Helping Players Find Their Own Way - talk from NYU Practice 2011

This past weekend I was lucky enough to participate in the first annual Practice Conference at NYU. I gave a talk on level design technique and wanted to share it here. So please click through to the presentation on Slideshare and be sure to click the "Speaker Notes" button beneath the slideshow. This way you can read through the presentation along with the illustrations.

Here's the presentation.

You can also download the .ppt directly from Slideshare if you prefer to view it offline.

Thanks to Charles Pratt, Frank Lantz, Eric Zimmerman and everyone at NYU for inviting me, and to all the incredibly smart and inspiring designers I met there. It was a fascinating event and I'm really glad to have taken part. Hope to be there again next year!

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Reorienteering: spatial organization in BioShock

Level design is communication. The constructed space itself needs to communicate the player's options-- where they can go, what they can do, how to progress. If the space doesn't adequately convey useful information, the player is lost.

Some games have less of this sort of information to convey than others. The player can assume that in a very linear, tunnel-like game, continuing to move forward is always the way to progress. As long as the designer communicates which way is forward (which door the player must exit through to continue) then the player will not be lost. On the other end of the scale are open-world games. The designer must clearly landmark destinations in the world, and the mini-map can be relied upon to lead the player there.

What about a game that lies more in the middle, like BioShock? Open-construction levels that the player can freely navigate, but that are made up of smaller, enclosed individual spaces result in a sort of ant farm arrangement. How does the designer keep the player oriented, and give them the information they need to easily navigate from one side of the level to the other?

These are my personal observations having spent a lot of time examining the levels from BioShock, and not any kind official process or information. These points mostly refer to the core systemic levels of BioShock: Medical Pavilion, Neptune's Bounty, Arcadia/Farmer's Market, Fort Frolic, Hephaestus, Olympus Heights/Apollo Square, and Point Prometheus.

Hubs & spokes

The most common high-level organizational strategy is the hub and spoke-- a large, central space from which smaller, self-contained spaces radiate. A straightforward example of this is the Medical Pavilion hub. You'll remember it as the place you first find the work of Dr. Steinman, and fight your first Big Daddy. The pavilion itself is large and open, with exits to the dental wing, surgery wing, funeral parlor, and so forth split off of it to all sides. However, the space is large enough to be partitioned throughout so that only a couple of possible exits can be seen by the player at any given time, as not to overwhelm them with too many simultaneous options.

As the player passes through the hub, they choose one possible exit and explore the space beyond it. Once this spoke has been explored, the pavilion acts as a reorienting space-- the player may think "alright, I'm done with this area. How do I get to the other parts of the level?" They backtrack through the spoke arriving back at the pavilion, which is easily identifiable. At this point the player only has to walk around the outer edge of the hub space to find exits to the rest of the possible spokes.

In this arrangement, minor spaces are always closer to major spaces than they are to other minor spaces-- the player always passes through the hub to get to another spoke. The player never proceeds directly from spoke to spoke, getting lost without an identifiable anchor space to reorient themselves by. The terminal point of any small explorable space is always just a short lifeline away from the major anchor space.

Consider this in contrast to an even distribution of small spaces that are all interconnected: if the player is on the far side of the level and wants to return to the place they started, they must pass through a succession of small, evenly-weighted spaces to return there. How does the player know whether they're making progress? How do they keep from getting turned around? The player must essentially memorize how each spoke is connected to every other. Even distribution of space results in a labrynthine construction that works against the player's sense of direction. Hub and spoke construction guarantees that even if the player is wandering blindly they will soon arrive at a large, recognizable space they've seen at least once before, and can reset their navigation from there.

Of course, this all goes back to principles of design for real-world public spaces. A shopping mall is laid out in this way-- short hallways branch off of a central concourse so that the visitor is never far from a large, central space that connects back to all the other minor spaces radiating from it. In BioShock, this is may be most recognizable in Fort Frolic, a large shopping mall in Rapture. Two main concourses are connected by a single passthrough, and all the shops, theatres and attractions branch off of these two major anchor spaces. When the player arrives at a dead end while exploring the tobacco shop for instance, they need only wander back the way they came until they reach the central atrium, from which they are reoriented and all their other options are open-- the Fleet Hall theatre, the casino, the strip club, etc. In Hephaestus it's the circular walkways ringing Hephaestus Core; in Apollo Square it's the large central courtyard containing the gallows, and so on.

The player's comprehension of an open-construction level is like a lifeline trailing behind them. If there's no central reorienting space, the player has nothing to anchor their line to; if the minor spaces radiating out from the anchor are too convoluted or arbitrarily interconnected, the player's lifeline gets tangled and they have no idea how to get back to their anchor point. A successful open-construction level is one where the player can be confident that their lifeline will always lead them back 'home,' from which they can cast out again, safe to explore new territory without being left adrift.

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Basics of effective FPS encounter design (via F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2)

I recently finished playing through the single-player campaign of Monolith's F.E.A.R. 2, a military first-person shooter with supernatural elements. In my mind, the design differences between the original game and its sequel highlight a few essential elements of good encounter design in a first-person shooter. These elements all support one primary tenet:

Give the player (and AI) options

The core experience of a good FPS such as F.E.A.R. is the dynamic conflict between the player and seemingly-intelligent, active enemies. This means that both parties need meaningful combat verbs to exploit-- expressive movement, a wide variety of attack types-- as well as spaces which encourage and highlight the use of these verbs.

The worst place to roll out these combat mechanics is in an empty hallway-- no cover, no lateral movement potential, no interesting geometry for the AIs to interact with, no strategy, no surprise. Conversely, the best space is arena-like and varied, with an emphasis on flanking opportunities. The closer any given encounter space drifts towards the hallway model, the less interesting the gameplay there is going to be.

The primary elements of a good FPS encounter space are these:

1. Varied, clustered cover. Players and AI both need useful and varied cover for any kind of tactics to arise. Half-height and full-height cover each serve a purpose, as the verticality/laterality of each is significant (full-height cover is useful against elevated enemies, while half-height cover is invalidated; full-height cover forces actors to alter their lateral path while half-height can be vaulted, etc.)

Clustering of cover is important, as cover which is too evenly distributed becomes undifferentiated and leads to a flat experience. Cover should exist as discrete islands with meaningful no-man's land between each. This gives the player meaningful moment-to-moment choices to make ("should I risk exposing myself to enemy fire in favor of running for a better vantage point?") and causes AIs to be out in the open and moving laterally to the player's view on a frequent basis as they seek new cover, allowing for a shooting gallery experience of trying to take the enemy down before he reaches safety. The idea is to create meaningful points of emphasisinstead of an undifferentiated field of scattered, equally-useful cover nodes.



The most useful cover should be placed in the arena's mid-orbital, the dense ring between the outer edge and the central point of the encounter space. This encourages the player to move into the thick of the action instead of hanging on the periphery, and leaves the central dead zone as a no-man's land that remains risky to advance through, encouraging circular navigation.


