mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

CBP 3 Volume 3…Almost Here!

Been really busy the last couple of months at work and with CBP 3. But now things are almost done and to get the hype machine moving check out this video one of our team members Drummer.unr made of all the maps and mods we will feature in volume 3! Be sure to check it out in HD and full screen looks much better.

My addition to CBP 3 volume 3 is CTF-Full Throttle. More screens of the map can be found on the level design page. So keep stopping by as very soon the final release build of CBP 3 volume 3 will be availble.

SP_Forrestal Village Released!

Alright folks, here it is, Forrestal Village! A project seven months in the making and now ready for your enjoyment. This is probably the most time I have spent on a single level, but totally worth it, as I took my time to make the level as detailed as possible. Along with the detail work, I did my best to provide a fun gameplay experience for you guys. In the end after several iterations on the lighting and gameplay flow I finally feel that this map is now done!

One thing that I know will make people happy is checkpoints. That’s right, I got checkpoints in this map, unlike my other map Industrial, and given the size of the map it was pretty much mandatory to figure out how to get level streaming and checkpoints to work.  I give my thanks to some folks on the forums for their knowledge and tutorials on level streaming for Gears of War.

As always the mandatory teaser screen:

More screens can be found on the level design page along with the download link. So give it a spin when you got time and feel free to drop any comments and or feedback to either:

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=184894

or

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=671755

So have fun and go kick some locust ass!

SP_Industrial Re-released!

After a long delay it’s finally here, a new version of SP_Industrial! I am sure many of you may have noticed the teaser pic on the level design page (which is now a bit out dated) of the updated look. In terms of gameplay the level is virtually the same. However a lot of changes were done in terms of cover placement and combat scenarios( and I give credit to those individuals who shall remain nameless but I owe them my thanks for providing feedback on areas of improvement for the map)

So without further delay here is a new screen:

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More screens and the download link can be found on the level design page. The readme file has install instructions if you need them.

Enjoy!

Making of WAR-CBP3-Meditation: A Study of Simplicity

So today the winners of the second phase of the Make Something Unreal Contest were announced and this time around I was lucky enough to snag 3rd place in the Best Warfare Category.  For more details and listing of the other winners follow the link, and before I begin with my discussion, I would like send my congrats out to all the winners, finalists and honorable mentions that were announced during phase 2.  Some really good competition this time around.

Without further delay let’s begin this discussion of simplicity, and what better way to start it off than a quote.  “Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.  ” Einstein, Albert. I first heard of this quote from my days of working on Spider-Man 3 DS as our lead designer had this quote printed and posted at his desk.  After knowing about this I have always thought about simplicity in my designs both at work and my mod projects. However, one thing to keep in mind, is that simplicity should not sacrifice the presentation or overall quality of whatever it is one may be doing.  When that happens, it’s not simplicity, its half assing everything.

But how does this relate to level design you ask? Well this is just my opinion and feel free to disagree, but in terms of level design I think simplicity can deliver effective results in the flow of the map. If the flow is simple and effective it promotes an easy to learn layout. If the layout is easy to learn it becomes memorable. If it becomes memorable it can be mastered to level of predictability to help you have that sixth sense of what your teammates or opponents may do in game.  Simplicity can also be adapted to visuals (i.e. Team Fortress 2) or even systems (don’t have a good example right now, but I am sure there is one) Now that I have established my thoughts on ’simplicity’ it’s time to move on to how this was applied to my level.  I’ll do my best not to bog you down with a lot of reading and let the pictures do all the talking! The level began with a very basic shell:

In the screens above I mapped out my initial flow with the terrain editor to create an ‘S’ shaped layout. Once I was happy with layout of the terrain I setup some really bare bone BSP blocks to add as structures to get an overall feel of how the arena plays. I did many iterations on the terrain until it felt right before moving on to the next steps of making the level look pretty.

One key thing to note here is that simplicity lies in the layout as I mentioned above, I choose a common shape that most people are already familiar with and works well for symmetrical gameplay.  Even in a bare bones state the map felt fun from the get go, and was easy to remember all the paths and key landmark locations that would be vital during a frantic game of Warfare. After deciding that the layout was locked down and simple enough for a good game of Warfare I moved on to visual polish. (I wish I had more screens handy from the dev time of the map but these show case how the layout came to life)

As I mentioned above simplicity can also be applied to visuals and I did just that in this map. It’s obvious to see that things are not over complicated as seen other UT 3 maps rather, they feel natural, as if they belong in the environment.  This simplicity in visuals also supports the gameplay in the fact that they don’t distract the player from what’s important… the game! With this in mind I built key land marks such as the arched bridge in the screen above is near the base exits. The construction of this landmark is rather simple but what does to support gameplay is that at this landmark players know that they near their own base or the enemy base (red or blue respectively) There are many more examples of this in the map that I could go on about, but hopefully when you play it you will keep this discussion in the back of your mind.

