Main Story Levels
Shipped levels across 20+ story beats from blockout to finish. Used Blueprint to script boss encounter mechanics. Worked closely with art and design to create engaging narrative gameplay spaces. Studied cover shooter gameplay and used the design principle to optimized playspaces.
The quest consists of around a dozen of minor encounters spread across two buildings, plus a boss fight at the end against antagonist Ken Ito. The video below (14:48 – 33:12) is the full playthrough of the quest.
Walkthrough: Main Story Chapter 5
When optimizing the map design, I put focus on intuitive route design and changes of space. For example:
- Most of the stairs, platforms and tunnels are reshaped into C-shaped routes that doesn’t require mobile players to constantly wiggle.
- Vertical movements indicate change of tempo. Stairs, elevators and slings are private places that allows the player to breathe.
- (28:04) Before the bloss fight against Ken Ito, the player will spend time in a tiny elevator, quietly and safely. Then, the space outside the elevator, vast and complex, is presented to the player in an overwhelming way. The hall is full of cubicles and pillars, indicating potential ambushes.
Highlight: Reversible Levels
(Video timestamp 15:35) Combat B-1 and B-2 uses the exact same scene, with the squad and the enemies occupying different sides of the street.
In the first combat, the squad enters from the left side and pushes the enemies on the rightside high ground. After a cinematic cutscene, the second battle turns the map around, with the player occupying the high ground, pushing right to left.
In another POI “Community College”, I designed a double-directional layout to host 2 missions, increasing the content efficiency of the space.
Mission A: Secretly breach from back door, go through each section linearly with progressively intense encounters.
Mission B: Revisit the POI reclaimed by enemies. Forcefully breach the front gate, explore the area to find keys, escape the ambush.
World Events
I was responsible of designing 15+ open world events of various types (Rescue, Disruption, Restoration…).
I was also assigned to improve the user flow of Capture Flags event. Upon redesigning its flowchart, I also scripted an adaptive template through Unreal Blueprint that allows the design team to mass produce event encounters quickly through dragging and dropping. Over 20 events were produced through this template.
Here is how I optimized the event’s gameplay flow.
Fun fact: The first CTF encounter I made was located right under my apartment building in NYC!
PvP Modes
Worked closely with engineers, designers, and artists on Dark Zone and Conflict prototype and GDD.
Dark Zone: PvPvE area featuring an extraction gameplay loop.
Conflict: Point Capturing PvP game mode in close-up spaces.