Changes in elevation are also recommended, as high ground from which to fire down on enemies can be just as useful as a solid piece of cover to hide behind. Mid-field rises also provide the opportunity to observe the space mid-fight, allowing the player to reassess the situation and adjust his tactics accordingly.

2. Circular navigability. This goes back to the "as little like a hallway as possible" point. A good encounter space gives the actors options, and encourages variability each time an encounter plays out there. This requires not just a wide hallway with islands of cover distributed throughout it, but an open arena that is circularly navigable-- one with pathways around the edges which allow defended flanking movement. This encourages the player to advance and be mobile, and allows the AI to surprise the player by swooping in on their starting position from the side. A wide hallway with cover in it still boils down to advancing battle lines, while defended flanking corridors on the peripheral encourage the actors to circle around one another, take risks ("should I risk flanking into the thick of the enemy force to gain a better close-range firing position?") and generally be active instead of sticking to a single safe point and taking potshots. Circular arenas should give the player a multiplicity of options while keeping him wary of possible enemy flanking maneuvers, dynamics which are conversely defused by the binary flow of a linear hallway no matter how wide or cover-strewn.

3. Observability. As the player approaches an encounter space, he should be able to observe its major features and devise an initial plan of attack. This means that the entry point should feature a vantage point, often elevated, that illustrates the layout of navigable space, cover points, and interactive objects (explosives, water hazards.) All relevant features of the space should be visible and readable, and any element of the space that is obscured should be intentionally so (for instance, the terminal point of a flanking corridor might be obscured to increase the player's feeling of risk in attempting a flanking maneuver by reducing his knowledge of what lies at the other end.) The player, having observed the space, may hereby think beyond arm's reach once he's in the thick of a fight by relating his current position to the overview he saw before the encounter began. Should the player die during the fight, this initial vantage point on respawn provides a reminder of the space's layout, to aid his survivability for the next go round.

Assessing a space for these high-level principles should lay a strong groundwork which can be further refined-- by line of sight tuning, strategic item placement, lighting readability-- to form the basis for an excellent encounter.

The second aspect of setting up the encounter is blocking out the placement and initial behaviors of the enemy AI that the player will be facing. This determines how the player enters the fight, and ultimately how he walks away from it. In an FPS that features expressive combat mechanics and active enemies, the best place for the player to begin the fight is right in the middle of the action; how does one encourage him to dive in, instead of plinking at his foes from the sidelines?

One way is to give the player the first move-- let him get the drop on his enemies. This ties into the observability factor, while also encouraging the player to set up the fight to his advantage and close the distance before fighting starts.

In this scenario, the player approaches the encounter space and observes his opponents standing or patrolling around in the center or at the far end, unaware of his presence. These enemies should be spread out enough that a single grenade blast won't take them all out, and having backup waiting in the wings is important. The player may observe the enemies' movements undisturbed as long as he doesn't attack or advance too close. This presents the player with options-- does he hang back on the outer ring of cover and line up a headshot on one of the enemies? Does he plant some proximity mines around the flanking corridors then toss a grenade at the group to make them scatter? Does he close the distance and open up with automatic fire just as they notice his presence? The player is allowed to choose his tactics and consider his approach. This is invaluable from a player experiential standpoint.

The opposite experience is often encountered in F.E.A.R. 2: as the player steps through a doorway into the fight arena, enemies are already aware of his presence and spraying the entry point with suppressive fire. What options does the player have now? The only valid ones are to retreat and use the edge of the entry door as cover, or to dash blindly forward into a hail of bullets, which is most often suicide. An unaware enemy is key-- it allows the player to strike the match setting off the encounter, instead of being purely reactive to his opposition's opening moves. It allows the player to take up an optimal position for beginning the fight, which a good level designer makes sure is significantly deeper into the arena than the entry door. It allows the respawning player to intentionally alter his tactics upon retry, instead of being forced to deal with the exact same setup each time.

An unaware enemy is subject to extermination by an opening headshot or grenade, but this is a small price to pay-- backup can be spawned at the far end of the arena to replace any intial fodder as a second wave of enemies advances into the encounter. The gains in player control over the fight's initial moments are worth it.

An alternate approach is the ambush-- the player observes a quiet arena, and advances into the middle, only for the enemy to pop out of hiding and attack (rappel down through skylights, jump down off of balconies, swarm in through multiple entry doors, burst through a wall, etc.) This is a fair approach in the back half of the campaign, as the player should be experienced fighting his enemy and could use some variety to encounter setups. However, the ambushing enemies should nonetheless have terrible reflexes-- enemies that pop out guns blazing will merely frustrate the player. Rappelling/door-bashing/balcony-diving/wall-busting ambushers should take a while to ready their weapons and draw a bead on the player, allowing him to make it to cover and get the first shot off. The idea is for the player to retain some initial advantage while still being thrust suddenly into the middle of an encounter.

My experience with F.E.A.R. 2 is that it unfortunately often misses the principles that made the encounters in the original game so engaging-- frequent are restrictive, linear encounter spaces without flanking corridors, precognitive enemies that begin firing on the player before he gets a chance to enter the space, and unobservable spaces without clear flow or points of emphasis. This not only makes the player's role in combat more frustrating, but makes the enemies appear less intelligent-- with fewer navigational options, they tend to remain stationary more and surprise the player less. Smart AI is only half the equation-- smart arena design is required to convincingly demonstrate your enemies' innate abilities. Hopefully the points above will help guide your encounter design towards showcasing your game's AI in the most flattering possible light, making the enemies look-- and the player feel-- as smart as possible.

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Informative

[This post was graciously republished by Edge Online.]

I decided I wanted to make video games when I was nearing the end of my college career. I knew I wanted to get into design. Unfortunately, I didn't know how.

During this time I attended a free seminar held outside Seattle on the topic of how to get into game development. It was presented panel-style, featuring a group of producers, artists, and HR managers on an auditorium stage before a surprisingly large crowd. Individual sessions throughout the day touched on the qualities developers look for when hiring, how to put together a good CV, a Q&A forum with the panel, and so on. Near the end of the seminar, one of the speakers summed up the takeaway of this entire how-to-get-into-the-industry confab:

"Make cool shit, and show it off to anyone and everyone."

The statement, simple and common sense as it is, was driven home in the context of this big to-do at a convention center outside of Seattle. It seemed almost a trite sentiment, but if these industry people bothered to bring us hundreds of neophytes and wannabes all the way out here, and agreed that this simple mantra was what we needed to hear, then that must be all there is to it. And as far as I can tell, it's turned out to be true over the years.

I'm sure that most designers, myself included, occasionally get an e-mail or question at a social function (often from a mom, on behalf of her teenage son) asking "how do you get to be a video game designer?" The answer is already stated above, but I'll go into detail here, drawing on my own experience.

