rE[MOD]

Senior Production Project | 1600 hours | Unity | Level Designer | Download

Re-Mod is an on-the-fly weapon modifying arena shooter game that focuses on intense bursts of fast-paced combat, with the key mechanic being that instead of weapons being scattered across the map, weapon parts dot the map, and you build and change your guns as you play.

First Concept White-boxing

I started by looking at what was wrong with the current multiplayer level design and why many players didn’t find the play space ‘fun’. My main theories were that the level was too big for the number of players, that the level was too flat, and that the level was very static. Not that it needed to literally move, but there was very little feeling of action while exploring the space.

My original design concept was sparse, and only really included a rough white-box I made after a few sketches of half the level. The concept was a bathtub shaped level, that focuses most of the players towards the middle. This would make for high action, as well be a good shape for a spectator arena sport.

More Detail and Thinking on the Art Pipeline

The original designer and artist who worked on the level said they had a hard time communicating standards. The artist built an art kit one way and the designer used it another, and it made for a very polygon-dense map that isn’t very modular at all. I knew from the start I had to work with the new dedicated environment to figure out how to tackle modularity and on getting assets into the engine

We stuck with doing modular assets, so the next draft of the levels were built using meter standards. I then worked with the artist to create a basic list of assets that would be needed to create the level including wall and floor pieces of various sizes.

Various angles of the Finished Arena

Feedback and Changes

The first thing I noticed once the assets were started and I built the level was that it was far too small. I nearly doubled the depth and width of the entire level from the first concept, and increased each floor by an extra meter, to 4 meters instead of 3. This allowed room for jumping indoors.

After the base size started feeling optimal, all the architecture was placed and ready for testing. It came down to finding a way to place weapon pads, spawn points, and health packs.

For health packs, I wanted there to be very few inside, as I wanted the player to have to take risks to recover health. Most of the health packs are towards the middle of the level, or outside in plain sight of any stray snipers. This forces players to move quickly when trying to get a refill on health.

Weapon pads needed to be placed everywhere. The structure has 3 floors, with a few structures on the top floor. Each floor has about 10 weapon pads, with an extra 4 on the top floor in the two towers and corner forts. They are evenly spread out throughout most of the level.

The spawns for the level needed to be good for both teams and free for all. The actual spawns were all placed within visibility of at least 2 weapon pads, and are all far from the middle, but also far from each other.

Last was the capture points. There are capture points in both the far corners of the map, inside the open-topped walled structures. There is also one in the central bridge box, affectionately known among the team as the killbox.

Interior spaces

The inside spaces were difficult to get right. Between the size of them, the shape, and placement of items, I had a difficult time trying to figure exactly what to do with them. I knew what purpose they had to serve and what components were necessary.

·         There had to be a relatively safe way to traverse one half of the level.

·         They needed to have ways to get up and down floors

·         Few health items, more weapon parts weapons

·         Most of the action should happen outside

One other thing I did was play around with changing the verticality of the area just a bit. Lowering some sections and raising others, just to increase the dynamics of the level slightly. These changes were all received well by testers.

After some testing and tweaking, I could balance the interior and exterior spaces so that each achieved their goals.