Next up was more visual polish which finally lead to completed design seen on my level design page and in the screen below:

So to put everything into a retrospective I would like to share some in editor screens to drive home the concept of simplicity I used when creating the map. Though I would like to point out that I made clever use of a total of 2506 meshes and a few BSP cubes!

Unlit/No Meshes:

From the screen below you can see that the initial BSP cubes I had in the first screens are exactly the same but textured ( again I used a generic base stone texture, simplicity!) This is the core layout and what I think makes the map fun to play. The meshes and lighting are there as necessary polish items to make the map cool but even without those the simplicity and refinement of the layout on it’s own could do quite well.

Unlit w/Mesh Work

Oh look pretty visuals! All I did here was use the static mesh library in game to morph those BSP cubes into believeable structures without compromising my intial gameplay designs

Lit w/Mesh Work

So here it is the final product in the editor!

Hopefully, this post was informative and helpful to you especially those of you that do mod work out there in the community. However, I would like to state one thing before I close this discussion. In no way I am docking down mind bending visuals and crazy (but awesome) map layouts, what some of you level designers out there achieve is spectacular and I applaud your work.  Just take this post as alternative way of thinking if you get stuck or get designer’s block… think of the simplest answer to your problem it may just work.

Thanks for reading, if you got a copy of UT 3 please check out WAR-Meditation (available on level design page) hopefully you will have fun!

New Map in the Works

Yes I am still here, and apologize for no updates since November 2008! Been really busy last few months between a few projects at work and side projects at home. If was not putting late hours at the office I was at home staying up late working on my new Gears PC map. The level is nearly done, and for your entertainment some preview screens of Forrestal Village! (single player map, note–lighting is temp for now.)

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I should be done with the level soon and will post new screen shots when that day comes along with the all essential download link. If time permits I’ll do write up on this map like I did for MP_Pipeline a while back.

That’s it for now, though on an unrealated note I am off to see Metallica tomorrow down in Philly. As usual with most concerts I attend I’ll do wrtie up about the event so look out for that as well.

Cheers,

Gears of War 2: First Impressions

It’s finally here, Gears of War 2, and yes it is bigger and badder as Cliff Blezenski said in most interviews leading up the release this morning.  Couple of friends and I went to midnight launch down at Best Buy and got home around 12:30 am and played till around 5 am. Currently at work with heavy amounts of coffee to keep me awake!

Anyways I did not do the campaign yet as I want to play co-op so my friends and I fired up multiplayer. Started off with Warzone, same as last time kill the other team anyway you can. Funny thing for me was that since I played the PC version of Gears 1 a lot the past few weeks ( did insane co-op with a buddy) the controls on console felt wonky and sluggish. Then after a few rounds of me getting my ass handed to me via various executions I finally got back in the groove of using my gamepad and was roadie running and taking cover with ease.

From Warzone we went on to the new game modes,  I think we tried Submission next, which is pretty much like CTF, but instead of two flags there is one, and it’s not a flag. It’s stranded civilian armed with a shotgun running around the level. The objective bring the civilian to his knees, grab him as a meat shield and take him to another spot on the map to capture a point! This game mode was pure mayhem!

Up next was King of the Hill, which is pretty much like Annex but better! Instead of running from point to point and capping it, King of Hill requires both teams to head to one point and the only way to score is if a team member stays on point for the duration of time, which is much better and requires more tactics than Annex where one team can capture a point then move on to spawn camp! As an added twist in this game mode, any team defending can not respawn if they own a point, but offense team can keep respawnning, but once they capture the point and get on defense they can’t respawn! This mechanic really changes dynamics of the battelfeild from second to second!

Next up was Guardian, which is pretty much a better verision of Assassination from Gears 1 where each team has a leader. The difference was that here the leader keeps the team alive and allows respawnning, if the leader is out the team has to play it safe cause there is no coming back if you are down! After Guardian we fired up Wingman, 5 teams of 2 running rampant around the levels! This was great and really enforced team work and tactics.