For my part, I'll assume no technical skill. If you can program code or make art, you've already got advantages I didn't when starting out. Let's assume all you've got is a desire to design video games, and a modicum of free time (or the ability to make some for yourself) and that you're not going to a video game-related college or trade school (for my money, I say just get a good liberal arts degree from a state school.) I'll also assume your interest is in big, commercial games; if you're interested in indie games, redirect here.

My approach was to enter via level design, which is the practice of creating gameplay spaces for the player to inhabit. In a game like Half-Life, the level designer lays out the rooms in part of Black Mesa, and places enemies and power-ups throughout these rooms, as well as scripting thing like the events occurring outside the initial tram ride, or the resonance cascade sequence. In modern game development the artistic side of world-building is generally the responsibility of another person entirely; a level designer doesn't make textures to put on walls or build 3D objects, but may sometimes help decide where these things are placed in the level.

So, step 1: Make cool shit. The barrier to entry here is a capable PC, but if you have a machine that can run new games then it can probably also handle making content for those games. If you're in college there is always the computer lab.

Many PC games ship with free editors that you can use to make your own levels. So, find out which games include level editors, then pick one you enjoy playing and would like to make your own content for. This is the important part: you need to choose a project that you really, truly want to play the end product of, as opposed to picking something you think is "marketable." It's the only way to maintain the momentum required to get projects finished, and to make sure you're really getting into something you're going to enjoy doing. If you like first-person shooters, Doom 3/Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 2KX/3/Gears of War, Half-Life 2 (and all the Source games like Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress 2) F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2 and Crysis are only some of the games that ship with editors. Roleplaying games like Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 all feature tools for making your own content. Realtime strategy games like Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War ship with level editors as well. New games featuring full editors are becoming less common these days due to the scale of projects and the resources required to support the tools, but it's likely that more than a few of the games you like have released the means allowing you to make your own content.

So, dig in. If you're a big multiplayer gamer, make deathmatch or capture-the-flag maps. If you're more interested in singleplayer games with a lot of scripting and enemy encounters, make sure you use an editor that allows you to build that kind of content. Making multiplayer arenas won't do you a lot of good if what you really want to do is set up interesting situations for a single player to find himself in. Most released tools have a wiki or community forum online, filled with tutorials and tips on how to get your level up and running. Spend time after work or school building simple little test maps until you have all the core gameplay concepts down: your first level out of the gate shouldn't be an epic production. Instead just make a simple box and figure out how to get enemies spawning in there, then branch out to more complex situations. Once you have the basics of your editor down, start stringing what you've learned into a more full map that someone else could play through and enjoy.

At this point, move on to step 2: Show your stuff to anyone and everyone. Join forums populated by people who are interested in the game you're working on, and modding in general. Post updates as you make progress. Ask others for feedback, and for advice on how to solve problems you encounter. Most importantly, find people who are interested in playtesting your maps for you. Send early versions out to others on the web and ask them to play them, then to send you any constructive criticism they have.

This accomplishes two things: one, having others playtest your maps will just make them better, period. Take constructive criticism to heart, try to implement the changes that others suggest, then have them play again to see if the experience is any better or worse. A project created in a vaccuum will likely only be enjoyable by its creator. Having more eyes on your project early will help you polish it into something that can be understood and enjoyed by anyone who encounters it.

Secondly, getting your stuff out there onto the web helps you make connections that may later be entry points into doing this as your job. I got my first design job when someone on a message board I frequented suggested I apply for an open position at his company, and recommended me to his boss. If I hadn't been linking to my maps online, talking to people about them, and generally making myself visible, I never would have known to apply at that company or had that inside connection. The first people to get a shot at any open job slot are the ones that somebody on the inside already knows. So, make yourself known. Enter contests and level showcases. Be proud of your work. Eventually someone will notice.

You need to end up with a few levels worth showing off, then to compile them into a portfolio and send it to any company you know of that might have an opening. The most useful portfolio is made up of screenshots and especially video of levels you've made, along with of course the level files themselves so potential employers can play your stuff. Capture video of playthroughs of your maps with something like Fraps, then upload them to a site like Youtube or Vimeo. Include these links along with the screenshots of your work and descriptions of each level. The most important thing to any potential employer is going to be the quality of your work; it's your job to make that work as easily accessible as possible. My most recent portfolio (which, granted, includes professional work) is a post on this blog, containing the aforementioned screenshots, videos and text in an easy-to-read web format.

Finally, no job is too humble to be your first. When I graduated college, I didn't have a level design portfolio yet; but, knowing my long-term goal, I worked as a quality assurance tester, first temp then full-time, for a year and a half while I worked on my levels on nights and weekends. Working QA made my day job productive to my end goal (experience inside a game studio, familiarity with the processes,) while giving me time to work on my portfolio during off hours.

Similarly, I jumped at the chance to move 2000 miles away to Texas and work on a low-budget expansion pack as my first design job. It wasn't glamorous or convenient, but if you expect to be hired right out of the gate to work on the next Grand Theft Auto or Halo game, you are very likely to be disappointed. Experience leads to new opportunities; don't be too proud to work on a project nobody's ever heard of, or that your friends wouldn't preorder. In all likelihood you will learn a lot in the process, making you better prepared for the future.

Speaking of Texas, unless you're very lucky, don't expect the first job offers you get to be right down the street from your house. Games industry people tend to move around a lot, or at least once or twice. If you can't go to where the games are, your options are going to be severely limited. Many commercial game companies are in big metropolitan areas-- think of moving as an opportunity to experience a new part of the world and you'll be better off for it.

So, in long and short form, make cool shit, and show it off to anyone and everyone. If you can't maintain the energy required to build a worthwhile portfolio during your off hours, game design may not be right for you. But find a project that excites you and pour yourself into it, and good things should follow in time.

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Critique: Haunting Ground

Quite a while back, I was turned on to Haunting Ground by Leigh Alexander's writeup of it for her Aberrant Gamer column on GameSetWatch. Her insightful critical read of the title made me want to see it for myself, but the disturbing subject matter she described kept me from diving in for a long time. And now that I've played through it, I've been taking even longer to write up my experience.

It's because Haunting Ground is a tough game to write about. Half of it's brilliant, the other nearly unplayable; it treads patently unpleasant and distressing territory, but features clever, enjoyable design that can be great fun to play. It uses exploitation and objectification to challenge audience identity and gender expectations in ways that only a game could, but feels simultaneously pandering and puerile. It's a great success, and a great failure. It's a weird game.

Haunting Ground is a Capcom survival horror title of 2005, following in the tradition of the Clock Tower series. The player is cast in the role of Fiona Belli, a young woman who wakes up in a strange castle with vague memories of a car wreck floating in her head. Fiona soon befriends a helpful German Shepherd named Hewie, and with his assistance must navigate through a convoluted series of puzzle rooms while evading the depraved denizens of the castle.

