengths.

We played around with other concepts, at one point even considering an augmented reality game, but decided on creating a top-down shooter. Although similar to what Project Vantium eventually became, our original top-down shooter concept was more complex with different objectives and a denser, more atmospheric environment inspired by Hunt Showdown. After developing the game for a couple months and presenting a proof of concept to our classmates and Behavior Interactive developers, I felt that we were going down the wrong path. I spent my academic break reworking the entire game, creating a game design document as well as a pitch deck. With the help of one of our artists, my ideas were brought to life with his concept art. The pitch went over well with the rest of the team, and was the final direction that the game took. I stepped into more of a leadership role on the team moving forward.

Other Roles

Over the course of development, I took on many challenges that were well outside my comfort zone, not always by choice, but I enjoyed learning new things nonetheless. A role that I stepped into early on was being the AI enemy programmer. I followed a short Epic Games course, and watched various tutorials to try and understand as much as I could quickly. Within a few days I had created the basis of the AI that utilized Unreal's behavior tree and perception system. The AI would wander around, chase and attack the player with a predictive leap attack. The larger enemy would later be built off of this base.

The other big role that I took on was technical art. I had a vison of the game which required a certain level of visual polish, and I was going to attain it no matter what. You can see on the side my process in creating the sand material. This was by far my biggest challenge during development as I had to fail multiple times by attempting to follow what others had done, to eventually be knowledgeable enough to create it on my own. The creation of this material was also my proudest moment during development as I never gave up over the course of multiple weeks. After which, I took on more daunting technical art challenges from runtime virtual-textures for blending objects into the terrain, and creating the cell-shader that would define the look of our game.