The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013)
Title: Primary Level Designer
- Worked primarily on level designs, whiteboxes (Sketchup), and minor system designs
- Primary level designer on Supply Stop level for prototype, vertical slice, and for full game
- Primary level designer on Logging Camp, Drive-In, Outlet Mall, and Stadium levels
- Helped establish world metrics and scripting standards for other level designers
From Whiteboard to Whitebox
The video below describes the basic design pipeline of the first full level created for the game, which was used in the first Walking Dead prototype, the vertical slice, and eventually as the 2nd level of the shipping game:
- Inspiration image done by concept artist to help determine a jumping off point for the level
- Initial brainstorming meeting with whiteboards open to all team members for more specific beat by beat gameplay designs
- Formal "paper maps" done by two designers using Sketchup and/or Photoshop, in addition to documentation
- Level owner creates 1st pass of world geometry using Sketchup, and imports into engine, incorporating work done by any other designers
- Level owner adds temp gameplay actors and scripting to quickly test out the rough flow of the level
- Play the game!
Levels
In addition to Supply Stop, I also worked on other levels in the game, including Logging Camp, Outlet Mall, and the final level in the game, Stadium. Since the project was done on a very short time period with a relatively limited design staff, as a team we rated the levels from A (most complex) to D (least complex) based on how difficult it would be to implement (including factors like level size, cinematic complexity, amount of NPCs and dialogue, linearity, etc.).
Screenshots below are from Sketchup, and the level editor
Screenshots below are from Sketchup, and the level editor
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Supply Stop (B level) - The primary objective of this level is for the player to find fuel, but there are optional weapons, NPCs, and sidequests for the player to find as well.
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Logging Camp (C level) - The primary objective of this level is to gather resources from a military camp that's nearby, and escape as quickly as possible.
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Drive-In (C level) - This level also contains a rumored military camp from where the player can gather resources. They end up running into the owner of the drive-in, and helping her out before escaping.
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Outlet Mall (D Level) - There have been some survivors holed up inside the stores here, and when Daryl reaches the area, he also finds out there is military nearby. Due to the walkers outside, he has to make his way through the stores in order to catch up with them.
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Stadium (A level) - The final level in the game set just outside of Atlanta, there is a helicopter evacuation occurring at the football field. Daryl and the survivors have to rush to make it to the field, and evacuate safely.
Eventually had to split this into two levels, for memory reasons, though thankfully the entrance to the main field area provided a natural split point to make that process a bit easier. This level is also a nighttime level. |
Level and Scripting Documentation
In addition to level creation, I also assisted with establishing metrics for other designers and artists to follow when designing levels (door sizes, story heights, average room sizes, etc.), and scripting guidelines for other level designers to help keep us all on the same page. These were all written up as standard Word documents, and available to any team member from our Perforce depot
System Designs
I didn't do a ton here (for most of the project we had a specific systems designer), but I did contribute a couple smaller system designs for Dead Bodies and Doors in the game, and how they functioned with the AI and the player.
Development
This was the first 1st-person action game Terminal Reality had worked on, so it was a bit of a learning experience for a lot of us on the team. Even though the project didn't get great reviews, there were some interesting ideas presented in it. It involved the player (who plays as Daryl from the TV show) essentially driving through Georgia, gathering resources and supplies, keeping his vehicle maintained, and also maintaining the health and well-being of any survivors he picks up along the way. Daryl can also send those survivors out on missions to gather more resources as well. As the main character, the player gets to make these decisions, in addition to going into levels on their own to look for supplies, avoiding any walkers they find. As in the show, you generally want to avoid making noise, and not use loud, ranged weapons, so that definitely kept it from being "Call of Duty with zombies" as many initially thought it would be.
As a design team, we also intended the levels to be a bit more open ended than a traditional campaign shooter level. For example, in the Supply Stop level, the player's objective is simply to "Get Gas", and although the high level goals are linear, the actual steps to get there can vary in a lot of ways. The player can choose whether to search certain buildings for resources, whether to help NPCs out with side objectives, or whether to just speed through the level as quickly as possible, at the risk of missing out on supplies for their companions. So on the design side, we had to think of the levels more as "hubs" rather than a simple point A to B approach. Below, there is a video of the basic pipeline we used to generate a level, using both Sketchup (used for the first time on this project), and our engine.
Ultimately, this project basically involved making a game with 16 of these main levels (with smaller "road event" levels counted separately) from scratch, within about 9 months, with essentially 4 level designers, and 1 lead. Knowing that we needed to create a lot of content in a short amount of time, we decided to use a system where we rated each proposed level from A-D based on how complex it would be to create it, in addition to creating reusable "building shells" for any buildings in the game that would allow designers and artists to more easily reuse them across multiple levels.
For example, an "A" level was considered our "must have levels", and generally involved the most voice acting, cinematics, NPC interactions, branching paths, complex scripted events, more unique building shells, etc. A "D" level was a level that was intended to rely mostly on gameplay systems and simpler environments, without a lot of "flash".
This system did all allow a relatively small staff to complete production on the entire game in a short amount of time, and fulfill the basic needs of the project, but of course, the drawback is that a lot of levels don't get the polish that they needed to elevate their quality.
As a design team, we also intended the levels to be a bit more open ended than a traditional campaign shooter level. For example, in the Supply Stop level, the player's objective is simply to "Get Gas", and although the high level goals are linear, the actual steps to get there can vary in a lot of ways. The player can choose whether to search certain buildings for resources, whether to help NPCs out with side objectives, or whether to just speed through the level as quickly as possible, at the risk of missing out on supplies for their companions. So on the design side, we had to think of the levels more as "hubs" rather than a simple point A to B approach. Below, there is a video of the basic pipeline we used to generate a level, using both Sketchup (used for the first time on this project), and our engine.
Ultimately, this project basically involved making a game with 16 of these main levels (with smaller "road event" levels counted separately) from scratch, within about 9 months, with essentially 4 level designers, and 1 lead. Knowing that we needed to create a lot of content in a short amount of time, we decided to use a system where we rated each proposed level from A-D based on how complex it would be to create it, in addition to creating reusable "building shells" for any buildings in the game that would allow designers and artists to more easily reuse them across multiple levels.
For example, an "A" level was considered our "must have levels", and generally involved the most voice acting, cinematics, NPC interactions, branching paths, complex scripted events, more unique building shells, etc. A "D" level was a level that was intended to rely mostly on gameplay systems and simpler environments, without a lot of "flash".
This system did all allow a relatively small staff to complete production on the entire game in a short amount of time, and fulfill the basic needs of the project, but of course, the drawback is that a lot of levels don't get the polish that they needed to elevate their quality.