The first half of the game is an incredibly well-crafted example of classic survival horror design. The castle itself has a creepy-but-plausible layout which includes bedrooms, sitting rooms, bathrooms, gardens, studies, a kitchen and dining room, along with a number of stranger, more baroque locations such as alchemy labs, a gallery filled with dolls staked to the walls, and a demented merry-go-round. The dense puzzles filling the castle hinge on a distorted abstract logic, and beg the question of just what kind of madman would construct such a lair. The setting layers surreality on top of mundanity with aplomb.

Mechanically, the clues and solutions to the first half of the game's tightly-knotted puzzles are wonderfully decentralized and satisfying to solve. Much like the dreamworld of Silent Hill 2, Haunting Ground's early puzzles operate on an otherworldly but readable ruleset which begs nonlinear thinking from the player.

The gameworld's structure and puzzles encourage the player to constantly make connections between distant points, while providing just enough direction to keep the player from getting completely lost: the clue to any given puzzle always lies in one room, while a pertinent object lies in another, and the place the puzzle must be completed in another still, resulting in puzzle solutions that sketch complex webs across the playable space.

The castle is divided into distinct chunks composed of a dozen or so rooms apiece, each chunk initially blocked off from the other by doors "locked from the other side." As the player enters a new chunk, he builds a mental map of that isolated physical space, then by clearing obstructions unlocks the blocked doors to prior sections, gradually building out the full map of the castle as a whole. From the nonlinear objectives to the physical shape of the gameworld and the player's course of progression through it, the first half of Haunting Ground presents a wonderful mechanical experience centered on completing circuits within a system driven by interconnectivity.

The character dynamics and narrative frame that buoy the gameplay in the first half of Haunting Ground are equally compelling and challenging, in totally different ways. Filling the role of Fiona Belli places the player in limbo between voyeur and subject, exploiter and exploited, violator and violable, and for most players, between masculine and feminine. It's a distinctly tense space to occupy, and can only arise from the play of a video game, as opposed to passively observing other entertainment media.

We first see Fiona in Haunting Ground's attract screen movie, padding down a long, red corridor wrapped in a translucent bedsheet, intercut with footage from a camera that follows a blooddrop trickle down the contour of her nude body:



The symbolism makes itself clear here, and colors the game's ongoing depiction of Fiona, which emphasizes her femininity, vitality and vulnerability. These aspects of the protagonist drive all of the ongoing narrative and secondary character motivation in the first half of Haunting Ground, which finds a pitiable rogue's gallery chasing lustily and relentlessly after Fiona. She is expressly designed as an object of desire.

In an early scene, Fiona trades in her wispy bedsheet for a set of clothes she finds disconcertingly laid out on a bed as if for an expected guest, and which furthermore seem to be tailored just for her. As she dresses, we observe the scene through the eyes of an unseen figure watching from behind a painting hung on the wall; we are momentarily put in the shoes of someone preying on Fiona, while simultaneously charged with keeping her from harm's way. The clothes she's been given are exploitative and degrading: a skirt much too short for decency, a bodice cut too tight for modesty, bringing into question the motives of her gracious host. But meanwhile, the game's developers also intentionally invested in a system for simulating breast-bounce as Fiona moves about the castle. The revealing costume serves a fictional purpose as an outfit orchestrated by Fiona's perverse captors, but the computational power poured into depicting boob jiggle can serve no one but the (predominantly male) developers and players of the video game. The overall effect is to reinforce Fiona's vulnerability as a captive subject within the gameworld, while also indicting the player as a voyeur in league with the story's antagonists.

Fiona is hereafter imperiled by the ongoing threat not just of death, but of vague and looming bodily violation. Her first pursuer is a hulking manchild referred to as "Debilitas," seen in the attract screen movie above. When he initially encounters Fiona, he glances from a filthy ragdoll he's holding, to our protagonist and back, then tosses the doll aside and lurches after his new object of desire. As Fiona progresses from room to room, Debilitas will attempt to chase her down when their paths cross. During the pursuit he'll shout out "Dolly!" giggling and stomping with child-like delight, but also sometimes stop to paw at the crotch of his pants in frustration. The implication is that his adult body and stunted mind may be in conflict: the player gets the feeling that Debilitas wants to rape Fiona when he catches her, without even understanding his own actions. The dissonance between physical and mental intent places the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between the threatening-but-blameless Debilitas and the helpless Fiona in an exceedingly uncomfortable frame.

If Debilitas embodies the conflict between male and female, lust and innocence, brawn and intellect, Fiona's second pursuer, Daniella, explores a range of conflict between two female forces: sensation and function, humanity and inhumanity, servitude and dominance.

Daniella is the maid of the castle, and takes over as Fiona's pursuer when Debilitas steps down. She reinforces one of the ongoing themes of the narrative frame, which deals with alchemy and reanimation. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that Daniella is an automaton: she has a body and sentience, but no humanity. As she says, she is "not complete," and can't "experience pleasure or taste." Daniella's turning point from observer to pursuer comes when we find her running her hand over Fiona's body as the girl sleeps, her palm coming to rest over the womb. As Fiona awakes, Daniella goes on to study her own reflection in a window, then bash her head against it in disgust until it shatters, from which point forward she mechanically follows Fiona around the castle, wielding a huge shard of glass as a blade.



Unlike Debilitas, Daniella isn't after Fiona due to any physical urge, but out of jealousy, confusion and contempt. Daniella covets everything Fiona represents: her vitality, her fertility, which spring from her femininity and youth. Daniella has no youth because she has no age; she's an empty shell and she knows it: simply being reminded of such by her own reflection drives her over the edge. When her polar opposite arrives in the form of Fiona, she simply can't process the contrast. Daniella is associated with dolls and puppets via mise en scene throughout the castle, and is just that: a body without a soul, a tinman without a heart. She is broken, pitiful, and terrifying.

The most unsettling aspect of Fiona's predicament is the vagueness of the threat that looms over her. If she's caught by Debilitas, what is he capable of? What is Daniella's true nature? And who is the madman orchestrating all the events in this demented castle anyway? Dolls, mannequins, puppets, earthen golems, mummified girls and even partially reanimated corpses occupy room after room; what is the obsession with life from death?

At one point, Fiona's unseen host, a mysterious hooded figure known as "Riccardo," tells Fiona to remove the tarp from a form sitting on a couch in the study. Upon pulling back the sheet, Fiona finds a clay replica of herself in a state of full pregnancy. Just what the hell are these people's intentions? Overtones of Rosemary's Baby intensify. While the player wraps his head around the castle's abstract puzzles and flees from an array of freaks, an abiding, oppressive fear of the unknown always looms large over the proceedings. It's the opposite of the explicit threat of having Leon's head chainsawed off in Resident Evil 4. Does Fiona face a fate worse than death? Not to know is to dread it all the more.