As the morning crept in around 3 am people from our group started to leave to go sleep so as soon as the group got down to four us left we fired up the co-op mode Horde. This game mode is pretty much a gaunlet pitting you against waves and waves of harder locust AI. Sounds easy but it’s not, the AI are really aggerssive and on higher levels no area is safe as Locust are coming out of the wood work with their best. In this mode two things freaked me out, the new Boomer variations all armored up with gaint maces and shileds and tickers. Tickers are worse than wretches and lambent wretches combined. These little buggers are small and fast, and have one motive to go kamakazi on your ass by finding you and blowing themselves up!

After a couple of rounds of Horde, the last few of us still up went back to Warzone with bots and played the maps that we did not see yet. A note about the bots, they are pretty good, not the best but offer up a good fight and are good teammates helping you up when you are down.

So all in all Gears 2 is awesome, and a quick note about the MP level design, it’s fantastic! The layouts are great, visuals are top notch and designs are bigger than Gears 1 with more z-axis gameplay in some maps. Additonally there are more gimmick maps this time like Avalanche which has a massive avalanche as an enviornmental hazard, Hail which offers up a dynamic storm if caught in is a slow death by mass ammounts of hail pellets, and Security which has scripted events putting up laser beams changing the flow of the level by locking and unlocking different paths.

Now all I want to do is finish my my work as fast as I can and get back home and fire up some more Gears 2! Whenever I get to the campaign I’ll offer up my intial impressions as well as final once I beat the game, but just from the polish and presentation in multiplayer I am sure the campaign is going to be kick ass!

Cheers!

Saints Row 2: First Impressions

First thing that comes to mind with Saints Row 2…GTA clone right? Wrong! In the 4 hours of playing the game I can honestly say that Saints Row 2 (SR2) blows GTA 4 out of the water…why? Well first off the game let’s you dick around with ease, and do crazy shit without getting the attention of the cops for a good while. GTA 4… you pull out your gun…10 cops on your ass…lame and not fun (Ok that was a stretch but for those that have played GTA 4 you know what I mean)

Second reason, side missions.  Side missions will be and always have been fluff to the core game, in GTA you could ‘hang out’ with people and play pool or get drunk… all good, annoying but it’s a side mission, what else could one possibly do? You know what would make for a good GTA 4 side mission, being a fake cop and wreaking havoc around town for a camera crew to film…I wish that was there or some game did that…oh wait… SR 2 does let you do that! Yes there are side missions were you can be a cop and go ape shit on the city of Stillwater for a camera crew. Good times! Though I don’t want to give away any spoilers about this game mode for those that have not played, I will say one thing, the camera man following has a twisted mind. For one encounter of quelling a domestic distrubance he suggested I use a chainsaw… the rest I leave to your imagination.

There are plenty of other side missions, which I have not gotten to yet but I assume they will all be more rewarding and fun to play than taking out a ‘friend for darts’. Oh and Insurance Fraud is still in the game, one of the best side missions from the first Saints Row.

Third reason why SR 2 kicks GTA 4′s ass…the radio stations. The first car I jack happens to have the Final Countdown from the band Europe playing….eff yeah! 80′s synth metal for the win! Then while browsing the other radio stations came across the rock station and guess what was playing… freaking Opeth, ‘Ghost of Perdition’! Does GTA have Opeth no… it does not! Almost everything on that station had big explosive metal tracks with double bass going and amazing riffs! GTA does not have mind bending metal tracks on their radio stations!

Just for my own curiosity and to share here is the entire track list of the metal station in SR 2: (I am fan of most of these bands!)

Anthem by Trivium
Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold
Colony of Birchmen by Mastodon
Milk Lizard by Dillinger Escape Plan
Nothing Left by As I Lay Dying
Ghosts of Perdition by Opeth
Stars by Hum
Resurrection by Chimaira
Unsung by Helmet
What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse by The Black Dahlia Murder
Redneck by Lamb Of God
Deadly Sinners by 3 Inches of Blood
Barnburner by The Agony Scene
Woman by Wolfmother  (Ok Wolfmother is not mind bending metal but they still freaking rock)

So as you can see from my initial impressions SR 2 has cleary gotten my attention and hooked me in more than GTA did in the same amount of time. However, is GTA 4 a bad game no it’s not, it’s ground breaking in it’s own right but somethings about that game just bored or annoyed me (i.e. not being able to mess around an open world with out cop interference)

That’s it for now… once I beat this game I’ll post a more detail review but with Gears 2 looming over the horizon I don’t think I’ll be beating SR 2 anytime soon!

Cheers,