Dark Souls III Level - Finishing Touches

My whole level has gone through multiple detail passes, and nearly the whole level is functional. All that is left to do is script the different endings to my level, add some negative space to the inner city to improve gameplay, decorate outside the play space, add more colors to the Hollow Village, and record and implement my NPC voice lines.

This stretch of work has been extremely rewarding for me as everything is really starting to come together. That being said, what I have left will still take a lot of time. I also have to create my updated map, create my level webpage, and if I have time, create a page for my souls-like gameplay pack that I scripted.

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Everent - Continued Blockout and worked on Sky Boxes

I've started to blockout more of Aeribus, a level for my capstone game Everent. I've developed the first sub-island of the level significantly more. I created multiple factories and added a way for the player to destroy the spire in the level. I've also started creating the second sub-island for this level as well, although I don't have gameplay laid out for it yet. 

A major hurdle during this blockout has been balancing the logic of the level and the gameplay of the level, as these two things almost counteract each other. So far I have focused more on logicality, but in the future I'm going to focus more on gameplay, as that is my lead recommends.

Additionally, I am responsible for the sky boxes of two of the three levels for Everent, those being Aeribus and Ventis. The asset pack I used to create the skies was very new to me, so I spent a lot of time just learning how it works. There were actually many points where I thought customizing a certain aspect of it wasn't possible with this pack until I spent more time with it and realized that I could. Working through this has made me much more comfortable working with unfamiliar asset packs as I am now more familiar with modifying them. Overall, the rest of my capstone team and I are extremely happy with how they came out, and I had a lot of fun learning how to overcome this challenge.

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Dark Souls III Level - Started 2nd Pass

I have just started the 2nd pass of my Dark Souls III level. This entails giving the blockout much more detail. I'm about half way done with the first half of the hollow village. So far, I have a made a few modular shacks that I've been placing in and around the critical path. I'm extremely happy with how it's turning out, as I thought making it look as good as it does would be significantly harder. I also replaced a cylinder that was used a statue placeholder with a character model.

An issue I am having though is that placing these shacks to look good is actually extremely time consuming, I've spent many many hours on it already, and I still have a lot to do, although I'm very confident I can get it done within the next week. 

My next steps are finishing the hollow village second pass by replacing the placeholder cubes with their appropriate meshes. After that, I'm going to do the same with the inner-city section of Londor. Those buildings will have gothic-style architecture. After that, I'm going to spend a lot of time scripting and blocking out the side-quest in my level. Once all of that is done, I'm going to really start the gameplay iteration process.

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Everent - Aeribus Early Blockout

I just started the blockout for the 2nd level in my capstone game, Everent. This level is called Aeribus, and it is the 2nd island of Stratos, which is a civilization consisting of three floating islands. Aeribus consists of four fractured sub-islands, and it is the manufacturing center of Stratos. The manufacturing district of Aeribus is located where the four fractured islands are closest, and the rest of each island is filled with high-density residential housing. Another notable aspect of this island is that rails are everywhere. Rails let the player rail grind to quickly navigate the area. In my blockout, these are represented by white pipes.

The residential areas of Aeribus are inspired by Birmingham, England and 1920s New York City apartments. While the factories in the blockout right now are just placeholders, the final factories will be inspired by the Battersea Power Station in England.

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Dark Souls III Level - Early Blockout

I'm about half way through the first pass of my blockout, I've done a pass of the hollow village (green), swamp (purple), and crypt (orange). I've changed quite a lot from my level design document map already, especially in the hollow village section. I found that in my map, this section was significantly more open than it should've been for what I was trying to achieve. The main area of the section was essentially an open field with only a couple instances of negative space. Another big change I've made from the map is changing bonfire locations. I moved the bonfire in the swamp too the beginning of the hollow village section, right outside of the checkpoint door. I did this so the shortcut could have more purpose, as before, it would have been more likely for the player to end up never using that shortcut. I also added a new bonfire to the first crypt room. I did this because I plan on making the crypt section larger and I plan on making the city section before reaching the first bonfire of the level again longer. The swamp has remained largely unchanged due to the fact that it's almost entirely open.

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Dark Souls III Level - Metrics Gym

Over winter break, I spent most of my free time working on a custom gameplay pack for my upcoming Dark Souls III level. I built nearly everything from the ground up except for the basic movement and attacking of the player. Some of my scripted features include a health, mana, and stamina system, an item pick up system, a bleed and poison status effect system, a boss fog wall, a bonfire (checkpoint) system, health and mana flasks, an illusory wall, destructible objects, a spell system, and full enemy/boss AI.

My goal in doing this was to be significantly better at scripting, which I definitely achieved. I've gone back to older projects and I have been able to implement features I previously wanted but could never figure out extremely easily. I've also learned that I really enjoy scripting in Unreal Engine. I used to dread whenever I had to script a feature in my level, but now I enjoy it just as much as every other aspect of level design.

Below are some images of metrics gym which include many building metrics I will be using in my level in addition to all of my scripted features. It also includes a combat arena and a boss arena where the player can test out combat mechanics.

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FPS Level - Borderlands 4 (mostly-complete)

My goal was to create a side-quest level that could feasibly be in Borderlands 4. I made sure the level fit in thematically, mechanically, and gameplay-wise. I used a generic first-person-shooter gameplay pack for the base of the gameplay, but I made many modifications to make it play as close to Borderlands 4 as possible. For example, I added double jump, I scripted a grappling hook that is very similar to the one present in the game, and I made sure the walk speed, sprint speed, and jump height were accurate to how they are in the game.

The name of my level is Cult of the Moon, and it would be located in the Carcadia Burn region of the map. The exposition of the quest is that after the arrival of the moon Elpis into Kairos’ orbit, many inhabitants of the planet rejoiced. However, some took the moon’s arrival differently. In the outskirts of Carcadia Burn, a band of rippers, led by their ring leader Ainar, dedicated their lives to worshiping Elpis. They believe its appearance is an act of divinity. Tonight is their Moon Festival, in which they celebrate their “Moon God.” The night will consist of drinking, dancing, and most importantly, sacrifices. The side-quest would entail entering the Cult of the Moon’s compound and killing their ring leader, Ainar, for his unique gun that is powered by the gravity of Elpis. There is also an optional objective to kill all of the enemies in the worship/sacrifice area to free the prisoners slated to become sacrifices.

Since my last blog post a substantial amount of my level has changed. On the macro scale, it's much larger, and each area is more complex. I also removed the designated prison areas on the sides of the level. I'm very happy with how it is, and even though the "assignment" is complete, I am not finished with the level. I plan on constantly improving, especially over the next month or so. I have not received feedback on it yet, so the first things I'll do is make changes based on my feedback, but besides that I want to make the first combat zone larger and maybe add more combat zones. I'm currently framing the level as a side quest but my goal is make it long enough to be a campaign level. I also want to make it more "Borderlands," such as adding an Echo log somewhere in the level. Add

This is definitely the most time I've ever put into a piece of work and it shows, I'm very happy with the results.

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