Haunting Ground chooses a female protagonist deliberately, almost perversely. Unlike many games that put an attractive female shell on an otherwise genderless protagonist, Haunting Ground exploits the trope of the woman imperiled in a way only video games can, twisting it to overlap with the player, resulting in a strange duality that requires the player to really delve in and inhabit the role, to identify with the uniquely female aspects of the character and be driven by her fear and vulnerability, as opposed to observing from a detached viewpoint. The player of the game is charged with protecting Fiona, but also with being Fiona, a character who is different from the player in much more psychologically significant ways than your standard video game protagonist. It's a unique experience for a male player, and uncomfortably so, but one worth braving for its truly alien qualities. Both as a set of engaging game mechanics and as a novel and affecting transportive experience, the first half of Haunting Ground is an overwhelming success.

But here's the thing though:

The second half of Haunting Ground takes every aspect that made the first half interesting or enjoyable and turns it absolutely on its head. Once the third of four acts begins, puzzle design devolves almost instantly into a linear set of rote objectives, with no thought or deduction required. The areas thin out and transition from unsettlingly surreal to simply goofy and implausible. While the early acts had me making interesting mental connections and criss-crossing the map to clear obstructions, successive acts had me simply walking from room to room pressing the buttons in the order I was instructed, or worse yet participating in terribly-designed boss fights.

Player feedback, which was a point of emphasis in the first half of the game, takes a nosedive: I banged my head against one bossfight for the longest time because using the "come here" command on Hewie seemed to be resulting in an aggressive attack that I was just mistargeting, while in fact a FAQ revealed that I had to use the "attack" command explicitly to achieve my goal, while nothing in the game even pointed out that I was making a mistake in the first place. I solved another puzzle by sheer coincidence: one progression gate requires you to simply have a candle in your inventory while your pursuer follows you into a room which also contains some dynamite, at which point a cinematic plays, solving the puzzle for you. Thank god I hadn't actually been trying to figure that one out in any kind of intentional fashion. The final sequence in the game is horrifically punishing, obtuse, and just awful: an invincible boss that kills you in one hit chases you through a gauntlet, requiring the player to restart over and over, scouting with death to build enough precognition to perform the routine perfectly, lest the "game over" beast catch up to you for the dozenth time. The abruptness with which the quality of the game design drops off after the second act is striking, and it continues plummeting all the way til the final credits roll.

Furthermore, any subtlety or restraint the game showed regarding its themes is sandblasted away. We go from uncomfortable sidelong allusions to reanimation, fertility, and impregnation, to Riccardo shouting in the player's face, "Your father and I are clones! WE.. ARE.. CLONES!!" and yelling outright, "Fiona! Let me into your womb!" The story, which pointed in an intriguing direction in its early stages, descends into silly nonsense along with the gameplay self-destruction. We see clones floating in green goo tubes, Riccardo makes himself invisible by casting some spell on Fiona's eyeballs, and we meet an ancient alchemist named Lorenzo who falls from his wheelchair and scrambles along comically behind Fiona, flailing his arms in triple-time, practically begging for strains of Yakkety Sax to play in the background. Everything foreboding and unsettling about the game's narrative frame is transformed, alchemically, into its polar opposite: laughable, eye-rolling camp.

So, Haunting Ground is a game that I can recommend emphatically, up to its halfway point. Buy a used copy of the game for cheap and play up through the end of Daniella's chapter, then turn off the PS2 and don't look back. Despite the second half's implosion on every level, I completed it out of respect to what a great game the first half was, and out of some vain hope that the conclusion would make my devotion worth it. It wasn't worth it though, except to be able to report with confidence that you definitely shouldn't do the same.

Haunting Ground isn't pleasant. It isn't uplifting. Hell, it isn't even noble or progressive, considering its queasily pandering depiction of its protagonist. But its first half is incredibly well-crafted and entrancing while it lasts. At its best, Haunting Ground will take you to an unfamiliar place, ask you to put yourself in a pair of shoes that are particularly difficult to wear, and to experience all that comes along with that challenge. Good luck.

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Work

A long time ago, I promised to share the specific elements of Perseus Mandate that I was responsible for.

I came into the project more than halfway through its life cycle. The entire single-player campaign was set in stone. My duties were primarily to A) bring various campaign levels from alpha or beta quality up to final state, and B) to create original maps for the Instant Action gametype.

First I'll share the original levels I built.

Instant Action

The Instant Action gametype made its first appearance in the 360 port of the original FEAR. These are standalone maps unrelated to the single-player campaign, which allow you to simply blast through a bunch of FEAR's combat without narrative elements to slow down the pacing. I was assigned to create three Instant Action maps (or "Bonus Maps" as they were called in the PC version.) One was based heavily off of an original design by Ian Shephard, so I don't consider it "my map" any more than the levels that I worked on from the single-player campaign.

But I created two other Instant Action maps from the ground up, handling all stages of development from original concept to final visuals and bugfixing. They were sort of "concept maps:" 'Sprint' and 'Arena.'

Sprint

This map eliminates all elements of exploration and equipment scavenging. Instead it focuses on an extremely focused linear path with checkpoints along the way at which the player can refill without slowing down. The challenge is to complete the "track" as quickly as possible, dropping each enemy as efficiently as possible so that you can cross the finish line without breaking stride.

Upon playing the demo of The Club, I felt that their game structure was a much more involved version of my concept for Sprint. Obviously the two productions were each developed completely independently of one another, but it felt validating to see another studio executing on the concept fully.

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Amanda Stewart performed an environment art pass on this map. The setting for Sprint is a bright, clean office complex, lit throughout by skylights. This environment was chosen to emphasize the focus on precise execution of your run, and to avoid enemies getting lost in the shadows. One battle does take place in the basement/generator room underneath the building.

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Arena

This map is the opposite of Sprint: it's a large, enclosed courtyard-- basically a single, open-plan room-- that gets invaded by wave after wave of enemies. The player must survive until the final enemy is killed. The checkpoint system reappears, by way of supply crates that are periodically dropped by planes flying overhead in a very arcadey fashion. The player kills waves of enemies, restocks at the supply drop points in the corners of the map, then continues the cycle.

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Again, the player's goal is to clear the map in the fastest possible time. My focus was to create exciting, open-ended combat in a dynamic space; challenge the player to maintain awareness of his surroundings at all times; and include some excellent destructible elements in the final battle, once the arena had served its purpose. So at the end of the level, the huge "Power Armor XP" mecha is dropped from a helicopter and crashes through the sculpture in the center of the map, then can smash through the surrounding concrete arches to chase the player.



Amanda Stewart provided the standing lamp and destroyed arch art assets.My favorite detail of the map is the large clock on the north wall, which runs in real time. I was actually surprised at how nicely the visuals turned out, since I was responsible for all the geometry and texture placement on the buildings surrounding the courtyard (I am a level designer, not a world artist.) The modernist sculpture in the center was also fun to build, and to blow up.

