Level Design Blog Week 12 - The Final Days

Narrative

From the beginning of starting the pre-production, I knew that I wanted to add a narrative to my level, it just so happened that when creating the actual level, I would leave all of the narrative to the very end!

I recorded all of my voice lines, using Audacity. Exporting them as wavs. Importing them into UE5 and adding them to levels as trigger boxes.

I eventually had to go back and add the "Do once" nodes as I had forgotten to add them originally... The narrative itself is slightly skewed and not as cohesive as I would have liked it to be, its also not that packed, its a couple voice lines. The overall Idea started with a treasure hunter, the game ended with a government agent trying to find out what mercenaries were cooking up inside of a Pyramid in Cairo. I believe my implementation of the story was good, but that In comparison to other projects I have seen, I lack a lot of story.

The Plane, The Jump, The Kratos Meme

Way back in week 7/8 Mathew gave me an idea about having the player arrive in the area via car, I could make a simple cutscene of a car arriving. However, at this stage I wanted something a bit more, action packed. The idea came to me randomly, I believe I was doing Christmas shopping when I thought of it " Why don't I have him jump out of a plane and parachute in?". Then, I was home and making it. The video below is a bit of a meme, I got a lot of feedback about it looking like the Kratos jumping Aerosmith meme, so I remade it. (My video was banned in Belarus and Russia because of Aerosmith).

My Video

Original

Plane Scene

Making the plane scene I had a take recorded record the plane moving, then I added it into a sub sequence, added a fade near the end, moved the camera around and had it zoom in, then finally added some audio to make it more immersive.

Jump Scene

Making the jump scene was much more complicated as I had to recreate the inside of the plane, I used a container and some static doors, moving them in the scene as the player walked along so that they could jump.

Because the player character has a falling animation, I used the static version. To do this, I had the real player character disappear after jumping and cut to a different camera, the static player was stored just below the plane.

I then used different cameras to track the static mesh as well as move the mesh within the sequencer.

Lastly I added plane audio, a voice over and a parachute opening at the end when the camera cuts and pans to the pyramid, before eventually fading out.

Inside the Pyramid

After the player falls down through a hole in the Pyramid cutscene, the cutscene ends and loads an entirely new level. The player spawns inside of this pyramid starting room:

It's dark and gloomy, its being hollowed out by the mercenaries inside. The player has two options, go left or go forward.

Left (acts as a hidden area)

Forward (golden route)

The player if they go left will come to a drop, this drop has a checkpoint, AI active and a level stream (loads room 1).

The drop

The player will then jump up a short wall, and be in a long hallway with some cover, the player can either go down this hallway or they can climb up the stairs beside the light and use the rafters to progress to the next room, while having a vantage point.

Hallway + Rafters

Going down the hallway the player can go left into a room that will have two shotgun AI (they may not be there 100% of the time as they do patrol. Or the player can go right into "cart room".

Shotgun room (player can find a shotgun in here as a reward for defeating the AI + Exploring)

Cart room

In cart room, the player can pick up an assault rifle as well as having to fight AI, if they engage the AI in cart room, the sounds of gunfire will attract the AI within shotgun room most of the time. On the right side of cart room, there is an opening that can only be seen with a flashlight, or by the flashing light that goes on and off during the level.

Entrance

This entrance leads to one of my better level streaming areas. Using a "dog leg" I created Room 1, Room 2, Room 3 and Room Big. These rooms will load in as the player enters specific trigger boxes set up within each room.

Anything in grey, is part of the level streaming. (Including the white rock).

The Big Room

This room was my last chance I had to show off my level design skills. So I did my best with what I had.

Entrance to the area

Left Corner View Of Room

Right Corner View Of Room

Level Streaming note

This drop is the perfect place for my game to unload almost everything behind the player (excluding room3) however, I haven't put it in the game as I must have forgotten to during bug testing before hand in. (This was 10000% planned to be implemented, its the entire reason the room has a drop into it instead of stairs). I thought I would point this out to show my understanding of how to use level streaming, despite forgetting to add the unload level stream node into this particular section.

While in this final room, the player has many an option for weapons, including a rocket launcher in the back right corner hidden in-between some rocks, as well as a shotgun beside the campfire where the AI start off. The player has to find a way out of the room, as the large door is locked. To do this they must defeat AI and push their way towards the very top containers, in which they will find a pipe that they can drop onto, and then follow the pipe along to an opening in the wall, I use a spotlight to point it out to the player.

Once the payer reaches this area, the game will end. :)

Quick fire notes of other fixes/additions this week:

- More voice lines.

- Added in more sound effects.

- Fixed a lot of bugs with collision and the rocks.

-Fixed even more bugs.

- Fixed level streaming on Egypt (floor wasn't persistent, AI would fall through).

- Implemented Brian's latest fix:

Finally, The Gameplay Video.

Note: Sorry for the electrical noise recorded in this video, it was a bug within the game.