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FPS Experience

Breakdown

  • Solo project spanning 6 weeks. (Halfspeed 4h/day)

  • Focus on hollistic FPS experience

  • Unreal Engine 5

  • Scripting

    • Gameplay Events​

    • Player & AI

    • AI Spawn System

    • Optimisation

Goals

  • To create a immersive, gameplay driven, first-person horde shooter experience

  • Communicate design with form & gameplay

  • Create mood using form & lighting

Story Summary

The Command has lost contact with an allied strike team deep within the enemy territory. Your job is to go in there, find out what happened and either regain contact if they are still alive or if not - collect their data and extract.

Top-Down Deepdive

ESCAPE

Now, the player must fight their way through to the Valkyrie ship that lands in front of them and extract. This area acts as a high-paced resolution to the mission where enemies are coming from all directions, giving the player the satisfying feeling of escaping just in the nick of time.

CATHEDRAL

Fighting through the cathedral, the player makes their way to the end of it. Here, the player discovers the corpses of the fallen strike team that they were sent to investigate. Now, the player must deploy a drone to analyze the corpses. As the drone takes its time to collect the data, endless hordes of enemies start attacking the player from the cathedral entrance. This sequence of events acts as the climax of the mission.

CITY
STREET

Here, the player exits the narrow environment of the living quarters and enters the massive open street. I start off the area by deliberately misleading the player via a red herring (in the form of a lit path as well as loot). After which, the player is revealed to the massive cathedral, which will later act as the climactic area. Here, the player is also shown the aftermath of an ambush that took place earlier. This is the narrative bit which the player was sent to investigate.

QUARTERS

The living quarters combined with a factorial pipeline in this mission are used to create a contrasting space compared to the areas prior and later - being more claustrophobic and leading to more close-quarters combat. This area also starts off with a safer room containing a healing station, giving the player a short break before the combat intensifies. This is used to avoid combat fatigue for the player.

CRASH
SITE

This area starts off with a sequence of a Valkyrie ship crashing right in front of the player. This both leads the player in the right direction aswell as it creates an illusion of a dynamic world for the player can then player around the crash site. The crashed ship separates the street, creating multiple paths for the player. One is faster but riskier, while the other takes more time but is safer.

  START  

MOLTEN
PIT

This is where the first action takes place. I give the player a lot of prospect throughout this encounter, but not a lot of refuge. The goal for me here is to create forward momentum for the player - to give them an incentive to push forward.

  START  

  END  

INTRO

The Intro section serves multiple purposes. Primarily, it introduces the world to the player and immerses them in it. It also foreshadows the middle section of the mission, creating suspense and anticipation for the player. I would have loved to add an intro voice-over that would relay the narrative to the player.

  START  

  EXIT  

Tension Graph

Tension graph.png

Intro

Molten Pit

Crash Site

Quarters

City Street

The Cathedral

Escape

First Action

Valkyrie Crash

Cathedral Reveal

Ambush Area

Corpses Found

Scan

Introduction

Confrontation

Resolution

I strived to follow the 3-act structure both for the narrative flow as well as the tension(action) flow(although more loosely) - which I believe creates a more classic approach and thereby resonates more with the player, giving them a more familiar experience.

Tension drops are used to give the player some breathing room in order to avoid combat fatigue.

Level Design Techniques

Red Herring into a Bait & Switch

In this area I use lights & loot boxes as a red herring to bait and trick the player to get them to a specific spot and upon reaching it the player has nothing else to do other than to turn around and be presented with a truly powerful hard reveal of the cathedral.  

Design Techniques

Funnel Before Reveal

Funnels are a great way to create contrast between a closed space and an open area and thereby create a more potent reveal for the open area. 

I use this technique to divide different environments in the level and to give certain ones a more powerful reveal such as the cathedrals reveal as well as the reveal within the cathedral itself.

Foreshadow

In this project, especially during the intro, I wanted to foreshadow the middle section of the mission by leading the player's vision via valkyrie ships flying towards a landmark. This immerses the player in the world and the landmark strengthens player's mental map. I chose to hide the climax chunks in order to create a more powerful hard reveal later.

“Crazy Ivan”

During the mission, especially during the climax stage - I lead the player's sight back to the beginning of an area. This gives the player: sense of achievement, progression and draws more attention to the environment. 

Juxtapose

The Warhammer universe is filled with juxtapositions. The combination of living quarters, a factory and a cathedral - all in one zone - interwoven and interconnected creates a powerful juxtaposition.

The cathedral has the most potent one with molten metal pipes going straight into it. 

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Scripting

Optimisation

Working with chunks provided an excelent opportunity to optimize the level by loading/unloading relevant areas of the map.

Using the verticality for one-way drops and to block sightlines enabled me to unload sections of the mission on triggers out of players view. 

Player Prototyping

I implemented the main player functionality in an attempt to imitate most basic aspects of gameplay from Darktide. Player can move, jump, slide, has a melee and a ranged weapon. Nailing metrics was rather challenging but I think I manage to get it close enough. 

Simple Spawn System

I created a simple yet modular spawn system where I could designate what spawns - where and when.

This solution works well for the desiging, testing and itirating process.

Reflections

The initial goal was to create a full Darktide mission designed for co-op experience, but very quickly I realized that this goal is first of all not feasible given my resources and the time window and second of all not testable considering my lack of knowledge in the multiplayer/networking area of Unreal Engine.

Downscaling gave me the opportunity to test, iterate on and improve my design throughout the mission. 

I believe that I managed to achieve most of my goals. If there was one thing I wish I would have added is for the most part dialogue triggers between the “command” and the “player-character” which would more plainly relay the narrative to the player in contrast to the exclusive(as it is right now) environmental/silent storytelling. 

I also believe that I managed to communicate my design ideas using form & colors fairly well in this project. I wanted to clearly define the looks & feelings of different chunks but still leave room for creativity for a level artist if this project were to be set dressed & polished.

There are many aspects that would have elevated this piece - primarily enemy variety & sound design. But that goal might’ve been too ambitious.
 

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