Single-player

I was responsible for adjusting gameplay elements, event scripting, tuning, performance, and visuals in a handful of the single-player campaign maps, but I don't feel like I "owned" any of that content. If my fellow LDs laid the foundation and built the frame, I just put up the drywall and gave it a couple coats of paint. These levels included the abandoned Underground, the sewers/subway following the Underground, and the mining facility, as well as a good deal of work on the final level of the game.

One area of the single-player campaign that I did feel some ownership over was the freight tunnel that preceded the mines. The player rides an elevator down into the large subterranean freight tunnel, and accompanies an NPC through it. I was handed the shell geometry, and built the visual look of the area:

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Tom Hanrahan (late of TimeGate, now of Monolith) provided the layout and shell geometry. Art assets come from the original FEAR, as well as the TimeGate art department. I placed the textures and art prefabs, provided final detail geometry, built the large pipes along the ceiling, and lit the space. The dusty fog of the volumetric lights really sells the scene, but unfortunately it only appears on the PC version; we cut volumetrics altogether from the 360 version for performance reasons.

Moments

Throughout the campaign, I was asked to go in and add some unique moments-- scares, scripted events or enemy encounters. While I only felt like a guest in the other guys' levels, the events that I added were themselves entirely of my own conception and execution. Spoilers ahead; here are some unique moments I snuck into the game proper:

Data Core Vision

During the first act, the player works his way through the ATC's Data Core facility. The main shaft runs many stories vertically through the center of the building; as the player criss-crosses through the level, he passes through the main shaft a number of times. The first couple times you pass through, it looks like this:



After becoming familiar with the environment, you pass through a final time, and are confronted with this scene:



The Data Core environment was built by Jim Kneuper, and the cloning pod assets were provided by TimeGate art department. The scene did what I wanted-- you feel frantic and distressed as you try to escape from the horrible machine, then disoriented as everything is suddenly back to normal. Jim said it's his favorite part of the level, which tends to make one feel good.

Foreshadowing of Chen's Fate

As the player presses through the sewers under the city, he suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar place: a strange industrial facility. He's greeted by his squadmate, Chen... but the vision ends with an image that implies things might not end well for the good lieutenant.



Art assets provided by TimeGate art department. I built the industrial facility environment and scripted the sequence, as well as the transition out of and back into the sewers. The sewers were built by Jim Kneuper. The idea was for an attentive player to suddenly remember this scene far down the road when Chen finally meets his end, and to foster that spark of realization when the two scenes click.

The Abandoned Hobo Camp

Before exiting the sewers, the player encounters a makeshift barricade of sheetmetal and cast-off home furnishings. Enemies burst through with breaching charges, sending debris flying. Upon further inspection you find mattresses and a flaming barrel; apparently vagrants had set up a small shanty here.



I placed all the set dec and scripted the enemy encounter. This event was originally created for the Perseus Mandate demo, and was integrated into the campaign proper. The level was built built by Jim Kneuper.

Chen Disappears

After a large explosion rocks the city, the player takes refuge in the abandoned Underground. He and Chen are separated from the rest of the squad. They must hurry to get back topside. The player follows Chen, until the inexplicable happens.



Shane Paluski (late of TimeGate, now of Remedy) is responsible for the scripting in the initial monologue, as well as the overall visual look of the Underground. My role was to make the player follow Chen for a bit, as this segment has originally been solo. I wanted to show off as much of the partner AI's range of motion as possible, so I had Chen ducking under obstructions, tumbling through windows, and sliding over tables. I had the player's vision distort and Chen dissolve into ash, leaving the player to wonder if he'd even really been there in the first place.

Window Surprise

While working your way back up from the Underground, the player comes across a small ammo cache in a side room.



Bruce Locke built this level. This little event I stuck in is a cheap scare, but one that's apparently effective. It's especially satisfying putting these kinds of shocks into the game late in development. A tester in QA has become completely familiar with the map, having played through it dozens of times; then one day you hear him literally scream as a scare sequence suddenly pops up somewhere it hadn't been before. Priceless.

Interrupted Firing Squad

When Paxton Fettel is killed, his platoon of Replica soldiers goes dormant, instantly falling into hibernation where they stood. As evidenced by scenes throughout the FEAR games, Replica forces tend to purge their surroundings of any civilian life. This gave me an idea for a grimly humorous little tableau:



Bruce Locke built the level. At this spot, I placed a squad of Replicas that was in the midst of executing a group of civilians, firing squad-style, when Fettel's death pulled the plug on their consciousness. The guy on the far left was seconds from meeting his maker like his two unfortunate friends, when out of nowhere the Replicas just dropped what they were doing and went to sleep. As you can see, the mental stress left the survivor trembling in a quite a state.

Wicked Witch

Finally, a little flourish I added to a scene I'd become way too familiar with while working on the game. After the player goes through enormous amounts of trouble to apprehend one Gavin Morrison, the guy is up and crushed to death in one of Alma's psychic freak-outs. I wasn't responsible for this scene, except for one small bit at the end.



Shane Paluski scripted the scene. It's messed up, but also kind of funny: I mean it's only one step away from a piano falling on the dude. So I added the skid motion to the truck after it lands, and left poor Morrison's feet sticking out from underneath. More than a couple people suggested his toes should curl up when you look at them. I'm glad this little touch made it into the final product.

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So, those are my personal contributions to the game, along with the less tangible finishing work I did throughout. My time spent working on it was incredibly fun, rewarding, and challenging. Less than a year ago I was a tester; now I can point to stuff in a retail video game and say "I made that." Which is nice.

Anyway, enough about my day job! Thanks for bearing with me.

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day.

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Retail

It's official: my first title as professional level designer has reached retail store shelves.

It was cool seeing the preorder signs and boxes in EB last week, and I'll pop in next time I'm near one to see the genuine article in person, shake the box around, hear the discs rattle. It's a modest accomplishment-- Perseus Mandate/F.E.A.R. Files isn't a release with anywhere near the profile of Call of Duty 4 or Gears of War-- but in the two years since I started this blog, I have gone from temp-hire game tester to full-time level designer with a shipped title under his belt. I'm proud to be able to say that. It's what I set out to do, and I hope that this will be the first of many titles with my name in the credits.

The low profile of the title means it hasn't received many reviews of yet; other factors have kept the reviewers from being too kind. Perseus Mandate is taking a bit of a beating, while F.E.A.R Files is doing a little better, no doubt bolstered by the added value of Extraction Point being included in the box. Innumerable factors result in the final state of a game at release, much less the review scores of that game, but I stand by my work on the title, and am proud to have been a part of something that I hope will bring some players a good deal of enjoyment during their time with it. As a fledgling designer, one who is only a single member of the design team and who was brought onboard less than 6 months before we went gold, I can only take some small amount of credit for our successes with the game, and a small amount of responsibility for our failings. I also hope that as more reviews trickle in, those Metacritic averages might creep upwards a bit.

We're digging in our heels and revving up pre-production for our next big, unannounced title. Here's hoping that with more resources of all kinds at our disposal, we'll be able to use the lessons learned from Perseus Mandate and deliver something truly outstanding!

In the meantime, if you do pick up Perseus Mandate or F.E.A.R. Files, pop open Instant Action: Sprint or Instant Action: Arena to play the two levels which are entirely my own, from concept to final polish. I am also largely responsible for Instant Action: Clinic, though I built it up from a base created by fellow level designer/former QA tester Ian Shepherd. My hand is visible throughout the campaign as well, though none of the level layouts or meta-elements are mine; only finishing and polishing. I'll have images and video of the material I'm directly responsible for sometime in the near future, for the curious.

Cheers!

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Demo

The playable demo for F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, a standalone expansion by TimeGate studios, has been released!

I was responsible for creating this demo, but most of the content isn't mine. I grabbed large sections from one level created by Shane Paluski and another by James Kneuper, a nightmare sequence from one of Sam Villareal's levels, stitched them all together, cleaned up some elements, added more of my own (including the final room,) did a bunch of bugfixing, and voila, there we have it: one playable demo that is truly a team effort.

I'm happy with all our work on the demo. It's a fun little playthrough, looks nice, and does a good job of illustrating what Perseus Mandate is all about. I hope that if you're a F.E.A.R. fan looking forward to the expansion, or just a gamer who happens to try it out on a whim, that you enjoy the experience we've put together.

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Path

I've come to a conclusion about level design philosophy that's probably elementary knowledge for someone, say, studying game design in college, but it just congealed for me during my stint at TimeGate. Even when building a level that only provides the player with a strictly linear path, the designer should build the path through the place, not build the place around the path. It's about contrivance and cohesiveness.

I think that there's a natural inclination when laying out a linear shooter level to sketch an 'interesting,' abstract path first, then rationalize it by building out the appropriate geometry around it. In my experience, this tends to lead to spaces that feel very contrived and 'gamey.' Places built around a path are disconnected from a sense of purpose-- where is this curved hallway supposed to lead? Why do these storerooms feed into one another like a string of pearls? Why would they make people in this facility go up a series of ramps and catwalks to exit this room? Why is the layout of this place so convoluted?

I believe that the superior approach is to build a place first--a cohesive, functional space, with a purpose--then define a path through it by strategically restricting the player's movement. If it's a factory setting, build a small complex of storerooms, packing floors and shipping bays in an open structure that could simply be a place of its own, then start blocking off hallways, locking doors, collapsing staircases, and so forth to remove all means of egress that conflict with your chosen gameplay path through the space.

Hereby, the overall space inherently makes sense, while still allowing the designer to have a strong hand in leading the player. No part of the built space, and therefore valuable time, need be wasted-- the player can still be given controlled access to each room; or if a room isn't visited, it is at least visible, understood by the player as a part of the place he's exploring, showing him that there's more to the gameworld than the little path he's running along.

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Gamespy

A little bit of cool news: Residential Evil got written up by Gamespy today (at the bottom of this page.) It's nice to get some recognition, especially for the first finished map I ever publicly released. Now both of my F.E.A.R. maps have gotten mentioned on Gamespy, which I hope means they've been played by a lot more people than they would have otherwise. If only I could let those people know that my work will be in TimeGate's next release, but it hasn't even been announced yet. C'est la vie.

To anyone who's downloaded Residential Evil or BENEATH: hope you dig'em!

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Personality

Today I was thinking about Personality of Place.

I am not a big proponent of author-dictated narrative in character-driven games, but I do think that the strongest player narratives come out of games with well-crafted and unique author-dictated settings; these settings are conveyed both through the core fiction and NPC's personalities, and through the physical spaces provided by the level designer. Since the scenarist provides the raw setting data to the level designer, it's important for the settings themselves (the Places where the play occurs) to exude their own inherent personality for the level designer to play off of, either by way of exploiting expressive locale archetypes or drawing from an original fiction. Many games suffer, in my opinion, by setting their games in spaces that have no ingrained personality of their own, and thereby nothing for the level designer to channel into a truly living gamepace.

Considering my job, this train of thought started with F.E.A.R. as its reference point, compared to prior Monolith games, specifically NOLF2 in this case. While the core gameplay of F.E.A.R. is outstanding in my opinion, I feel it suffered from a lack of Personality of Place. Each setting was inherently generic-- warehouse, industrial plant, office building, office building, office building, high-tech research facility-- and that carried through into somewhat aimless level design. The story occured alongside the levels as opposed to within them-- exposition was through verbal transmissions, usually revolving around events unseen by the player. While the spaces showcase the combat effectively, they gave the level designers no strong personality traits to build off of, as they weren't integrally tied to strong narrative elements or immediately evocative locale archetypes, resulting in an overall rather dry player experience. I single out F.E.A.R. here, but this could be said of many, many action/shooter games (for instance Splinter Cell, Black, Max Payne, The Punisher, The Warriors, and so forth.)

Compare this to NOLF2, which not only had an extremely strong narrative featuring a cast of distinctively-voiced NPCs, but a succession of levels that had as much personality as the game's human characters. When it comes to snap-visualizing a space, which says more to you: "villain's secret undersea base" or "wastewater treatment plant?" "60's spy agency headquarters" or "industrial warehouse?" Hell, even "abandoned suburban home in Akron, Ohio" or "office tower?" In my opinion, the first of each of those pairs evokes not only a strong visual but a tangible mood, a personality-- something to shoot for in both look and feel of the resulting playable spaces. Choosing settings with strong Personality of Place has led to outstanding level design in such recent games as Psychonauts (the settings being the mindscapes of a variety of quirky characters) and Hitman: Blood Money (the settings being a number of exotic and not-so-exotic locales, each home to a very distinctive target for assassination.) When picturing levels, do you get more out of "sewer, factory, office, research lab" or "Mardi Gras, Mississippi riverboat, Heaven & Hell-themed rave, French opera house?" Could Psychonauts' run-of-the-mill platformer gameplay have been so engaging if it didn't take place in the minds of a paranoid conspiracy nut, a battle-hardened army general, and a frustrated painter of black velvet matadors?

The scenarist of a game is not only responsible for inspiring the player's forward movement through engaging plot points and relatable NPCs, but for inspiring the level designers to create spaces that truly exude personality, by supplying them with exciting and unique core Places to develop. It takes an incredibly self-motivated and inventive LD to infuse a boring Place with strong personality strictly through gameplay; on the other hand, an inspiring fiction and locale can lead to truly outstanding playable spaces which breathe with a unique and palpable personality all their own. To put this in MDA terms, there are types of Places that have a built-in aesthetic for the level designer to work towards, adding a unique and tangible set of emotional metrics to the process, which leads to more inspired and engaging playable spaces.

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Pro

Official announcement:

I will begin work as a level designer at TimeGate Studios on March 12th!

TimeGate's most recent release was Extraction Point, the official expansion pack for F.E.A.R. Considering my work with WorldEdit and the F.E.A.R. maps I've released, I would say that TimeGate and I are a pretty good match :-)

TimeGate has been on the scene since the late 90's, gaining prominence with the Kohan series of RTS games before switching gears with the release of Extraction Point. I was very impressed with my playthrough of the expansion, which recently won PC Gamer Magazine's Expansion of the Year 2006 award. It's a great team of guys there and I'm excited about the project.

I'll be moving to Texas immediately after GDC. I'll miss being in the Bay Area with Rachel and everyone else I know here, but I feel like taking on this new role will be worth it.

I hope to find the time to release BENEATH pt. 2, which is not so far from completion at this point. I'd like to make it a priority, as I'd hate to see this go unfinished, since I'm excited about how I plan to finish up the story.

In any case, with this move I'll be a professional designer, which just makes me happy beyond words. I'll keep this blog up to date with how it all works out. Thanks to everyone who's provided me with the encouragement and support to do this thing. Lone star state, here I come :-)

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Stress

I've been thinking about my own self-induced stress lately. Here are the factors:

1. I work in QA
2. I am eager to begin working in a design role
   

The problem is how that's to happen, and the timeframe. There are a lot of possible paths-- I make maps, I apply as a level designer at a studio, I get a level design job; I continue working in QA, I put myself forward internally as a junior designer, I'm moved into that department; or I'm referred by someone I know in the industry and am approached for a design position by a lead at a studio. In any case, I know that all I can do in the meantime is work on my level design portfolio, maintain my contacts, and do the best possible work at my day job. That's all I can do, and I'm trying to do it. But it's not coming soon enough for me.

Am I too impatient? Am I too hard on myself? Or am I too lazy? I feel like I don't spend enough time at home working on my mapping. But I don't have a good metric for that. How many hours per day did other level designers put into their maps and mods before they went pro? How many months or years? Do I spend too much time reading and posting about games online, or playing games? Or do I not spend enough time with my girlfriend, or reading, or traveling? I'm trying to find a balance, but I admit that I'm impatient regardless. I want to be where I want to be and I want it now. I don't know if I should expect myself to be making quicker progress on my work, but I do. So I'm sort of stressing myself out. I'll be happy when my night job turns into my day job, and I can actually enjoy myself when I'm not working. I'm looking forward to it.

Another short-term factor I've noticed in my own dissatisfaction is when I reach a point in the mapmaking where I'm not sure exactly how to proceed. I think part of learning level design is figuring out an effective workflow, recognizing exactly which aspects of the map need to be completed in what order, and being prepared to tackle them when the time comes. I'm facing some aspects of this map that I haven't had to deal with yet-- specifically, meeting a friendly NPC in person for an expository scene-- which I still need to figure out how to set up and script, not to mention writing the actual dialogue to be spoken, and recording it, and putting it into the game. I've gotten to the point though that I know my next step is to write the dialiogue, at which point I can lay out the sequence of the NPC delivering it, script it in, and then move onto the next scene. In general, I'm much more comfortable when I know exactly what work I need to do, and just have yet to do it, than when I'm uncertain about how to proceed. I think that's really true of myself in any regard; I thrive on certainty, knowing what goals I have to complete, and completing them. This probably figures heavily into why I'm drawn to games, and specifically the ones I am.

Here are some progress shots of the living quarters where you meet the aforementioned NPC:

"Sup bro"

A comfortable seating area, with dining table in the background (the two of each seat will become significant.)

Another outstanding bathroom set that I'm slowly becoming famous for.

Someday hopefully I'll learn to slow down and chill out.

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More

Welcome to the first scripted sequences of BENEATH pt. 2!

Some dastardly ghosts swarm you:But that's just a trick.

Then, a Heavy and his cronies burst through this door! The Heavy easily tosses over this huge reception desk, scattering junk everywhere:Then you fight the dudes!

Next I'll either be scripting the NPC conversation sequence, or the next fight sequence... I also need to convert that overhead bridge seen in the last shot into a working retractable walkway.

More to come!

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Shell

So far, I've built the entire shell of BENEATH pt. 2, and laid in the gameplay-relevant set decoration objects. Here's a general overview:


From a viewability standpoint things are still pretty dicey what with the fullbright and the stock texture, but the player's path is something like this:

Green star being the start point. I've learned a lot from making BENEATH pt. 1 and observing how levels are designed in retail games, and I'm happier with the layout and flow of Pt. 2. I was pretty happy with the beginning and end of pt. 1, in that they were pretty open and non-linear, but the central section-- the meat of the fighting-- was really cramped, and basically sent the player in a more-or-less straight line through a bunch of little rooms and little hallways. Also the fights often "felt like [the player] was fighting from a doorway," in that you were confronted with enemies as you set foot in a room, and basically had to stick to the front door for cover until they were dead. So, even though I personally really enjoy close-quarters tunnel fights, I think that more open environments with more cover and flanking opportunities play to F.E.A.R.'s strengths, so I've tried to give the fights as much room to breathe as possible.

For the bigger picture, I'm trying to unify the map as a whole by sending the player through various parts of it in multiple ways and making later parts of the space visible from the very beginning. Also building out ancillary areas along hallways and side rooms that aren't actually playable, to give the player a sense that the space is more of a "real place" that expands beyond the playable path, and exists as a complete entity (labs you can see through windows but can't enter, doors blocked off by debris, etc.) So that's the basis of my layout philosophy this time.

Here's the first arena you'll meet hostiles in:
It's a barracks area, with dividers between individual bunks (more playable space to the left and right, not pictured) and a split-level ceiling. There are no dead ends, giving both the player and enemies plenty of chances to hit cover and flank. It's a straight shot from one end to the other without stopping, except a heavy is going to burst those double doors and block the way until he's killed off.
One section of the map is a non-combat living quarters area where you speak with an NPC. This is the panoramic overlook from the quarters, where the player can look back down to the starting spawn, further down to the lowest level, or up to the roofs, to reorient themselves. Makes for good scenery for a semi-interactive sequence.

Stairs leading down from the "rooftops" (indoor rooftops) to an interior area, that the player must pass through to proceed. Alice is there for scale reference.

My first vent-crawling sequence! I think it'll be a pretty nice one, not stupid and drawn out. There's going to a scripted Alma appearance in here too, but not the scary stuff. Alma in BENEATH isn't a malevolent force.. hopefully her role will be clear by the end of pt. 2.

The server core-- the heart of the facility. It holds all the answers to what lies beneath.

Weirdly I already don't feel like I have THAT much more to do on the map. Logically, I know I do: triggered event scripting (which there's more of this time,) set dec, detailing the geometry, texturing, and enemy encounters. But somehow it doesn't seem especially daunting. I think I just have a better foundation this time.

More to come soon!

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